This Friday, former Mongolian president Elbegdorj Tsakhia explains why standing up to authoritarian regimes is not a futile endeavor; Lanhee Chen offers alternative policies to price controls that could help lower Americans’ prescription drug prices; and Michael McFaul reflects on the intellectual challenges and civic aspirations behind the writing of his most recent book.
Freedom Frequency
What does the birth of freedom actually look like? In a debut column called Liberty Amplified, a new feature at Freedom Frequency highlighting brave and resourceful souls who have defied autocracy, former Mongolian president Elbegdorj Tsakhia reminisces about his time on the barricades as his country broke from Soviet domination and won its independence. Mongolia continues to watch its step between China and Russia. As Tsakhia writes, “Old maps tempt new tyrants. Freedom is never guaranteed. . . . [but] it can be defended by each generation willing to resist.” Reflecting on Mongolia’s successful democratic transition, Tsakhia says, “Many transitions in the late twentieth century faltered. Ours succeeded because the people themselves owned it.” Read more here.
US Healthcare Policy
In a new article at the Journal of the American Medical Association Forum, Research Fellow Lanhee J. Chen examines the drivers of high prescription drug costs in the United States, a perennial health policy concern. Although many individuals in the United States enjoy access to the world’s most novel therapies, Chen notes, the cost of medications, both for individuals and government programs like Medicare and Medicaid, continues to escalate. As the piece shows, the Trump administration has attempted to address these concerns via a most-favored-nation pricing proposal that promises rapid cost savings by anchoring US prices to foreign benchmarks. But Chen argues that this idea risks undermining pharmaceutical innovation and producing fiscal outcomes that fall short of expectations. Chen concludes that a sounder alternative would be a “more transparent drug pricing system,” which “would help patients get more value for their spending and reduce waste without the costs of rigid price caps.” Read more here.
US Foreign Policy
Writing at his Substack, Senior Fellow Michael McFaul offers insights into his thinking, goals, and analytical challenges as he composed his most recent book, Autocrats vs. Democrats: China, Russia, America, and the New Global Disorder. The former US ambassador to Russia explains why this work is “the most ambitious book” he has ever written, as it attempts “to synthesize a vast amount of historical and social science literature and provide policy recommendations for the United States based on this analysis.” McFaul notes the challenge of summarizing accurately the centuries of history necessary to understand present-day great power relations and making hard editing choices to slim down the 1,200-page first draft (which was complete with “over 5,000 footnotes”). Ultimately, McFaul says he aimed to write a book for “all Americans” in a style blending the accessibility of a popular press publication with the analytical rigor of an academic work, minus specialized jargon. Read more here.
Honoring Thomas Sowell
At his Substack I Blog to Differ, Research Fellow David R. Henderson offers a reflection on personal characteristics of Thomas Sowell that enabled his success, in the wake of Hoover’s celebration of Sowell held earlier this week. “I can think of two,” Henderson writes. “The first is his sense of righteous anger. He always takes the side of the person or people whom the government treats unjustly. The second is his compassion.” Henderson also shares several quotations from Sowell that demonstrate the latter’s talent for succinctly communicating economic wisdom. In a paper prepared for the conference, to be published at a later date, Henderson analyzed the qualities that have made Sowell an effective communicator of economic concepts. Henderson says these “included his careful digging into data, his great ability as a storyteller, and his ability to coin a pithy memorable phrase.” Read more here.
Hoover Institution News
Last Friday, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis visited the Hoover Institution for a public discussion with Director Condoleezza Rice. As reported by Sophie Nguyen in The Stanford Daily, DeSantis highlighted a range of policy shifts he has overseen in Florida, in areas from primary education to health care to higher education reform. Rice and DeSantis also discussed the responsibility of citizens and civic leaders to constantly work to advance the American experiment in self-governance. “You could have the best constitution in the world, you could have the best declaration of independence in the world—these things don’t run on autopilot,” DeSantis said. “They require every generation of Americans to defend these principles, to apply those principles faithfully, to defend freedom.” The conversation also touched on national and global events, including immigration policy enforcement under the Trump administration and China’s ambitions in the Indo-Pacific. Read more here.
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