For God's sake, vote him out

[Inquartata]

Thread ended?

Since he didn't get voted out?

*bounce*

Oh, you ARE an optimist, aren't you?

[Soldier]

Like I said, I was pretty much completely insane at that point.

[Soldier]

Ha! God is on our side!!

Ecclesiastes 10:2 - "The heart of the wise inclines to the right, but the heart of the fool inclines to the left."

[telkanuru]

Meh. God could have been using the russian definitions.

[jeff]

Gee, that wouldn't be a "hypothesis", would it?

Yes it is, supported by empirical data. More lengthy reply later when I'm not in meetings.

[Soldier]

Meh. God could have been using the russian definitions.

Oh, come now. Everybody knows God's American.

[telkanuru]

Oh, come now. Everybody knows God's American.

True. 'Cause, y'know, those godless commies, are, like, godless, and stuff.

[Soldier]

Of course. They probably fence sabre, too.

[Maeve_Mari]

Yes it is, supported by empirical data. More lengthy reply later when I'm not in meetings.

Aha! Poor excuse. Everyone knows that Blackberries and Palms were invented to keep you in touch DURING meeting!

[jeff]

Aha! Poor excuse. Everyone knows that Blackberries and Palms were invented to keep you in touch DURING meeting!

Alas, we're not a Blackberry type of company (we avoid the Evil of Microsoft Exchange, to which Blackberry usually connects - a very Good Thing). So, it's after dinner, and I have only 280 e-mails to skim before doing the more important work of responses on Fencing.net (at least, the ones taking more than a minute to do...)

[jeff]

Finally...

Again I say, get thee to an economics class, go. I cannot make much headway against your insistence that everything MUST be either black or white otherwise.

Good advice. I got my first "A" in economics class in 1972. The problem with your statement was that it was vacuous, saying "ALWAYS good" (your caps) except for two wide categories of exception.

The real answer is that I don't see things as black and white. Sometimes government intervention is good, sometimes it's bad. It's you that have the black and white rule "ALWAYS". You accuse me of the belief system that you hold, not me.

Which is not the same thing as being wrong, fortunately.

I'll bear that in mind next time somebody claims Bush's victory implies so.

No, that's not coercive power. Coercive power is the power to send in police and regulators and auditors and shut you down. Coercive power is the power to deny building permits and licenses. To pass enforceable laws forcing compliance. THAT'S coercive power. The ability not only to pressure, but to compel should mere pressure fail.

You certainly list forms of coercive power that are specific to governmental agencies, but to claim as you do that "WalMart has no coercive powers" is simply absurd. You yourself used the word that describes it (monopsony) - here is where it fits in actual practice. Very often, Walmart is the primary customer for many suppliers, and squeezes all margin out of them. This has been widely reported in the business press, with specific examples. In fact, when I when I read your note I guffawed and went to Google with the first words that came to mind "Walmart squeeze suppliers". Lots of hits.

Coercive power includes the power the PUT YOU OUT OF BUSINESS if you don't toe the line. Walmart absolutely has this power over many of its suppliers. To not know this is simply to be uninformed.

Absent compelling reasons, as I say, yes.

For instance, on the safety issue, there have been some problems experienced by people who go down into Mexico to buy prescription and non-prescription drugs: poor quality, past expiration dates, repackaged generics, etc. Safety is an issue ( I don't know about the Canadian stuff ).

Let me help you here, because I do know about the Canadian stuff: in the highly publicised cases that have been in the press, seniors (and, IIRC, at least one state government) have gone to the Canadian market to buy THE EXACT SAME DRUGS manufactured BY THE SAME COMPANY (often at the same plant). There is no safety issue because its the same stuff. We just pay a lot more for Lipitor down here. Mexican generics you can pick up in Tijuana street markets are a completely different story

There's also a trade issue: the Constitution gives the federal government the power "To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States". This is a dealing with a foreign government, insofar as there are differing trade regulations, tariffs, quality control and inspection standards, etc. Once these are resolved, yes, it should be a matter for the drug companies and their buyers to hammer out. If the former don't want Canadian pharmacies selling their products for reimportation, there are ways they can put a stop to that without government help...and there are measures available to consumers as well.

