Improving the U.S. health-care system requires encouraging low-value doctors and hospitals to practice as well as high-value ones do. The gap between the two is wide, but that only shows how much room we have for improvement. Costs vary wildly across regions, among hospitals within a region, and even among doctors within a given hospital. […]
The Monopolized Economy
Posted inEconomy, Government, July/August 2013, Magazine, The Monopolized Economy
Estates of Mind
The answer to America’s techno-malaise is to force big corporations to compete more. And to open their patent vaults.
Posted inEconomy, Magazine, November/December 2012, The Monopolized Economy
Last Call
Industry giants are threatening to swallow up America’s carefully regulated alcohol industry, and remake America in the image of booze-soaked Britain.
Posted inEconomy, Magazine, November/December 2012, The Monopolized Economy
Obama’s Game of Chicken
The untold story of how the administration tried to stand up to big agricultural companies on behalf of independent farmers, and lost.
Posted inEconomy, July/August 2012, Magazine, The Monopolized Economy
The Slow-Motion Collapse of American Entrepreneurship
The experts tell us new business start-ups will save the American economy. So how come there are fewer and fewer of them?
Posted inEconomy, Magazine, May/June 2011, The Monopolized Economy
The Real Enemy of Unions
Why organized labor should join with entrepreneurs to bust the corporate monopolies threatening them both.
Posted inEconomy, Magazine, March/April 2010, Politics, The Monopolized Economy
Who Broke America’s Jobs Machine?
Why creeping consolidation is crushing American livelihoods.
Posted inAugust/September/October 2008, Economy, Magazine, The Monopolized Economy
How Fast You Can Read This Essay Online
John McCain is an AT&T guy; Barack Obama is a Google guy.
Posted inEconomy, January/February 2006, Magazine, The Monopolized Economy
Let There Be Wi-Fi
Broadband is the electricity of the 21st century—and much of America is being left in the dark.
Posted inEconomy, Magazine, The Monopolized Economy
The Monopoly Factory
In 1993, Purdue Pharmaceuticals of Stamford, Conn. applied for the first in a series of patents on a drug it called Oxycontin— a painkiller to which Rush Limbaugh would later become addicted. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) granted those patents based on the manufacturer’s contention that the drug contained a novel innovation: It had been engineered so […]
