Topic: Economics
Bureaucracy vs The Market Why do people keep looking to government for help?by RS Davis
(Libertarian)
Monday, May 5, 2008
Hello Freedomphiles! I am sure you are familiar with the Part D Medicare prescription drug benefit - it was all the rage back in 2000, when Al Gore and G-dub squared off on the best way to spend your money for you.
Well, it's a new election season, and that benefit is back on the political tennis court, being volleyed again and again, except without tenis' usual awesome panty shots.
Right now, John McCain is proposing we means-test the program, meaning that if you make more than a certain amount, you don't get the benefit:
McCain said, "People like Bill Gates and Warren Buffett don't need their prescriptions underwritten by taxpayers" (New York Times, 4/16). He added, "Those who can afford to buy their own prescriptions should be expected to do so. This reform alone will save billions of dollars that could be returned to the taxpayers or put to better use."
I mean, they have to do something, don't they? Bush expected this benefit to cost $400 billion over the decade following its passage. As is the case with all government programs, it has ballooned into an estimated $1.2 trillion.
One of the reasons that this happens is because government spending is not fueled by profit - the billions of everyday choices of consumers direct a free market's resources toward those businesses and industries that consumers decide are needed.
Government spending is fueled by special interest groups - the pharmaceutical industry, AARP, and a thousand other people and organizations with a horse in the race and crony-profits at stake.
So, its no wonder (and no surprise to those of us who study these things) that the cost of the prescription drug benefit is going to be three times the estimated cost.
And as Scientific American tells us, all that money hasn't been all that successful:
Madden and colleagues found that while 14.1 percent of beneficiaries in 2005 reported skipping pills and prescriptions because of their cost in 2005, before the benefit existed, the figure dropped to 11.5 percent in 2006 after Part D was introduced.
In 2006, 7.6 percent of beneficiaries reported cutting back on spending on basic needs such as food, housing and utilities to afford prescription drugs, down from 11.1 percent who reported doing so in 2005 before Part D.
However, patients classified as the sickest reported no improvement in skipping medications because they could not afford to pay for them even after the Part D benefit began.
These people, accounting for about 27 percent of the overall group, skipped their pills at about twice the rate of healthier patients in 2004 and 2005, Madden's team found.
As a juxtaposition - while the government keeps raising costs to Americans for this "benefit," that evil scourge Wal Mart is expanding its generic prescription drug program, offering more and more medicine at lower prices. Reuters reports:
Wal-Mart Stores Inc on Monday said it has expanded its low-priced drug program, and will now offer certain 90-day generic prescriptions for $10 and sell more than 1,000 over-the-counter medicines for $4 or less.
Starting on Monday, the world's largest retailer said that pharmacies at its discount stores, its Neighborhood Markets, and its Sam's Club warehouse locations will fill prescriptions for up to 350 generic medications for $10 for a 90-day supply.
It also said its Wal-Mart Stores and Neighborhood Markets will sell more than 1,000 over-the-counter items for $4 or less without a prescription.
So, in short, while the government is squandering $1.2 trillion dollars for very little return, Wal Mart is slashing prices on an ever-increasing amount of medication and helping millions of people, all the while being demonized as the evil laviathon destroying this country.
Maybe people should get Wal Mart to do something about the government, rather than the other way around.
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2008 RS Davis, all rights reserved.
Published: Monday, May 5, 2008
Last modified: Monday, May 5, 2008
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The so called free market and health care don't mix. People don't go "comparison shopping" when they have a gun shot wound, sports related injury, car accident or the latest pandemic.
Disease does not respond to the "unseen hand" of the market. Otherwise people would just stop getting cancer because it costs so much to treat.
Can you say sugar teat!
Actually, the free-market works great with health care and did so for decades before the 1930s and then again in the 1970s when government regulations and programs began to place certain pressures on the health care systems. The government bascially corporatized the health care systems to the point that real competition was squeezed out of the system. Additionally, government programs also led to a tightening of market forces in the system.
Having worked for Wal-Mart, they continue to prove how a free-market can provide better than govt. Not the same since Mr. Sam, but still provides value. Sure they have faults and being the big kid on the block they will constantly be challenged by looters and valid complaints.
Socialism became popular in America shortly after the great depression. Polically it is an easy way to screw up an election to say hey, Herbert Hoover doesn't give a fnck about the average American, but Franklin Roosevelt does!
Also MLK jr was a socialist as well as many in the Civil Rights movement who saw it as necessary to keep the black man from getting taken advantage of.
"Socialism became popular in America shortly after the great depression. Polically it is an easy way to screw up an election to say hey, Herbert Hoover doesn't give a fnck about the average American, but Franklin Roosevelt does!"
Socialism (or really Fascism) was popular in America all throughout the 1920's, and was actually on the wane when FDR was elected. But there is very little difference, economically, between Hoover and FDR, except in degree.
They advocated the same policies, but FDR was able to ram more of them through and in greater size.
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Government spending is fueled by special interest groups - the pharmaceutical industry, AARP, and a thousand other people and organizations with a horse in the race and crony-profits at stake.
Wal-Mart Stores Inc on Monday said it has expanded its low-priced drug program, and will now offer certain 90-day generic prescriptions for $10 and sell more than 1,000 over-the-counter medicines for $4 or less. 
2008 RS Davis, all rights reserved.