DISQUS

Brian T. Schwartz · 1 year ago

What free market? If by "free," you mean free from government mandates and prohibitions, which is what most people mean. (That is, if they care to consider that the word "free" actually means something when placed in front of "market".) To a significant extent the U.S. already has socialized medicine, as I write here.

In terms of prescription drugs, the FDA has a default ban on them until it lifts the ban, which it calls "approval." That's not a free market. From an earlier blog post, "...the cost of getting one new drug approved [by the FDA] was $802 million in 2000 U.S. dollars, or $1.02 billion in 2008 dollars."

Jay · 1 year ago

@Brian T. Schwartz: Those are good points. Thanks for the thoughtful reply.

I see from a lot of your writing that you compare things people can't live without when unfortunate and unpredictable things happen to them (health insurance and life saving medication) to things like steel (Hank Reardon in Atlas Shrugged).

So lets say you have it your way... the government stays completely out of the health insurance biz, "let the consumer take their money elsewhere if they don't like the service they're getting." What happens when I get cancer and the insurance company (that I've been paying premiums to for years) makes the business decision to not pay on the basis that even though they are contractually obligated, they have the expensive legal staff to defeat somebody with not very much money and busy battling cancer?

I don't like the way they do business and don't have the resources to battle them in court while also battling cancer. Which health insurance company should I switch to that will cover my now pre-existing condition of cancer?

From what you write and how you quote Rand, it sounds like you're atleast solidly in the Rand school of libertarianism (vs. Rothbard)? So atleast you still agree there should be a government based court system in this example?

Please no links back to a blog post on your site. Can you explain your positions in the comments on this page so the discussion is easier to follow for the readers?

Ku · 1 year ago

IMHO, Big Pharma could improve profit margins significantly by ceasing direct-to-consumer advertising and paying researchers under the table to conduct dubious studies for marketing purposes, among other things.

Brian makes some valid points WRT lacking a free market. Why else would Big Pharma lobby FDA to prevent reimportation of drugs produced in the US packaged for/sold in foreign markets, not to mention multiple cases of preventing generic competition for soon-to-expire patents, Cephalon's Provigil/Nuvigil debacle being the latest.