Those legal rights certainly exist, but I thought you were a free-trader opposed to such governmental interference. Drugs travel north and are banned by our government from being shipped south again, as if they were Cuban cigars? Qui bono?, Inq? Let the drug companies and their buyers hammer it out without the coercive intrusion of the Federal government to protect the inflated prices south of the border.

Do I? No more than you seem to think they should be forced to subsidize "the other taxpayers"...

As you recently said elsewhere - "Ah, making up things and attributing them to me, now, the better to ridicule them? Tsk! Even Latin fails at the temerity!" The Federal government getting a volume discount on a purchase (as any purchaser does in normal business circumstances) is not a subsidy.

Right, I'm going to do this just once, Jeff. Just once. I will not respond to any future challenges which include intimations that I am a liar. Period.

A threat, eh? I'll make it clear so you know where I stand: I don't think you're a liar. I just think that you don't let not being in possession of facts or "domain knowledge" be an obstacle to making an argument, and once having made an claim, no matter how absurd, you're incapable of conceding error. I'm not the first to make this observation. You very rarely back up any argument with concrete data, as you seem to have done below, usually sticking to hypothetical situations and abstractions that differ from the original point being made, and changing the subject or retreating into Latin when losing. I don't care for your style of argument, but I don't call it "lying". There's a difference between a fencer who twists ROW to claim he scored on every double light (and probably believes it) and somebody who knowingly prevaricates to get a touch. I doubt this distinction will make you feel better, and if you don't feel like responding to my posts in the future that will not much discomfort me. One Charred_Phoenix experience is enough for me.

"Vaccines for Children" Program, 1993-94, still in existence and run by the CDC:

"The government's role in the vaccine market "raises an issue of monopsony power," says Duke's Dr. Sloan, referring to the economic situation when a
single buyer -- in this case the government -- has the power to keep prices low. Under the Vaccines for Children program, the CDC negotiates a discounted price with the manufacturer. It then allocates to each state a credit balance, which states can use to buy vaccines from the manufacturer at the discounted price. The program offers free vaccines to uninsured children under 18 years of age or to those who are eligible for Medicaid or care from federally qualified health centers. The report concluded that the price squeeze, coupled with a heavy regulatory burden, has discouraged investment and driven drug companies out of the vaccine business. The U.S. vaccine market is only a couple of billion dollars a year in sales, and many pharmaceutical companies can make more money on other products than on hard to make and market vaccines." ( from http://www.hmpscience.com/news/lack_of_vaccines.pdf )

http://www.washingtontimes.com/funct...6-090326-8427r

http://www.ncpa.org/iss/hea/2003/pd081803e.html

http://www.iom.edu/Object.File/Master/14/454/0.pdf

http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/conte.../309/6960/1023

http://www.nas.edu/headlines/

It isn't limited to just flu vaccines, either. And before you digress, no, the Bush Administration has made not the slightest move toward rectifying the situation. In fact, the CDC and the FDA are lobbying to expand government control of the vaccine market, either by increasing government purchasing or by forcing insurance companies to pay for vaccinations. I decry this as well.

I thank you for your troubling to research actual citations. I'll also make use of your useful phrase, "alleged swan". Such programs existed before the Clinton Administration, and as you point out this one exists now. So they are therefore not "HillaryCare"; let alone "regulatory price-fixing efforts of the Clinton Administration". This is the same, no more, no less, than Medicare and Medicaid. You can blame with equal justice a whole bunch of presidents.

If you want to go down the road of how low Federal disbursements are a disincentive to healthcare providers, I'll be happy to go down that road with you, as I witness that directly. To blame the Clintons is a partisan overreach.

I also suggest you study actual cases on price-fixing: historical examples where the government set prices on steel and coal - in private transactions where neither buyer or seller were government. "You may only sell steel at X dollars per ton". Now, that's price-fixing - not "give me a volume discount instead of list price". They are two very different things and you can't call them by the same name. Before you jump all over this, of course I recognise that prices to one large consumer affects prices to others, but that's supply and demand, not price-fixing. Individuals not in the vaccine for children program, for example, do not get the price the government obtained within the program.

