CHEAP DRUGS FOR THE POOR

In response to my recent note about the attempt in Maine to force drug prices down for the uninsured, one of my readers who is a medical specialist writes:

This drug price control will just result in a shortage of drugs - for "the poor" - NPR had a good discussion of this issue. One way the drug companies can wiggle around this is to restrict their supply; and the insurance companies can apply restrictions on distribution, like requiring pre-approval; when "the poor" realize that they will have to make another trip to the doctor's office to obtain pre-approval, etc.. many will not go back and simply will not get their drugs.

There is no free lunch. Following all the pressure to discount anti-AIDS drugs for Africa's "poor", there has been a great reduction of new such drugs - no surprises here. Likewise - there have been few new drugs for malaria - most of the people who need them the most can't afford them. Of course, "need" is simply not a market force - some people are just out of luck.

Fortunately, some have developed common sense in this area - South Africans have re-discovered DDT and the incidence of malaria has dropped greatly - again, no surprises - except to Greenies like Christie Whitman; I always believed she was an airhead when, as Governor of NJ, she fired the chief of the NJ State Police when he said "of course, we profile"

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SMOKING

A smoker among my readers has reproached me for saying that people have a “right” to breathe unpolluted air. To clarify: I am not an anarcho-capitalist -- though I did once trifle with the idea. Like most libertarians I am a Minimal Statist -- which means that I see some role for laws. It seems to me that air pollution is a case in point. 300 years of capitalism did nothing to clear up London's smog but the Clean Air Act did the trick. So I support restrictions on air pollution -- whether emanating from factories, cars or smokers. Breathing is pretty basic and so therefore is pollution of it.

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THE LATEST FROM BROOKES NEWS

Why does Ralph Nader bat for Arafat against Israel?: Nader is more than just a hypocrite. His support for Arafat was a backdoor way of denying the right of Israel to exist _ and what would that mean for Jews everywhere? Bunny Champers: media corruption and the Iraqi war.: It still pains an old battle scarred war correspondent like myself to recall how his fellow scribes refused to report the truth about Saddam and how they lied about the looting and the hospitals so as to make the Yankee Doodle Dandies look bad. Oil prices and energy taxes: another green con.: Free markets, not taxes, conserve resources. This is really basic stuff. When the supply of any resource falls its price rises. Eventually the price reaches a point where the cost of producing an additional unit exceeds the demand. This is why we never run out of resources in a free market.

Details here

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