Lorens Helmchen and Tony LaSasso’s op-ed in The New York Times argues that when regulators enforce price caps on medical treatments, they create perverse incentives for healthcare providers. For fragile patients with complicated maladies, the cost of treatment may exceed the price cap the regulators allow the healthcare provider to charge. In that case the healthcare provider has a perverse incentive either to deny the patient care, or to give the patient a lower, ineffective, level of care.
I argue elsewhere that there are better ways to reduce the too-high costs of healthcare, e.g., increase competition by repealing certificate of need requirements before opening new healthcare facilities, reduce practice restrictions on nurse practitioners, and eliminate the mandated Phase 3 RCTs required for FDA drug approval.
The Helmchen and LaSasso op-ed is:
(Note: the online version of the op-ed has the date July 20, 2026, and has the title “This Is Not the Answer to Soaring Health Care Costs.”)