All of us continue to be preoccupied with reports about the war in Iraq. Not surprisingly, every domestic policy issue, including health care, is taking a back seat right now. But even with everything else on his mind, President Bush still took time during a war meeting with his cabinet on Thursday afternoon to mention health care, stressing the importance of improving Medicare. While all of us are hoping and praying for the safety of our troops and American citizens living in the Middle East, many of our friends and colleagues outside Washington have sent messages hoping we are safe here. Strangely, it doesn’t feel any more dangerous to be in the Washington area right now than anywhere else. In fact, the city has been preoccupied with a different sort of terrorism this week — the disgruntled tobacco farmer who drove his tractor into a pond near the Vietnam Memorial, warning he was armed with explosives. So while the president was giving Saddam Hussein 48 hours to give up or face war, the U.S. Park Service was trying to convince Dwight Watson to peacefully leave his TV-equipped tractor – which he did after 47 hours. Surreal. And the thing that most of Washington focused on was the terrible, terrible traffic jams! It took three hours or more to make what should be a 15-minute trip into or across town. Everyone was astonished at the gridlock, and frightened that one man with a tractor could paralyze this city. So we’ll take a break from commenting on the health care debate this week. Several important things did happen: There was a major conference at the American Enterprise Institute on The Worldwide Campaign Against Pharmaceutical Innovation and the 2003 Medicare Trustees’ Report was released. You’ll find information on both in the summaries below. And the Manhattan Institute’s Center for Medical Progress held an important forum on Thursday with principal investigators saying that the conclusions drawn from the findings of the ALLHAT study on diuretics and hypertension are dangerously wrong. Here is a report by Galen’s Joe Moser on the conference. Please join us in continuing to pray for a swift end to the fighting and for the safety of the allied troops and the Iraqi people. Grace-Marie Turner
Grace-Marie Turner is president of the Galen Institute, a not-for-profit research organization focusing on ideas to promote free-market health reform. She can be reached at P.O. Box 19080, Alexandria, VA, 22320.
Conclusions
All of us continue to be preoccupied with reports about the war in Iraq. Not surprisingly, every domestic policy issue, including health care, is taking a back seat right now. But even with everything else on his mind, President Bush still took time during a war meeting with his cabinet on Thursday afternoon to mention health care, stressing the importance of improving Medicare. While all of us are hoping and praying for the safety of our troops and American citizens living in the Middle East, many of our friends and colleagues outside Washington have sent messages hoping we are safe here. Strangely, it doesn’t feel any more dangerous to be in the Washington area right now than anywhere else. In fact, the city has been preoccupied with a different sort of terrorism this week — the disgruntled tobacco farmer who drove his tractor into a pond near the Vietnam Memorial, warning he was armed with explosives. So while the president was giving Saddam Hussein 48 hours to give up or face war, the U.S. Park Service was trying to convince Dwight Watson to peacefully leave his TV-equipped tractor – which he did after 47 hours. Surreal. And the thing that most of Washington focused on was the terrible, terrible traffic jams! It took three hours or more to make what should be a 15-minute trip into or across town. Everyone was astonished at the gridlock, and frightened that one man with a tractor could paralyze this city. So we’ll take a break from commenting on the health care debate this week. Several important things did happen: There was a major conference at the American Enterprise Institute on The Worldwide Campaign Against Pharmaceutical Innovation and the 2003 Medicare Trustees’ Report was released. You’ll find information on both in the summaries below. And the Manhattan Institute’s Center for Medical Progress held an important forum on Thursday with principal investigators saying that the conclusions drawn from the findings of the ALLHAT study on diuretics and hypertension are dangerously wrong. Here is a report by Galen’s Joe Moser on the conference. Please join us in continuing to pray for a swift end to the fighting and for the safety of the allied troops and the Iraqi people. Grace-Marie Turner
Grace-Marie Turner is president of the Galen Institute, a not-for-profit research organization focusing on ideas to promote free-market health reform. She can be reached at P.O. Box 19080, Alexandria, VA, 22320.