A Different Drug War

A recent post at Daily Kos considered a different and less recognized “drug war.”

Let’s talk about the other drug war: The one being waged against the American consumer by the pharmaceutical companies who benefit from our tax dollars that fund basic scientific research and make up the difference in the tax relief they receive for their own research and development.

The post was prompted by the recent steep increase in the price of the Epi-Pen. Among other disclosures, it turns out that the company that manufactures the pen had moved its headquarters to the Netherlands in 2014, a move that allowed its tax rate to fall from 14 percent to its current 7 percent.

The fact that the company and its well-connected management are making out like bandits by stiffing those who need the devices is bad enough, but as the post points out, it isn’t even recovering its own costs of research and development.

The mechanical device in the EpiPen to deliver epinephrine was developed in the 1970s by a NASA engineer. It was designed for the rapid self-injection of antidotes to chemical warfare agents in battle, and in 1987 it was approved by the FDA for use with epinephrine. Epinephrine itself is a human hormone, first isolated by Japanese scientists in 1901. So the drug couldn’t be patented, although the device itself, the same one created by a government employee, was. The logical assumption, of course, is that a technology developed by a NASA engineer would be owned by all Americans. But it is not.

This is an excellent example of the Achilles heel of arguments advanced by drug companies defending exorbitant prices.

Big Pharma makes the case–correct as far as it goes–that the development of new therapies is expensive. Many promising avenues of research fail to pan out; testing and the regulatory process for vetting drugs is expensive and time consuming. If companies are to continue to sink money into the development of life-saving drugs, they need a financial incentive to do so–a promise that they will recoup their costs and make a reasonable profit.

What they don’t mention is that significant percentages of drug development costs are paid for by government grants–by the many millions of taxpayer dollars that support medical research. (They also don’t mention that, by some calculations, Big Pharma spends more on those interminable television ads than on research. Purple pill, anyone?)

It is especially galling that American consumers are charged more for drugs developed with substantial taxpayer support than consumers of those same drugs in other countries. It would be one thing if our tax dollars subsidized the cost of medications across the board, but it is really unconscionable that the same people whose taxes helped pay for the development of medications are also being charged more for those medications.

Lobbyists for the drug companies have managed to get laws passed that prohibit U.S. government agencies from negotiating drug prices as other countries do. At a bare minimum, those laws need to be repealed.

Comments

False Equivalence, Delusion-Grade

Tomorrow night is the first Presidential debate, so this seems like a good time to get something off my chest.

I’m fed up with assertions that the candidates are equally flawed, that either would be a “disaster”–as if there is anything remotely comparable between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. And I don’t think I’m the only one who finds those assertions dishonest and self-serving.

I understand the propaganda when it comes from people who don’t want to admit, even to themselves, that their support of Donald Trump is rooted in his–and their–bigotries. I don’t understand it coming from people who actually understand that we are hiring a chief executive for an incredibly demanding job, and who disclaim support for Trump, but then say they will vote for a third party or not at all–both actions an effective, if indirect, vote for him.

I participate in a listserv focused on Law and Courts. It’s a conversation between political scientists and law professors whose academic research centers on legal and constitutional issues and the ways that judges approach and resolve those issues. A recent thread about impeachment law included a post from a (male) scholar who expressed his distaste for both candidates in a fashion that suggested such a near equivalency; that post generated a response that is worth sharing in its entirety.

I categorically reject the idea that one could put Hillary Clinton in the same category as Donald Trump vis-a-vis “high crimes and misdemeanors.”

Absurd. Clinton has been in public service for more 40+ years and, by and large, has abided by the rule of law governing the offices she was in, the roles she inhabited, and the causes she advocated for. Did she do some stupid, wrong and probably illegal things during some of that time? Yes, she did. Was it above and beyond what similarly situated men have done? Men whom we laud as tireless public servants? No, she did not.

Not only that, she has endured a relentless 25 year campaign to undermine, demean and thoroughly discredit her. I defy any male politician in public service as long as Hillary Clinton to come away from such a microscope with nothing more damning than the email nonsense.

We can and should be vigilant about the rule of law and the abuse of political power. But the double standard on display right now is among the worst I’ve seen in my lifetime. I was not a particularly vehement supporter of Hillary Clinton when this campaign started but I bloody well am now.

Sorry. But I just can’t take it anymore.

