
 |
|
Nov. 20, 2009
Nov. 19, 2009
Jonathan Tobin: ADL Crosses the Line with Report Bashing Obama Critics
Nov. 18, 2009
JWisdom.com: The (Jewish) Dating Game
with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff (8 minutes)
Nov. 17, 2009
Steven Emerson: How Does the 4th Amendment Impact Terror Finance Investigations?
JWisdom.com: If Frank Sinatra married Edith Piaf
with Rabbi Y.Y. Rubinstein (2 minutes) Life lessons from what would be regarded as the most inappropriate lyrics ever sung
Nov. 16, 2009
JWisdom.com: Deconstructing faith
with Rabbi Warren Goldstein (9 minutes)
Nov. 13, 2009
JWisdom.com Sarah's subjective reality
with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 6 minutes)
Nov. 12, 2009
JWisdom.com Does God get tired?
with Rabbi Harvey Belovski ( 5 minutes)
Nov. 11, 2009
JWisdom.com Marriages are not made in Heaven
with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff (VERY fast 15 minutes)
Nov. 10, 2009
Michael Doyle: Author of book exposing CAIR ordered to remove supporting documents from Web
JWisdom.com If the creation so loudly shouts the existence of the Creator, why aren't more people believers? with Rabbi Naftali Brawer (9 minutes)
Nov. 9, 2009
Mark Steyn: Shooter exposes hole
in U.S. terror strategy
JWisdom.com It's never too late to
have a happy childhood with Sarah Chana Radcliffe (5 minutes)
Nov. 6, 2009
JWisdom.com Zero to 1/60th: How
to Empower An Hour with Gavriel Aryeh Sande (7 minutes)
Nov. 5, 2009
JWisdom.com Hidden Hints: Unlocking
Faith & Prayer with Rabbi Jay Yaacov Schwartz (10 minutes)
Nov. 4, 2009
JWisdom.com When God played peacemaker
With Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (5 minutes)
Nov. 3, 2009
JWisdom.com Are you are closet idolater?
With Sara Yoheved Rigler (10 minutes)
Nov. 2, 2009
JWisdom.com Abraham's Strange Change
With Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer (5 minutes)
|
| |
Jewish World Review
Feb. 21, 2007
/ 3 Adar, 5767
No drug price controls
By
John Stossel
| 
|
|
|
|
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
The Democrats who now control Congress want to change President Bush's Medicare drug benefit to require government officials to negotiate drug prices with the pharmaceutical companies. Under the current program, competing insurance companies cut the deals and offer coverage to the retired and disabled.
Yet another lesson in the well-established principle: Government intervention begets more government intervention.
When Bush signed this program into law, it was the biggest expansion of the welfare state since Lyndon Johnson's Great Society. As with all "entitlement" programs, the costs will explode. Tax-financed health programs are always more expensive than promised.
Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., defends the drug-negotiation proposal, saying, "It will deliver lower prices to seniors, lower prices at the pharmacy and savings for all taxpayers."
At first glance the idea makes sense. Instead of multiple companies competing to negotiate drug prices, have one big powerful entity do the negotiating. Wouldn't that lead to lower prices?
It might and that's part of the problem. We should be suspicious when someone promises benefits from a government monopoly. Government doesn't produce things. It simply uses force to move things around. So why think that Medicare, hardly a paragon of efficiency, should be given the power to negotiate in reality, control prices?
Government's clout to negotiate lower drug prices supposedly comes from Medicare's 43 million beneficiaries. According to the theory, drug companies will have little choice but to submit to the government's demands because having their products excluded from the program would be self-destructive.
But there are problems with that theory. First, the government doesn't know what the "right" price is. In the real world, prices are set by supply and demand. Government is not part of the marketplace and would have no competitors. Its attitude would be "take it or leave it."
The story won't have a happy ending. A lot of money is needed to develop medicines. Getting a new drug through the FDA labyrinth to consumers takes $1 billion. Most drugs in the research pipeline never even get that far. It's a failure-intensive business.
The occasional success makes it all worthwhile.
So when the government uses its muscle to force prices to sub-market levels, the drug companies will develop fewer life-saving drugs. We will suffer more pain and live shorter lives.
Medicare participants probably won't even have access to some drugs that are already developed. To see this we need only look at the Department of Veterans Affairs. I happened to have lunch with Sen. Hillary Clinton recently. When I went into one of my usual libertarian rants about free markets, Ms. Clinton cited the VA as an example of government success. Indeed, under her husband's administration, the Veterans Health Administration came to provide the "best care anywhere," according to The Washington Monthly. Great.
| BUY THE BOOK … |
| 
at a discount by clicking HERE.
|
| But government monopolies like the VA never embrace innovation in the same way the private market does. And sure enough, the VA now rations drugs. If you are a VA patient and you need a new and expensive drug, you can't get it. Writes Sally Pipes, president of the Pacific Research Institute and author of "Miracle Cure: How to Solve America's Health-Care Crisis and Why Canada Isn't the Answer", "Only 19 percent of drugs approved by the FDA since 2000 are listed on the VA formulary, and only 38 percent of drugs approved in the 1990s are listed. ... "
In other words, the department keeps a rein on costs by withholding drugs from veterans.
The giant Medicare drug program, which created the cost problem the Democrats say they will solve, shouldn't have been created. We ought to get our drugs through the private marketplace or from private charities. If government must be involved, at least let it be through the states so they can compete against each other.
The last thing we should do is give federal officials more power. When government controls prices, it must eventually ration supplies. Consumers suffer. When the product is medicine, the results could be catastrophic.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
JUST OUT FROM STOSSEL
Myths, Lies and Downright Stupidity: Get Out the Shovel --- Why Everything You Know Is Wrong
Stossel mines his 20/20 segments for often engaging challenges to conventional wisdom, presenting a series of "myths" and then deploying an investigative journalism shovel to unearth "truth." This results in snappy debunkings of alarmism, witch-hunts, satanic ritual abuse prosecutions and marketing hokum like the irradiated-foods panic, homeopathic medicine and the notion that bottled water beats tap. Stossel's libertarian convictions make him particularly fond of exposes of government waste and regulatory fiascoes. Sales help fund JWR.
|
JWR contributor John Stossel is co-anchor of ABC News' "20/20." To comment, please click here.
Archives
© 2007, by JFS Productions, Inc.
Distributed by Creators Syndicate, Inc.
|
|

