Category Archives: markets

Drugs

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Democratic Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has turned to bashing drug companies, and in doing so, she’s exposing her ignorance of economics. Last Tuesday, she proposed in all seriousness

a $250 monthly cap on out-of-pocket prescription drug costs and other measures to stop what she called “price gouging” by pharmaceutical companies.
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Under Clinton’s plan, the monthly cap would limit what insurance companies could ask patients to pay for drugs that treat patients with chronic or serious medical conditions.

Then she added this gem:

“We need to protect hard-working Americans here at home from excessive costs. Too often these drugs cost a fortune,” adding drug companies keep the profits for themselves while “shifting the cost to families.”

Well, yeah, they do keep the profits. Contra her BFF, President Barack Obama, they did build that.

Here’s a thought, Madam, for holding down costs for us “hard-working Americans here at home” about whom you claim to care so much: reduce the costs to the manufacturers by getting your Big Government’s regulations out of their way. Increase the incentives for manufacturers to reduce costs by getting your Big Government out of the way of competition.

And think about this: if your monthly cap, pulled straight out of rectal storage, plays out, what will be the cost of those drugs to us hard-working Americans here at home when the drug companies, unable to recoup their costs, stop manufacturing the drugs altogether?

Democratic Party Policy Regarding New-borns

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The House recently passed the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act which requires that babies who survive an abortion attempt are to be cared for as though they’d been born more normally. The Act opens with these two paragraphs:

Sec. 2. Findings

Congress finds as follows:

(1) If an abortion results in the live birth of an infant, the infant is a legal person for all purposes under the laws of the United States, and entitled to all the protections of such laws.

(2) Any infant born alive after an abortion or within a hospital, clinic, or other facility has the same claim to the protection of the law that would arise for any newborn, or for any person who comes to a hospital, clinic, or other facility for screening and treatment or otherwise becomes a patient within its care.

President Barack Obama has said he’ll veto this bill that protects babies newly born under a procedure that was intended to have a different outcome. His…rationale…is this:

HR 3504 [Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act] would impose new legal requirements related to the provision of abortion services in certain circumstances, which would likely have a chilling effect, reducing access to care.

If the President were presented with HR 3134 [Defund Planned Parenthood Act of 2015] or HR 3504, he would veto them.

This is nonsense. The Born-Alive bill has nothing to do with abortion, per se, only with its aftermath. The abortion ended with the removal of the baby from the mother’s womb. The task now is to care for a newly born baby. That this particular baby was born via a procedure that is not one of the more normal birthing procedures is wholly irrelevant to that.

Of course, Obama knows that. His decision—in advance of seeing the bill actually passed—to veto a bill that explicitly protects the life of a newly born infant, and the silence of his fellow Democrats on his veto threat, says volumes about the Democratic Party’s policy toward new-born babies.

Let’s Increase Taxes

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…and the costs all of us must bear from that. But the real story is this…proposal…Hillary Clinton has dreamed up for her Presidential campaign.

The centerpiece idea would require drug makers to devote a sufficient portion of revenue to research and development. Those that don’t would risk losing federal support, such as research grants or an R&D tax credit.

Never mind that drug companies already spend 15%-20% on R&D. This fine businesswoman, who’s never run a company in her life and who was dead broke when she left the White House, says that’s not enough. Never mind, too, that she has studiously avoided saying how much is enough.

This is just another Democrat who hasn’t met a tax she didn’t like. This is just another Democrat who thinks Big Government knows more about running a business than the businessmen, who have to operate in a competitive environment or fail.

The EU Wants a New International Trade Court

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The proposal is described in Tom Fairless’ piece in The Wall Street Journal. I want to focus on a couple of comments in that article, though.

Campaigners [for the proposed new trade settlement court] claim that the current system constrains governments and leaves policy makers vulnerable to legal proceedings from overseas investors.

Kind of like those impertinent American companies do with the US government.

And

[O]pponents [of the existing trade settlement system] warn that large US companies could use the dispute-resolution mechanism to challenge European laws and regulations on labor, food and the environment.

As a matter of principle, what’s the downside of either of these?

Only Big Government proponents fear government being held to account by its…lessers.