Like the writer of this post–with which I agree 100%–I was not a particular fan of Hillary Clinton at the beginning of this campaign. My attitude was not based upon her performance in the various offices she’s held, which was in each case highly competent; my reluctance to support her was based upon a concern that she was not–and is not–a gifted candidate.

Not unlike George H.W. Bush (the competent Bush), Clinton’s interest is clearly in governing, and she is uncomfortable “selling herself” on the campaign trail. In her case, the 25-year campaign referenced above has made her defensive and scripted. Understandable but unfortunate behaviors on the campaign trail.

Like the writer of this post, however, I’ve been “radicalized” by the double standard applied to Clinton, the raw misogyny, and the obvious delight in criticizing her every move by our so-called “liberal” media. (Since when is working through walking pneumonia without whining about it a “lack of transparency”?)

There is no equivalency between Trump and Clinton. None.

If you needed an operation, and your choice was between a respected surgeon who had saved numerous lives during a long career during which he had also made a few bad calls, and a local B-list actor with delusions of grandeur who had never performed an operation,  who displayed monumental ignorance of medicine generally and human anatomy specifically, I don’t think your choice would be difficult.

There’s false equivalency, and then there’s monumental intellectual dishonesty.

Think about that as you watch the debate.

Comments

Market Economy versus Market Society

A recent opinion column from the Lafayette Journal-Gazette caught my eye. Written by Ed Eiler, a former school superintendent, it began

Three recent newsworthy items deserve our attention. The first is a study in the American Educational Research Journal, which concluded rising income inequality in the U.S. is a primary cause of the growing economic segregation of schools. As the gap grows, affluent families are more likely to segregate themselves into enclaves where there are few poor children in the public schools.

The second is a report issued by the Indiana Department of Education that calculated the net increased cost for the state’s education voucher program to be $53.2 million. Some 52 percent of voucher students now have no record of attending a public school.

The final report is one completed by the National Conference of State Legislatures addressing educational reform. The report acknowledges there are no silver bullets and the present efforts at reform have failed. The report recognizes the importance of having all stakeholders be a part of the process of improving our schools.

Why does any of this matter? All of these reports can be tied to the effort to privatize education.

Eiler then references a book by Michael Sandel, who makes an important distinction between markets that deal with material goods, which he finds “valuable and productive” and markets operating  in areas where they do not belong, in our civic lives.

Should educational opportunities be made available based upon the ability to pay? Should we pay children to read books or get good grades? Should people receive health care on the basis of their ability to pay? Should access to politicians and the political system be governed by those who have more money? Should legal representation be affected by one’s financial circumstances? Should you be able to pay someone else to take your place in serving your country? Should citizenship be for sale?

Sandel asserts markets may in fact undermine or crowd out non-market attitudes and values worth caring about and change the character of some goods and social practices. He writes that the most corrosive effect of markets is the loss of our commonality – “we’re all in it together.”

This argument underscores what I have sometimes called a “category mistake.” I’ve previously written that our misguided and unsuccessful drug war is a consequence of placing drug abuse in the category of criminal justice rather than public health. Similarly, too many school reform efforts categorize education as another consumer good, rather than a public necessity.

Of course we all want our children to receive educations that will enable them to compete for jobs and status, just as we all want university graduates to find gainful employment. But the purpose of education goes far beyond those “consumer” goals. Genuine education is not job training; it both enriches the lives of recipients (a market good) and creates good citizens (a social good). As political scientist Benjamin Barber has written, public education is constitutive of a public.

So long as we think of education as a consumer good, a “product” we purchase for our children, we will continue to have affluent families segregate themselves from poorer communities, and we will continue to exacerbate inequality.

Public education is–and must be categorized as–a public good. And an exceptionally important one. Properly understood, it is not something that private markets can provide.

Comments

“The Cyber is So Big..”

Ed Brayton recently compared Donald Trump to that student who tries to give a book report without having read the book. His evidence? A Politico report on yet another episode of Trump’s “stream of consciousness” babbling, this time in what was intended to be a carefully orchestrated town hall in Virginia Beach, with a friendly moderator chosen to lob softballs:

A few minutes later, Flynn asked Trump a question about cybersecurity challenges.

Trump’s response?

