Ischaemic heart disease, stroke, lower respiratory infections and chronic obstructive lung disease have remained the top major killers during the past decade. Noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) were responsible for 68% (38 million) of all deaths globally in 2012, up from 60% (31 million) in 2000. Cardiovascular diseases alone killed 2.6 million more people in 2012 than […]

Avik Roy, Forbes Staff GUEST POST WRITTEN BY Jason Clemens and Bacchus Barua Mr. Clemens is the executive vice-president and Mr. Barua is senior health economist at the Fraser Institute in Canada. The heated and often emotionally charged debate over the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) hasn’t subsided despite it being the law of the land for more than […]

The Ugly Truth About Canadian Health Care David Gratzer, MD Socialized medicine has meant rationed care and lack of innovation. Small wonder Canadians are looking to the market. I was once a believer in socialized medicine. I don’t want to overstate my case: growing up in Canada, I didn’t spend much time contemplating the nuances of […]

War has undoubtedly been a fixture throughout human history, and the battles raging in the Middle East today are just one example. But is war necessarily a permanent part of human civilization? In Scientific American, science writer Michael Shermer suggests that democracies are less likely to go to war. In 1795, philosopher Immanuel Kant first […]

How to Make Medicine Safe and Cheap By Steve H. Hanke, Alexander B. Rose, and Stephen J. K. Walter Assuring that affordable, high-quality drug therapies are available in poor countries is a priority for policymakers, scholars, and advocacy groups around the world. However, there is little agreement over how to achieve that goal. Some see […]

Why Poland Matters: Do Your Shopping in Paris, but Back Polish Entrepreneurs by Julie Meyer CEO, Entrepreneur Country. I started off the week with a lot of ‘other stuff’ on my mind. I boarded the flight to Warsaw on Monday morning sort of asking myself how it was that I was going to spend my […]

NHS: The Observer Scale of clinical negligence claims is now unprecedented prompting claims that reorganisation has harmed patient care The number of litigation claims made against the NHS in a year has almost doubled under the coalition, prompting claims that the service is failing to deal with growing demands on its limited resources. The scale of the […]

Atul Gawande: The angel of good death opens up his surgery The American surgeon and bestselling author begins his Reith lectures this week on why doctors sometimes do harm. And the nation is dying to hear them The Sunday Times: 23 November 2014 As a senior surgeon who has become a bestselling author by writing […]

Removing the government cap unleashed free enterprise – hidden value re-appeared Deutsche Bank suffered about $150 million in losses Thursday after the Swiss National Bank abruptly removed the cap on the Swiss franc’s value, sparking a massive franc rally, said a person familiar with the matter. Barclays also racked up tens of millions of dollars […]

  CZECHS LEGALIZE CANNABIS Beginning January 1, ordinary Czechs can grow up to five marijuana plants or have several marijuana cigarettes in their pockets without fear of criminal prosecution.  Previously what constituted a small amount was not specified and the police and courts loosely interpreted the penal code case by case, often resulting in incarceration […]