Arnold Ahlert
Mitch Albom
Michael Barone
Dave Barry
Tony Blankley
Andy Borowitz
David Broder
Stratfor Briefing
Mona Charen
Linda Chavez
Ann Coulter
Greg Crosby
Larry Elder
Suzanne Fields
John Fund
Frank J. Gaffney
Lloyd Garver
Jonah Goldberg
Julia Gorin
Jonathan Gurwitz
Paul Greenberg
Lewis Grossberger
Victor Davis Hanson
Betsy Hart
Nat Hentoff
David Horowitz
Laura Ingraham
Cheri Jacobus Jeff Jacoby
Paul Johnson
Jack Kelly
Ed Koch
Ch. Krauthammer
Michael Ledeen
John Leo
David Limbaugh
Kathryn Lopez
Rich Lowry
Michelle Malkin
Jackie Mason
Dick Morris
Bill O'Reilly
Jim Mullen
Clarence Page
Kathleen Parker
Dennis Prager
Wesley Pruden
Tom Purcell
Jonathan Rauch
Celia Rivenbark
Robert Robb
Cokie & Steve Roberts
Pat Sajak
Debra J. Saunders
Culture Shlock
Roger Simon
Michael Smerconish
Thomas Sowell
Mark Steyn
John Stossel
Cal Thomas
Bob Tyrrell
Diana West
Dave Weinbaum
George Will
Walter Williams
Byron York
Mort Zuckerman

Robert Arial
Chuck Asay
Baloo
Chip Bok
Dry Bones
Lisa Benson
John Branch
Gary Brookins
John Cole
J. D. Crowe
John Deering
Brian Duffy
Everything's Relative
Mallard Fillmore
Jake Fuller
Bob Gorrel
Joe Heller
David Hitch
Jerry Holber
Steve Kelley
Jeff Koterba
Dick Locher
Chan Lowe
Ranan R. Lurie
Jimmy Margulies
Rick McKee
Michael Ramirez
Kevin Siers
Jeff Stahler
Ed Stein
Danna Summers
John Trever
Gary Varvel
Kirk Walters

How 2
Lori Borgman
The Savvy Consumer
Elder matters
Fixit
Dr. Peter Gott
GET A JOB! by Marty Nemko
Richard Lederer
Tech Maven
Every Monday Matters
Nutrition Myths
Bookmark These
Bruce Williams
How Stuff Works
|