As you are against corporate theft, you obviously are against the tariff and quota structure that adds so much to the prices of all the goods we buy. To reel you in, I had better say that raise the prices of goods bought by poor people.
So you are a free trader.
I know too that you are against the patents that raise the prices of drugs to old people. As I've mentioned, I have belonged, for forty years, to one of the best HMO's in the country - Kaiser Permanente. I get drugs at a big discount. Generic drugs are $10 (for say 100 pills). The patented drugs are $25 - though they often supply two rather than one for the price. I'm sure they use their mammoth buying power to get the cheap prices. I use an asthma treatment spray. Two sprays cost me $25 dollars and last for 100 days - about $87.50 a year.
I checked Cosco for the price. It was $71 a spray - or about $500 a year. This is a new spray that replaced another which was long used but sometimes gave problems. The old spray was a generic. Four were supplied for $10. These lasted for 148 days. So the annual cost was about $25. However, at Cosco, the price for one was $63. For a year, this would cost me $630.
My asthma is mild, so I wish they hadn't changed. Maybe severe cases need a better treatment, but they have to standardize to get a good price. On the other hand, did the pharmaceuticals get to Kaiser and turn them to a more expensive spray? Kaiser is run by the doctors - but faced by mounting costs, is this (and perhaps other instances) their way to increase revenue?
I don't know, but I doubt it. I trust them to do whatever will generally best treat their patients.
However, as I said, for years I used an asthma spray that cost me about $25 a year. If I had paid the brand name price it would have cost me $630.
Same spray - the difference is the patent law..
The difference is the privilege bestowed on the pharmaceutical companies by the people who are supposed to represent us. Then, liberal thought is apparently to tax these receipts of privilege. This means the money is collected from poor and ill people by the pharmaceutical corporations - there to suffer taxation.
Then, continues liberal addled thinking, the poor will be subsidized by universal health care, or medicaid, or some other such program. These programs will then pay the high price of drugs, which goes to the pharmaceutical corporations, to be taxed, so it can pay part of the cost of the high priced drugs.
Brilliant!
If they were radicals instead of wimps, liberals would get rid of the privileges.
But?
Oh, but then research in new drugs would end. Oh, my gosh! So, now we get the new drugs, but the majority of people can't afford them anyway, so their invention doesn't matter much to most people.
In fact, as I've said, half the drugs research is not carried out by the pharmaceutical corporations. Again, the corporations spend more money on advertising than research. Yet, again, I wonder how much those corporations spend on their sycophants (there is a pharmaceutical lobbyist for every two congressmen).
This is only one part of the network of privilege that is provided by government to the fat cats who screw us.
I bet Al Gore would have done something about it (after he had handled Global Warming, of course).
So, Bruce, if you want to light a candle rather than curse the darkness, support free trade for the US and hammer privilege - perhaps beginning with patents.
I suppose that's my rant for today.
Harry
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Bruce wrote:
"Really free market" is what? Other than a fairy tale! They are a problem as long as they are considered "persons" and have perpetual life.There are a lot of us who do not try to externalize costs my friend! There are many who recognize theft when we see it and are about justice to work to see the stolen returned or paid for by those who benefit from the theft. Bruce Leier
****************************** Harry Pollard Henry George School of LA Box 655 Tujunga CA 91042 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tel: (818) 352-4141 Fax: (818) 353-2242 *******************************
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