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Monday, November 27, 2006
Big Drugs, Big Government
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Once the new Congress is sworn in, a top priority for Democrats will be to authorize the federal government to negotiate drug prices for Medicare recipients. The Bush administration is strenuously opposed — and rightly so.
“Government negotiation of drug prices does not work unless you have a program completely run by the government,” the secretary of health and human services, Michael O. Leavitt, said recently in reaffirming administration opposition to one of the Democrats’ first 100-hour priorities. “Democrats say they want the government to negotiate prices. What they really want is government-run health care.”
That I believe. The Dems have never abandoned for a second the idea of government-run universal health care. One of the great political struggles in this country is the race to enshrine a marketplace system based on competition and choice or a version of Hillarycare.
Drug price negotiations allow government to set prices and politicians to dispense pills. It’s another version of the body-part by body-part health care mandates that had state legislatures practicing medicine, determining for example which procedures should be covered by medical plans and how long some patients should remain in the hospital. This is not going to bring drug costs down, except in a few showboat instances where politicians harangue drug companies to give away certain medications, the prices of which are then shifted to others — other drugs, other payers. In 10 years, the cabal will be Big Pharmaceuticals and Big Government, padding and shifting prices while building in political contributions and showboat giveaways demanded by politicians.