And had the market been left unfettered to work out supply and demand imbalances, there would have been no need for such "cost containment measures". Hillarycare as a total program may have failed, but enough bits of it were added to existing government meddling in the health care business to damage the ability of the system to adjust properly to changing conditions.

Well, here is where domain knowledge would be helpful to you. There was a free market system, called "fee for service", and doctors, hospitals and pharma companies charged what the market would bear. Costs were really high (they remain high, but that's a story for another day). You say "HMOs and other supposed cost containment measures probably would not have become necessary had the market been permitted to operate and solve long-term problems on its own." Well, the market was unable to solve this problem. If you claim "probably would have solved" in the face of reality of "definitely did not", the burden of showing how (let alone why) this would have occurred at some magical point in time resides with you. Likewise, its your obligation to show which "bits of Hillarycare meddling" cause the non-Medicare/non-Medicaid system to work as it does: It's the HMOs that set reimbursals and drug lists, not the government. For example, a simple laparascopy could be charged out for, say, $3,000 in 1990. Now, the surgeon will get anywhere between $400 and $700 for that procedure. If somebody needs an MRI or an extra day in the hospital, its the HMO that can deny it - even if the doctors judge them to be medically necessary. It's to their financial advantage to deny services whenever they can. It's the non-governmental _coercive power_ of the HMO that makes this possible. The government has nothing to do with it.

You've got it backward: regulati on distorts the operation of market forces and prevents them from working properly. But you're going to believe what you're going to believe. So be it.

You're putting words in my mouth again. As a general principle the above is fine. You haven't demonstrated that this principle applies to this case.

My turn. Cite some sources for this, please.

Fair enough. I will look for such this weekend. I have seen press reports on drug prices in Europe and have verbal information from Americans buying drugs in Europe (and buying more when they saw the prices), and from a senior UK NHS doctor. If we broaden the topic from drugs to healh care, then I have seen "total costs" comparing US, UK and Europe, and we are far, far more expensive. (Sources like Medical Economics which is a specialist publication, and The Economist).

Remember: the reason the whole subject of drugs came up is that people learned that drugs cost less in Canada and Europe than they do here. The drug companies charge less for the same merchandise. That pretty much wraps it up - but I'll find some sources anyway.

Tu quoque.

Yes indeed. We both do.

Luckily, the world has not yet signed on to let Jeff define "reality".

Both proving your half of "uses sarcasm", and at least as applicable to you. I have a mental list of Inq's "divorced from reality" claims; I even had to make an acronym for it, FITFOR (Flies In The Face Of Reality), that I think when I see you make a howler.

They are my opinions, as a citizen of the polity and as an economist.

You're entitled to your opinions regardless of citizenship or profession. Great thing about this country, that right to think and say as you please. Though, I was under the impression that you were in law enforcement. Was I mistaken?

You need not sign on to them yourself, or to accept my view of which of its functions are "legitimate" or "necessary" and which not. However, the second point is plain: if the government had arrogated fewer functions to itself, it would be smaller by the agencies carrying out those functions, and less costly by the absence of those agencies' budgets. A far smaller government with far less money to throw around ( or use as a weapon ) means less power in the marketplace.

With the above I have no argument. If you merely prepended "In my view..." to "The vast majority of the goods and services the government buys are unnecessary" I would have had no argument with that either. You stated it without such a qualification, as if it were fact, and that is not justifiable without substantiation.

Reprinted from the passage cited above:

"The government's role in the vaccine market 'raises an issue of monopsony power,' says Duke's Dr. Sloan, referring to the economic situation when a
single buyer -- in this case the government -- has the power to keep prices low."


But you're correct, perhaps oligopsony is a better characterization of the situation. The Federal government is the largest purchaser, buying over 50% of all vaccines in the country. State governments and other public-sector entities buy a lot more of them. After them come the HMOs. Put them all together and they can exercise an overwhelming amount of pressure on prices. There are other factors which have contributed to driving the drug companies out of the vaccine business, but that is the biggest.

