Tag Archives: Medicare

[Part of a series on the Swiss economy and society.] The enigmatic independence of Switzerland is perhaps best demonstrated in the fact that its healthcare system manages to satisfy both free marketers and the statist-socialists in the country. It is a giant social safety net woven by individual responsibility and self-made wealth. Health insurance is almost entirely consumer-based, though there are strict cantonal...

The last few years haven’t done wonders for the reputation of the pharmaceutical industry. In 2015, Turing Pharmaceuticals faced public outrage after hiking the price of Daraprim, a drug used to treat the parasitic disease toxoplasmosis in vulnerable populations such as pregnant women and AIDS patients, by more than 5,000 percent. This year, Mylan is embroiled in an ongoing controversy after the price of its emergency allergy treatment EpiPen increased sixfold in under a decade. Meanwhile,...

Last Thursday, when we reported that Ben Bernanke was to "secretly" meet with Kuroda and Abe this week (he is said to have already met with Japan's central bank head earlier today), we said that "something big was coming" out of Japan which had "helicopter money" on the agenda.  And sure enough, after a dramatic victory for Abe in Japan's upper house elections which gave his party an even greater majority, Abe announced the first hints of helicopter money when Nikkei reported, and Abe...