Geee Posted May 9, 2011 Share Posted May 9, 2011 American Spectator:What is it about bad ideas that make them so hard to kill? Brilliant inspirations can often be sent skimming across the River Styx by a sardonic smirk while obviously unworkable schemes often resemble the Hydra, whom Hercules had so much difficulty dispatching. The Hydra, you will recall, had the irritating habit of growing two new heads each time the mythical hero cut off one of the originals. This unpleasant characteristic is seemingly shared by the notion, promoted by many progressive health policy types, that drug costs can be controlled by allowing Medicare to "negotiate" prices directly with pharmaceutical companies. Every time a conservative or libertarian economist decapitates some ludicrous argument in favor of this awful idea, two more materialize almost immediately.Another of its ugly heads recently popped up in President Obama's Orwellian "Framework for Shared Prosperity and Shared Fiscal Responsibility." This budget proposal, announced on April 13, includes the following verbiage: "The framework would limit excessive payments for prescription drugs by leveraging Medicare's purchasing power -- similar to what was called for by the bipartisan Fiscal Commission." The commission called for nothing of the kind, of course. More importantly, however, is that this is yet another Obama proposal to impose Soviet-style price controls on a private industry. Because Medicare is by far the largest single purchaser of pharmaceuticals in the market, "leveraging" its "purchasing power" is merely euphemistic language for "we will dictate drug prices." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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