by Akiva Malamet, Bautista Vivanco, and Michael F. Cannon, Cato at Liberty, August 11, 2025.
Excerpts:
Whereas Ozempic and different GLP‑1 medication are nice at serving to sufferers reduce weight(amongst many different promising makes use of), these spectacular drugs include a powerful price ticket. For these paying out of pocket, a month’s provide can value round $1,000.
Congress prohibits Medicare from subsidizing anti-obesity drugs however permits GLP‑1 medication for the therapy of diabetes and heart problems (a very susceptible subset of its beneficiary inhabitants). The Congressional Price range Workplace studied the budgetary affect of authorizing Medicare to subsidize anti-obesity drugs. It concluded that subsidizing GLP‑1 medication for weight problems would have a web value to taxpayers of $31.5 billion between 2026 and 2034.
And:
Extra not too long ago, our colleague Jeffrey Singer argued that Congress can and may eradicate FDA obstacles for compounding pharmacies. Singer additionally emphasised the advantages of eradicating prescription necessities. Mixed, these reforms would considerably improve competitors and render GLP-1s extra accessible.
In a aggressive market, price-sensitive sufferers put downward stress on the costs of the medical items and providers they want or need. Medicare, Medicaid, and the tax exclusion for employer-sponsored medical health insurance create a number of ranges of separation between sufferers and the worth of medical items and providers. The extra insensitive sufferers are to the worth of care, the much less stress they placed on suppliers to scale back costs. This makes well being care costlier and fewer accessible for everybody.
by David J. Bier, Cato at Liberty, August 11, 2025.
Excerpt:
Immigrant employees searching for a inexperienced card—which denotes authorized everlasting residence in the USA—now face nearly a three-and-a-half-year wait to make it by means of the federal government’s regulatory morass. Paying a $2,805 price might scale back this wait to “solely” 2.8 years. Since 2016, the federal government has added over 18 months to the common inexperienced card course of. This wants to vary to maintain America aggressive.
The processing delays come on high of the time to await a inexperienced card cap slot to turn into out there underneath the annual inexperienced card caps (which is commonly a few years). Additionally they don’t embrace the time spent complying with rules previous to the primary submitting step. This prefiling interval can take months.
DRH remark: I’m so glad I acquired my inexperienced card in 1977, when it took just a few months.
by Mike Fox, Cato at Liberty, August 11, 2025.
Excerpt:
NYU Legislation Professor Rachel Barkow has written a rare new ebook, Justice Deserted: How the Supreme Courtroom Ignored the Structure and Enabled Mass Incarceration. It’s a damning indictment of our judicial system’s complicity within the dramatic growth of incarceration over the previous a number of many years. Choose-made modifications within the legislation have created a brand new establishment: The USA—with 5 p.c of the world’s inhabitants—now incorporates 25 p.c of its prisoners.
Barkow’s central thesis is that the Supreme Courtroom has didn’t execute its core perform: to safeguard particular person liberties in opposition to the encroaching energy of the state. Even worse, it has cloaked this failure within the guise of public security. As Barkow explains, the Courtroom has refused to “police the police.” When supervision of presidency fails, egregious abuses of authority go unchecked. The Courtroom’s failure to implement constitutional ensures has enabled mass incarceration to metastasize.
DRH Word: I didn’t discover till I began posting, however 3 out of three of my weekly highlights are from one supply: Cato at Liberty. Good for them. So could be the 4th, so I’ll chorus from posting it and, as an alternative, put up a hyperlink to a superb discussion board held by the Unbiased Institute.
by Jeff Hummel and Phil Magness, Unbiased Institute, August 13, 2025.
Jeff does a superb job of questioning and Phil knocks it out of the park together with his solutions. Actually wonderful how low the New York Instances sunk.
I like to recommend listening at 1.25 pace. You received’t miss a lot by skipping Q&A, which begins at concerning the 42:00 level, though there’s an attention-grabbing query (and an informative reply) about how Abe Lincoln considered getting slaves to to migrate.
Even if in case you have little time to hear, take a look at the story of the New York Instances reality checker at 15:14.
My favourite line, although, which gave me goosebumps, is at 12:34.
