Scott Gottlieb

After stints at the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Scott Gottlieb, M.D., has returned to AEI as a resident fellow. A specialist in regulatory reform of the FDA and pharmaceutical pricing, Gottlieb is a regular contributor to the British Medical Journal, and his articles have appeared in numerous and varied outlets, including the Journal of the American Medical Association, New York Times, Washington Times, Los Angeles Times, and Forbes.

Wilson H. Taylor Scholar Joseph Antos

On September 13, Joseph Antos and a team of independent actuaries and cost estimators released their study of President George W. Bush's and Senator John Kerry's health care reform proposals. It is the most detailed analysis that has thus far been made publicly available. Antos and his collaborators predict widely different costs and impacts for the two proposals: "Over the ten-year period between 2006 and 2015, the Kerry [health insurance] plan would increase federal outlays by about $1.5 trillion. About 27.3 million people would be newly insured under the Kerry proposal. The Bush plan would increase federal spending by about $128.6 billion over that same ten-year period. About 6.7 million people would be newly insured under the Bush proposal."

Nicholas Eberstadt and Joseph P. Ferguson, writing in The Weekly Standard (August 30), discuss North Korea's handling of its nuclear crises: "In past [nuclear weapons] disputes, the North Korean leadership consistently, and often skillfully, attempted to play off one nation against another. Today, by contrast, Kim Jong Il has managed to alienate and alarm most of his neighbors simultaneously--even though they have not yet responded to his mounting threats. To the extent one can today detect in Northeast Asia the nascent components of a coalition to punish North Korea for its nuclear transgressions, it is a prospective coalition being assembled more through the inadvertent actions of Pyongyang than through the conscious design of Washington."

Desmond Lachman, writing in the Washington Times (September 2), criticizes recent and planned investment industry reforms by the Securities and Exchange Commission: "As if it were not satisfied with harming the mutual-fund industry, [William] Donaldson's SEC has now decided to weigh in on regulating the hedge-fund industry. The initial step proposed by the SEC in that direction earlier this month was to require that all hedge-fund managers file with the SEC. It seems to matter little to Mr. Donaldson that no less an expert than Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan has testified before Congress that the SEC's proposed regulation would do little to prevent fraud in the hedge-fund industry, while it might do a lot to drive some of those hedge funds out of business. It also seems to matter little to Mr. Donaldson that he might be jeopardizing the highly important contribution that the hedge funds have made to the flexibility of our financial system by providing much-needed liquidity."

In Forbes (September 6) Sally Satel, M.D., asserts that critics of the painkiller OxyContin unfairly blame it for causing addiction: "[OxyContin] fits the popular cultural narrative that frames pharmaceutical companies as rapacious, self-interested entities that hurt consumers-sick, vulnerable consumers to boot. Add trial lawyers salivating at the thought of a product liability payday and media that cannot resist the story of a villain (drug company) and a fair maiden (patient), and you have the script for a modern-day health scare. The most worrisome consequence of the hype about OxyContin's dangers is that patients, and some doctors, have become fearful of it. The American Pain Foundation receives calls from patients who are doing well on the medication but are afraid to continue even though it is well established that addiction--the compulsive use of a drug to regulate one's mood--occurs infrequently among individuals who take OxyContin as prescribed."

Resident Fellow Karlyn H. Bowman

Karlyn H. Bowman, in her column "POLLitics" for Roll Call (September 1), summarizes public opinion results on whether Americans feel safer in a post-9/11 world: "Most Americans believe that there will be another terrorist attack on American soil. In the polls, about 20 percent say they are very worried about that prospect. In an August 23-25 NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, 41 percent said that we as a country are more safe than we were before September 11, 2001; 31 percent say [we are] about as safe; and 27 percent say we are less safe. In an August 15-18 CBS News poll, 51 percent of those surveyed said the policies of the [George W.] Bush administration had made the United States safer from terrorism, and 24 percent said less safe."