PolicyGuy

Monday, December 27, 2004


These Drugs Free. But these? Not at Any Price.
Chip Taylor comments on our current drug policy, both in terms of pricing and availability.

First, he points to a recent HHS report on drug reimportation, and the NY Times' summary:

The Bush administration said Tuesday that commercial importation of some low-cost prescription drugs from Canada might be feasible. But the savings to consumers would be small, it said, and the federal government would have to spend hundreds of million dollars a year to ensure the drugs' safety.

The administration said in a report to Congress that legalizing imports would probably hurt the development of new drugs for Americans.


Speaking of the economics of the issue, Taylor notes that "Reimportation as a means of lowering drug prices is about as effective as propping open your refrigerator door as a means of cooling your kitchen."

Here's a link to the (PDF file) report from the HHS, as well as the HHS Task Force on Importation.

On the same day, Taylor also argues that the feds are overly aggressive in limiting access to painkillers:

Do we strive to make access so restrictive that absolutely no abusers get access, even thought that means some legitimate patients do without? Or do we allow doctors to prescribe as they see fit, realizing that some abusers are going to get unneeded pain relievers?

Public policy, he argues, opts for the former rather than the latter. It's all of a piece with the philosophy demonstrated in the Vioxx post (see below), which holds that the federal government is the optimal actor for making decisions on the use of drugs.

"Justice Louis D. Brandeis'?s metaphor of the states as "laboratories" for policy experiments ... had almost nothing to do with federalism and everything to do with his commitment to scientific socialism. .... To this day, it continues to inhibit a truly experimental, federalist politics." -- Michael S. Greve

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