Recall that Chemist Warehouse found a structure that let them operate in New Zealand despite pharmacy guild regulations that had seemed aimed to block such entry. The pharmacists are having another tilt at it.In Australia, a pharmacy that wanted to fill prescriptions could not set up within 200m, 1.5km or 10km of an existing pharmacy depending…
Another pitch by the pharmacy guild
The Cancer Society is racist? Really?
26 Jul 2024 Leave a comment
in discrimination, health economics, law and economics, politics - New Zealand Tags: political correctness, racial discrimination, regressive left
Graham Adams writes on the media’s mission to demonise NZ’s health system — Not long after I began treatment in 2015 for an aggressive leukaemia, I was phoned by a representative of the Cancer Society. A hospital oncology staffer had strongly recommended I give the organisation my name and contact details so I did. I […]
The Cancer Society is racist? Really?
Doctors Without Borders Accused of violating its own policy of political neutrality to impugn Israel, and my cessation of donations
24 Jul 2024 Leave a comment
in defence economics, health economics, laws of war, liberalism, Marxist economics, war and peace Tags: Gaza Strip, Israel, Middle-East politics, regressive left, war against terror

A while back I was a big fan of Doctors without Borders (or “MSF”, for “Médecins Sans Frontières”). It was put in my will to get a big bequest, and when I auctioned of a copy of Why Evolution is True, autographed by many famous scientists and nonbelievers, and illustrated and illuminated by Kelly Houle, […]
Doctors Without Borders Accused of violating its own policy of political neutrality to impugn Israel, and my cessation of donations
Dawkins talks to Kathleen Stock
24 Jul 2024 Leave a comment
in discrimination, economics of education, gender, health economics, labour economics, law and economics, liberalism, Marxist economics, politics - USA Tags: Age of Enlightenment, conjecture and refutation, free speech, gender gap, philosophy of science, political correctness, regressive left, sex discrimination
Here we have a 55-minute (remote) conversation between Richard Dawkins and Kathleen Stock conducted during the “Dissident Dialogues” conference in NYC last May. Here’s a précis of Stock’s background from Wikipedia: Kathleen Mary Linn Stock OBE is a British philosopher and writer. She was a professor of philosophy at the University of Sussex until 2021. She has published academic […]
Dawkins talks to Kathleen Stock
Vaccination works
23 Jul 2024 Leave a comment
in health economics Tags: anti-vaccination movement, cranks, vaccines

Climate Warriors are Colonising Medicine
21 Jul 2024 Leave a comment
in energy economics, environmental economics, environmentalism, global warming, health economics Tags: climate activists, cranks, political correctness, regressive left
…aspiring to be a planet-saving superhero risks undermining the commitments that doctors make: make doctors doctors again. Physicians, heal thyselves!
Climate Warriors are Colonising Medicine
Pamala Paul: Ideology impedes gender treatement in U.S.
14 Jul 2024 Leave a comment
in health economics, liberalism, Marxist economics Tags: British politics, free speech, political correctness, regressive left

If you’ve followed this website regularly, you’ll know that the UK’s Cass Review, which evaluated and criticized the NHS’s treatment of gender dysphoria, has been widely accepted in the UK, causing the country to slow down on “affirmative care”, following the lead of other European countries. No longer will the NHS run a conveyer belt […]
Pamala Paul: Ideology impedes gender treatement in U.S.
The Failure of Primary Care
12 Jul 2024 Leave a comment
in health economics, labour economics, labour supply, politics - New Zealand
In an ageing and growing population, the failure of primary health care in New Zealand is a dire problem. Many general practices are shadows of their former selves. There are too few doctors and too many patients. Many people can’t even get enrolled. Those who are enrolled report wait times to see a GP of…
The Failure of Primary Care
The Pharmac Fiasco
09 Jul 2024 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, health economics, politics - New Zealand Tags: drug lags, patents and copyrights
If you don’t understand how things work you make foolish mistakes. To explain how the government got into its cancer drugs muddle, we need to explain first how New Zealand’s pharmaceutical purchasing system works. There is a parallel between Pharmac and the Reserve Bank of New Zealand. The Government sets the monetary policy framework with […]
The Pharmac Fiasco
Pharmac’s free ride won’t last forever
04 Jul 2024 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, comparative institutional analysis, health economics Tags: drug lags
Americans contribute disproportionately toward the pharmaceutical innovation from which we all benefit, but their tolerance for subsidising the rest of the world is on the wane… Eric Crampton writes If philosophy students remember one thing from their lectures on Immanuel Kant in undergraduate classes, it is his categorical imperative. It’s easy to remember […]
Pharmac’s free ride won’t last forever
Hardcore Thai Massage Satisfyingly CRACKS My Broken Back
21 Jun 2024 Leave a comment
in economics of media and culture, health economics
JORDAN WILLIAMS: We can’t afford cancer drugs, but can afford this?
20 Jun 2024 Leave a comment
in health economics, politics - New Zealand, public economics
While cancer patients wait for the Government to “find the money” to fund desperately needed modern drugs, the very money meant for health research and saving lives is being flushed down the toilet. At our weekly staff meeting this morning, the research team took me through the latest batch of grant funding decisions by the…
JORDAN WILLIAMS: We can’t afford cancer drugs, but can afford this?
Rivers in India
14 Jun 2024 Leave a comment
in development economics, growth disasters, growth miracles, health economics Tags: India, water pollution
What Evolution Reveals About Human Behavior
11 Jun 2024 Leave a comment
in economics of education, economics of media and culture, health economics, population economics Tags: cognitive psychology, evolutionary biology, evolutionary psychology
Where did the Government get the law right and wrong with the Covid-19 response?
10 Jun 2024 Leave a comment
in economics of bureaucracy, economics of natural disasters, economics of regulation, health economics, law and economics, politics - New Zealand, Public Choice Tags: economics of pandemics
For those who are interested in public law, a very interesting paper by Dean Knight summarising the various court cases over the Covid-19 response. It details in which areas the Government won judicial reviews, and in which areas they lost. The TLDR version is: Hopefully we will not go through another pandemic anytime soon.
Where did the Government get the law right and wrong with the Covid-19 response?
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