The advocates of government-run health care supplement their thin repertoire of legitimate arguments with a series of canards that they hope will be accepted as facts. Sally Pipes debunks five of these myths in The Washington Times:
I. 47 million Americans do not have insurance.
The [Census] Bureau counts anyone who went without insurance for any part of […]
The WSJ Health Blog notes that Wal-Mart has saved its customers more than $1 billion with its $4 generics program:
Wal-Mart’s doing a bit of chest thumping this morning, claiming that its $4 generics program has saved consumers $1 billion — $1,032,573,012.61 as of March 10, to be precise.
These savings were brought about not by government cost […]
Yesterday, I noted that Barack Obama and John McCain are both right on health insurance mandates. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said about their positions on drug reimportation. Both are for it—which means they are for importing the price controls of Canada and other countries.
As I discuss here, drug reimportation would stifle innovation while producing insignificant reductions in pharmaceutical spending. […]
Jason Shafrin at Healthcare Economist links to a study that attempts to quantify the relationship between drug importation and pharmaceutical innovation. The study’s author, Frank R. Lichtenberg, concludes that importation would bring about short term price reductions but that innovation would suffer:
In the long run, a 10% decline in drug prices would … be likely to cause at least […]
I have been fearful that John McCain’s occasional use of phrases like “safe importation of drugs” meant that he was eventually going to endorse the re-importing of pharmaceuticals from Canada. Alas, AP has confirmed my fears:
Republican presidential contender John McCain on Saturday said he wants to again allow the importation of prescription drugs from Canada […]
For single-payer advocates, it is axiomatic that the market doesn’t function properly where health care is concerned. But if it seems implausible that one industry would be somehow immune to the economic forces that shape every other field of human endeavor, listen to your instincts.
Robert Goldberg, of the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest, […]
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Posted 29 October 2007
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As I have pointed out here, Ron Paul voted to allow prescription drug re-importation. This puts the good doctor right in line with Hillary Clinton and the other Democrats running for President. According to John Lott, this policy would put real human beings at risk:
All Democratic presidential candidates agree on pharmaceutical price controls, which means […]
The Edwards campaign has evidently concluded that, in order to compete with Hillary, its candidate needs to be very aggressive in promoting health care initiatives. Thus, John Edwards has unveiled another feature of his health care plan. This time, he proposes overhauling the drug patent process:
Edwards’ plan would offer cash payments in place of long-term […]
Walter Williams makes the case that the FDA’s incentives cause it to be too cautious about approving new drugs. In support of this proposition, he provides a quote from former FDA Commissioner Alexander Schmidt:
In all our FDA history, we are unable to find a single instance where a Congressional committee investigated the failure of FDA […]
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Posted 30 May 2007
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I got cuffed about a good bit when I wrote that Ron Paul’s support for drug reimportation was wrongheaded, but it appears that state-level experiments with this idea have vindicated my position. According to Kimberley Strassel’s recent WSJ piece:
Three years ago, grandstanding governors and mayors vowed to break federal law and set up state-run drug […]