“You know, cyber is becoming so big today. It’s becoming something that a number of years ago, a short number of years ago, wasn’t even a word.”…

“Now the cyber is so big. You know you look at what they’re doing with the Internet and how they’re taking, recruiting people through the Internet. And part of it is the psychology, because so many people think they’re winning. And you know there’s a whole big thing.

“Even today’s psychology, where CNN came out with a big poll — their big poll came out today that Trump is winning. It’s good psychology. It’s good psychology.”

I defy anyone to interpret that word salad. Trump makes Sarah Palin look coherent.

Brayton said it best:

All politicians try to avoid answering a question directly and they will quickly pivot to their pre-rehearsed answers. But this is not that, not even close. This is someone who literally has no idea what he’s talking about so he just babbles for a while and then stops talking without having ever even come into the same vicinity as the subject that was asked about. It’s like there’s just random firing of synapses going on.

And the really bizarre thing is that this was a staged event for the Trump campaign. He knew all the questions in advance. He was being interview by one of his advisers. He had been given prewritten answers to the question. And he still had nothing but a stream of drivel to offer. Can you imagine trying to run his campaign? I’d have killed myself by now.

It has become increasingly clear that something is very wrong with Donald Trump–not simply his ignorance, or his lack of self-discipline, or his bigotry, or even his monumental (and unwarranted) self-esteem. This man appears to be profoundly mentally ill.

And millions of Americans will vote for him.

Color me terrified.

Comments

Quid Pro Quo…

I’m certainly not surprised by the recent revelations about Scott Walker’s unethical fundraising. I’m just depressed by yet another confirmation of the sorry state of American politics and the increasing corruption of the political system. I don’t enjoy being suspicious and cynical, but it’s getting a lot harder to maintain my Pollyanna side.

For those who missed the recent reporting, here’s one lede from the Wisconsin State Journal:

A new batch of leaked documents provides the most complete record yet of how Gov. Scott Walker raised millions of dollars for a supposedly independent, tax-exempt group during the 2011 and 2012 recalls — activity that prompted a now-halted John Doe investigation into whether Walker’s recall campaign circumvented state campaign finance law.

The newly revealed donations to the Wisconsin Club for Growth included six-figure sums from a lead producer who later stood to benefit from changes slipped into the 2013-15 state budget.

In another article, expanding on the details of the “lead producer,” we read

One of the more tangible revelations found in the leaked documents is how money buys bad policy-making decisions. An example is how Harold Simmons, a man who owned a company that produced lead that used to be in paint, made $750,000 worth of donations to Walker in 2011 and 2012 and got Republicans to protect him from lawsuits.

The Guardian US posted more than 1,300 pages of documents online, detailing more of Walker’s corrupt behavior. It’s unclear how the newspaper got the documents, which were being held under seal.

These disclosures come just weeks before the U.S. Supreme Court will consider a petition by prosecutors to overturn a Wisconsin Supreme Court 4-2 decision that quashed the investigation into Walker’s practices. The prosecutors bringing the petition argue, among other things, that conservative justices Michael Gableman and David Prosser should have recused themselves from the case.

Walker, in a May 2011 letter to Republican strategist Karl Rove, wrote that his chief political adviser R.J. Johnson ran the efforts to elect Gableman in 2008 and re-elect Prosser in 2011. Johnson was under investigation for his role in coordinating advertising for both the Walker recall campaign and Wisconsin Club for Growth, which is organized as a tax-exempt 501(c)4 group.

“Club for Growth—Wisconsin was the key to retaining Justice Prosser,” Walker wrote to Rove.

Johnson affirmed the group’s role in a December 2010 email to Club for Growth director Eric O’Keefe, saying “Club is leading the coalition to maintain the court.”

In this case, “maintaining the court” evidently meant retaining judges who’d been bought and paid for. Engaging in such partisan activities is illegal for a tax-exempt 501(c)4 like the Club for Growth.

It’s bad enough when elected officials like Walker ignore the laws with impunity, but when quid pro quo politics infect the judicial process, it’s worse. The ability of citizens to rely upon the impartiality of jurists is a bulwark against inequality, corruption and tyranny.(And speaking of politics infecting the judiciary, when will the Senate discharge its constitutional duty to vote on the nomination of Merrick Garland??)

It’s all pretty sleazy.

Buying laws, neutering the courts….and we wonder why young people don’t trust “the system.”

Comments