News, Resources, and Events Tagged "Christopher Robertson"
When Desperate Patients Go to Court for Unproven Treatments — The Battle for Hospital Independence
During the Covid-19 pandemic, patients have asked courts to compel hospitals to administer unproven therapies, including ivermectin. These lawsuits have called into question the judiciary’s role in medical…
A new Alzheimer’s drug shows why the FDA’s speedy approval process is broken
Whether it’s covid or cancer, when you’re a patient facing a life-threatening disease without good treatment options, your risk tolerance is bound to be pretty high.…
Challenges in confirming drug effectiveness after early approval
It’s easy to understand the urge to make potentially beneficial drugs quickly available to patients in need. It’s also easy to go too far. Through its 2021…
Constitution allows Biden to mandate COVID vaccine. Federal government can do even more.
Over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, each state has taken its own approach on masking, vaccine distribution and education. As the new school year gets underway, New York is…
Is it a crime to forge a vaccine card? And what’s the penalty for using a fake?
Shools, businesses, the military and local governments are requiring proof of vaccination. Yet, unlike the European Union and Australia, which have secure digital proof of vaccination, the United States has…
Paying people to get vaccinated might work – but is it ethical?
A financial shot in the arm could be just what is needed for Americans unsure about vaccination. On May 12, 2021, the Republican governor of Ohio, Mike DeWine, announced five US$1 million…
The Need for a Strong and Stable Federal Public Health Agency Independent from Politicians
The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed the precariousness of federal public health institutions in the United States, and how disastrously things can go when those institutions are undermined by political forces.…
Paying People to Take the Vaccine - Would it Help or Backfire?
Full author list: Christopher Robertson (Former Academic Fellow), Daniel Scheitrum, K. Aleks Schaefer, Trey Malone, Brandon R. McFadden, Paul Ferraro, and Kent D. Messer This research investigates the extent to…
The Jury Trial Reinvented
The Framers of the Sixth and Seventh Amendments to the United States Constitution recognized that jury trials were essential institutions for maintaining democratic legitimacy and avoiding epistemic crises. As an…
Evidence Supporting the Value of Surgical Procedures: Can We Do Better?
There is an acknowledged need for higher-quality evidence to quantify the benefit of surgical procedures, yet not enough has been done to improve the evidence base. This lack of evidence…
What are emergency use authorizations, and do they guarantee that a vaccine or drug is safe?
In coming days, the Food and Drug Administration is likely to authorize new COVID-19 vaccines based on applications submitted by two companies. These authorizations have happened very fast in a…
Conservatives backed the ideas behind Obamacare, so how did they come to hate it
The Affordable Care Act is back before the U.S. Supreme Court in the latest of dozens of attacks against the law by conservatives fighting what they now perceive to…
Keeping the Patient at the Center of Machine Learning in Healthcare
Char et al. (2020) aspire to provide “a systematic approach to identifying … ethical concerns” around machine learning healthcare applications (ML-HCAs), which includes artificial intelligence and big data. Their…
We need an independent public health agency
As the Trump administration seizes and buries the Centers for Disease Control's public health data and tries to isolate and undermine Dr. Anthony Fauci, we are now seeing a…
Indemnifying precaution: economic insights for regulation of a highly infectious disease
Economic insights are powerful for understanding the challenge of managing a highly infectious disease, such as COVID-19, through behavioral precautions including social distancing. One problem is a form of moral…
The Health 202: Obamacare is turning 10. But its cheerleaders are focused on the problems it didn't fix.
From the article: Christopher Robertson, a health law expert at the University of Arizona, told me he’d give the ACA “a solid B” because of its…
Exposed: Why Our Health Insurance Is Incomplete and What Can Be Done about It
A sharp exposé of the roots of the cost-exposure consensus in American health care that shows how the next wave of reform can secure real access and efficiency. The…
Why the Medicine You Take Could Actually be Bad for Your Health
From the article: Premature birth can be terrifying. Although survival rates for babies born before 37 weeks of pregnancy have steadily improved, they are still significantly worse than those of babies…
If We Cannot Live With The Individual Mandate, Can We Cover Enough Lives Without It?
From the article: On Monday, AEI welcomed Wendy Netter Epstein of DePaul University to discuss her forthcoming paper “Private law alternatives to the individual mandate.” Ms. Epstein provided…
Watch: “Driving Value in the U.S. Healthcare System”
Academic Fellow alumnus Christopher T. Robertson presented at the Health Law Symposium at the University of Nevada Las Vegas. Click here to watch his talk, "Driving Value in the U…
Viewpoint: Promoting Patient Interests in Implementing the Federal Right to Try Act
Former Executive Director and Academic Fellow Alumna Holly Fernandez Lynch has co-authored an opinion piece on the federal Right to Try Act of 2017. From the article: On May 30, 2018, President Trump…
Can Rationing through Inconvenience Be Ethical?
From the Article: In this article, we provide a comprehensive analysis and a normative assessment of rationing through inconvenience as a form of rationing. By “rationing through inconvenience”…
It’s hard to be economically rational when you’re sick
From the article: We may be in the early days of a changing political ideology. For decades, politicians on both sides have espoused the belief that copayments and other out-of-pocket…
House passes right-to-try on second try
From the Article: The House of Representatives passed on party lines Wednesday evening a bill designed to let very sick patients request access to experimental medicines without government oversight. The…