Want to know how much your government has cost you?


Regulation strangles economic growth and hits your pocketbook. Sometimes even your health and life.
Dr. Henry I. Miller explains why government intervention in medicine is not a good idea.

The reason is that flawed public policy from the Congress and the government's Executive Branch has ensured low return on investment and high exposure to legal liability for vaccines. The predictable result: U.S. vaccine R&D and production have been decimated.

What kinds of policies? The Vaccines for Children Program, for example, was a do-gooder innovation of the Clinton administration (Hillary's toe in the water for national health care, apparently) that disrupted market forces and dealt a blow to vaccine producers. Established in 1994, it created a single-buyer system for children's vaccines, making the government by far the largest purchaser of childhood vaccines -- at a mandated discount of 50 percent. Try extorting that kind of discount from manufacturers of trucks for the U.S. Postal Service or of Meals-Ready-to-Eat (MREs) for the Department of Defense, and see how long the companies bid on government contracts.

Memo to Senator Clinton: It doesn't take a village, just good old American ingenuity combined with the expectation of a decent return on investment.

Arbitrary and excessive regulation is another obstacle. The highly risk-averse FDA has been especially tough on vaccines. The agency has rejected evidence of safety and efficacy from European and Canadian vaccine approvals; prematurely withdrawn life-saving products from the market because of mere perceptions of risk; and set the bar for the testing of new vaccines almost impossibly high.

As a result of our disastrous public policy, innovation has suffered and vaccine producers have abandoned the field in droves, leaving only four major American manufacturers and a few dozen products. As of the last flu season, there were only two producers of injectable flu vaccine for the U.S. market, for example, both using antiquated technology.

No company can be expected to operate in those circumstances. No company could capitalize, no sane investor would buy their stock.

The government is not the free market.

Government decisions are made for political reasons, regardless of the cost or the results.

In a free market, you have to pay for results. Companies are in business to make a profit. Profit funds experiments and investment. Competition keeps companies honest and drives prices down.

Mess with any part of that, no matter how good your intentions are, and you warp the self-adjusting feedback and screw up the results.

I chose this article because as of the first of the year, we just expanded government control over medicine farther than it ever has been before. It's going to become harder to get drugs legally, no matter what the "mandated" price is.

Drug companies are already shutting down their own free and discount drug programs. Other companies are shutting down their medical insurance.

Which of course was the real reason for the Medicare Drug Benefit.

It's not just medicine. Some Congressmen are making noises about going after "windfall" profits of oil companies.

All in your best interests of course. After all, we're addicted to oil.

— NeoWayland

Posted: Wed - February 1, 2006 at 04:59 AM  Tag


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