"I want our government to be big enough so that it can successfully stop Big Pharma from selling us drugs at five times the price as other countries," writes liberal commentator Thom Hartmann.
While I'm no fan of removing state checks on corporate privilege, this is a strange argument for a liberal to make as overpriced drugs are a clear result of the state -- big government -- granting corporate privilege. As center-left economist Dean Baker pointed out in his book, The End of Loser Liberalism, Americans currently spend around $300 billion a year on prescription drugs. Without state-granted monopolies in the form of drug patents, which bar competitors to Big Pharma from producing generics, that number would be closer to $30 billion.
Yes, that's a good point, but they keep saying, 'oh, but if we had the right people in power, we could change the way government works. Instead of subsidizing big pharma, we'd sick our regulators after them' or whatever. It never ends...and they never learn.
ReplyDeleteGovernment's mutant corporate offspring taking advantage of the system? Say it ain't so
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