Democrats' "Symbolic blow against profits"

by Patricia Green, published on Jan. 23, 2007 by MedsAbroad.com

Rich Lowry opined in the Washington Times (DC) recently about the Democratic initiative to allow Medicare to "negotiate" drug prices for seniors. He uses the same arguments you've read here more than a few times:

• Seniors are perfectly happy with Medicare Part D the way it is;
• Without a formulary, negotiations have no teeth and a formulary is not acceptable to most beneficiaries;
• Price "negotiations" are really "price controls," and would eat away at pharmaceutical manufacturers' research and development budgets so drastically that new drug developments would be slowed down significantly for everyone.

But he also points out the hairy monster in the corner: Democrats' real concern is their desire to cut pharmaceutical companies' profits because they think those profits are too high. Lowry is wisely suspicious of the Democratic half-hidden agenda, saying sarcastically, "At least Democrats will have struck a symbolic blow against profits."

And there you are. It's really about who's allowed to make money, and just how much they're allowed to have. Socialists and Communists have been fighting that fight for a long, long time. Funny, but humans seem to want to be prosperous, to earn something in direct proportion to their labors, savvy and creativity. Isn't that the American ideal? One wonders how the Democrats managed to forget that.

Many Americans are opening their eyes to this shameless attack on a program that - while we might want to debate upon entitlements - is working for the vast majority of beneficiaries. They're concerned about the possibility that drug research and development might be affected adversely (see, for example, Betsy's Page, a blog that is fully representative of a lot of concerned Americans out there).

It's time that the Democrats stopped racing around and started actually educating themselves on the mischief price "negotiations" might cause. Legislation should not be about sound bites.

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