Tag Archives: economics

Drug Pricing

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Amazingly, there’s an actual debate going on over whether consumers should be allowed to see drug prices in drug advertising.

Stacie Dusetzina, Vanderbilt University School of Medicine’s Associate Professor of Health Policy and the Ingram Associate Professor of Cancer Research, argued—in all seriousness—in a recent Wall Street Journal example of the debate (see the link) in favor of the following points:

  • disclosure of list prices may deter some people from seeking treatment
  • disclosing prices could backfire by creating an artificial sense of “value” due to a high price tag
  • the idea behind the proposal is to shame manufacturers into lowering list prices or limiting price increases by requiring them to disclose just how high their prices are

Wow.  In reverse order….

No, the idea behind the proposal is not to shame or to limit price increases by requiring manufacturers to disclose just how high their prices are. The idea is competition.  The idea is to limit price increases or to lower prices by forcing manufacturers to compete in an open, free market environment.  This, just incidentally, also will force intermediaries and pharmacies as end-sellers to compete on pricing in a similarly open, free market environment.

No, disclosing prices won’t create an artificial sense of “value” from a high price.  Dusetzina must really think Americans are stupid to pay artificially inflated prices simply because the prices are high.  That may be the case for luxury cars or fancy purses or other objects of ego-driven conspicuous consumption, but it’s most assuredly not the case for the working man or woman—which is to say the vast majority of us—buying necessities or even the merely nice-to-haves.  If we were stupid enough to buy the higher priced good or service just because it was more expensive, grocery store prices would be much higher than they are now.

No, disclosure of list prices won’t deter many of us from seeking treatment at all.  What it will do is let us see the lowering prices make getting treatment more affordable.  Besides, even for those few of us who do defer or avoid treatment because of those prices; that’s our choice, not Government’s to make for us, not even indirectly by manipulating our accesses.

Price information—especially price information available before any decision to buy or not to buy—is critical to competition.  And it’s that competition that will drive drug prices to their natural levels—the cost of producing and marketing them—and not a penny more.  Even the profit margin that competitive companies legitimately can collect will be eaten into by that competition.  Look at those grocery stores, again.

Hiding price information is absolutely antithetical to free markets and low prices.

Fueling the Housing “Crisis”

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California’s Progressive-Democrats are at it again; although, this time they’re not active only in California.  Now they’re looking to

expand subsidies to middle-class families—some with six-figure incomes

under the pretense of “helping” folks afford housing in this manufactured crisis of housing.

California Governor Gavin Newsom has proposed funding housing for families whose income normally wouldn’t qualify them for assistance programs. Last month, his administration set aside $200 million for middle-class families in a $750 million package meant to combat the state’s housing crisis.
DC Mayor Muriel E Bowser has proposed a $20 million workforce fund to help families earning up to $141,000.

Boston and Philadelphia city governments are pushing the same sort of nonsense for the same sort of reason.

Aside from money spent on this pandering is money not spent on serious problems, these moves will only make the problem worse. The moves only increase demand for a not very flexible or easily expanded supply—and so supports, and increases, price, and so exacerbating the problem.

The way to address housing costs for the residents of a city—and the citizens of States like California—is to get the governments out of the way.  That means reduce duplicative regulations associated with housing and housing construction and eliminating regulations that exist solely for the benefit of unions and other special interests.  It means reducing zoning limits that drive up the cost of building and of living in a neighborhood.

Banning Workers’ Freedom

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That’s what two Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidates want to do.  Here’s Kamala Harris, who’s doubling as a California Senator:

The barriers to organized labor being able to organize and strike are something that have grown over a period of time[.] … It has to be about, for example, banning right-to-work laws[.]

Here’s Social Democrat Bernie Sanders, doubling as an Independent Senator from Vermont while, once again, masquerading himself as a Progressive-Democratic Party member for this campaign, calling for:

a federal ban on so-called right-to-work laws in a Monday [1 Apr] speech.
Speaking to the International Association of Machinists at the union’s conference in Las Vegas, Sanders said as president he would push legislation in Congress to prohibit the laws.

And

…the trade union movement must be in the middle of all of those discussions.

Aside from blatant attacks on all workers’ 1st Amendment right of freedom of assembly, these are obvious and petty attempts at pandering for the votes of blue collar workers.

The attempts also are dishonest in their cynically deliberate distortions of the situation.  Right to work laws guarantee workers’ right to work without paying dues to unions to which they do not belong and their right to work without being forced against their will to join unions.

Those right-to-work laws do not bar workers from joining unions; on the contrary, they explicitly allow them to—that 1st Amendment bit, again.  Instead, the laws simply enable workers to support their families without having to join a union as a precondition for doing so.

Oh, and it’s all about the Benjamins, too.  Unions fund the political campaigns—and other expenses—of Progressive-Democratic Party politicians.  Those forced dues that freed workers no longer have to pay were a significant fraction of the funds used to pay those politicians; and those politicians are desperate to recover the money.

Blocked, Because, Maybe

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Great Britain’s regulators have blocked what should have been a private enterprise business decision taken in a free market.  But, then, Great Britain’s economy is no more free market than ours has devolved into, and in some ways, the Brits’ economy is even less so.

Regulators blocked the proposed merger between Walmart Inc’s British grocery unit and rival J Sainsbury citing competition concerns….

And

Britain’s Competition and Markets Authority said [last] Thursday the merger would reduce competition and could lead to price rises for shoppers.

“Concerns” about a possible future—one of many. “Could lead….”

All of this is prior restraint and idle speculation.  The Brits would have been better off to let market forces determine those outcomes, and if the merger proved uncompetitive, then take action based on actual facts, rather than their current course of acting on fortune telling and other guesses.

The Brits would be better off to return to a free market economy generally.

Northern Korea Sent Us a Bill

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Northern Korea sent us a bill two years ago for $2 million for the hospital care of Otto Warmbier while he was a kidnapping prisoner in northern Korea. The bill was part of the process of getting Warmbier when his vegetative body finally was released.

Couple things about this.

One is that Warmbier received no medical treatment worthy of the name, much less “hospital” care.  It’s necessary only to review his condition when he was, finally, returned to his family in the US.

Another is that the medical care Warmbier so desperately needed would not have been needed had northern Korea’s functionaries not tortured Warmbier for as long and as enthusiastically as they did.  That medical care would not have been needed had northern Korea’s functionaries not tortured Warmbier at all, but instead treated him humanely while they held him in their kidnapping facility.

The costs, such as they are, are solely the responsibility of northern Korea.

The proper response to this “bill” should be to treat it like the sick joke that it is and not respond to it.  Not at all.  Not even to acknowledge it.