With the above I have no argument. I pay more attention to the health provider segment than pharma (noting in passing that this industry is extremely profitable), but the combined effect of government and HMO purchasing is very substantial.

[Inquartata]

The problem with your statement was that it was vacuous

Heh, something upon which you seem to be something of an expert...

saying "ALWAYS good" (your caps) except for two wide categories of exception.

Would you like me to repeat it?

It's you that have the black and white rule "ALWAYS". You accuse me of the belief system that you hold, not me.

Hmm, coulda sworn I noted a couple of exceptions. Which, parblieu! you just mentioned! Those meeting have clearly affected your short-term memory.

I'll bear that in mind next time somebody claims Bush's victory implies so.

By all means.

Very often, Walmart is the primary customer for many suppliers, and squeezes all margin out of them.

Which is not to say that there ARE no other potential buyers for those products. The suppliers have chosen to do business mostly with WM. There are others with whom they could do business if they so chose. WM is big, but it is nothing like the only retailer in the country. However, I will concede the point if you like; it scarcely affects the conclusion that monopsony is bad, and permitting government to act as a monopsonist is likewise to be avoided. Especially given its other coercive aspects in addition.

went to Google with the first words that came to mind "Walmart squeeze suppliers". Lots of hits.

Like to see how many hits I got from "aliens abduct farmers" or "jews responsible for 9-11"?

I thought you were a free-trader opposed to such governmental interference.

Read my post again. That's what I'm saying. There ought to be no interference. Not in ex-im, not in private transactions, and not in "bargaining" for lower prices BY the government. Which latter practice I rather suspect is WHY drugs are cheaper in Canada...

Let the drug companies and their buyers hammer it out without the coercive intrusion of the Federal government to protect the inflated prices south of the border.

Yes. Why are you arguing so hard even when I agree with you?

The Federal government getting a volume discount on a purchase (as any purchaser does in normal business circumstances) is not a subsidy.

Certainly it is. Where do you think the discount comes from, thin air? It comes out of the pockets of one group of citizens that another group may have "lower prices".

You seem to think it's perfectly alright for government, acting "for the taxpayer", to disadvantage whoever it wishes. I don't. That has consequences.

A threat, eh?

How do you get that?

I'll make it clear so you know where I stand: I don't think you're a liar.

Thank you.

Asking for citations or sources is all well and good; please do so at will. But
adding a snide postscript like "or are you making this up" is a gratuitous accusation. I think you are often wrong, I think you misinterpret things, but I have not ever intimated that you were lying or inventing things in order
to advance your argument. I expect the same courtesy, or you can argue with yourself.

I just think that you don't let not being in possession of facts or "domain knowledge" be an obstacle to making an argument, and once having made an claim, no matter how absurd, you're incapable of conceding error.

You are welcome to your opinion. Rest assured that I regard you in a very similar fashion.

I'm not the first to make this observation.

Oh, well, THERE'S solid proof of the truth of the claim...oh, no, wait, it's just argumentum ad numeram...

You very rarely back up any argument with concrete data,

Maybe because I expect you to be as informed as I am before you dispute a thesis? Or maybe because I think you are capable of doing your own research? I could be wrong, I suppose.

Ask, and it shall be given you...

Such programs existed before the Clinton Administration, and as you point out this one exists now. So they are therefore not "HillaryCare"; let alone "regulatory price-fixing efforts of the Clinton Administration".

You are simply incapable of admitting that you are wrong, even when presented with the evidence, aren't you? And you think I am the one with the problem!

This is the same, no more, no less, than Medicare and Medicaid. You can blame with equal justice a whole bunch of presidents.

True, there are other government programs which exercise deleterious effects on the workings of the free market and which cause problems and distortions of their own. True, other Administrations are guilty of their own meddlings. None of that changes the fact that it was THIS program, authored by THIS Clinton, which resulted in the current absence of US compaines producing flu vaccines. And the argument that "Well, others do it, too" is just another tu quoque . It changes nothing and excuses nothing.

I also suggest you study actual cases on price-fixing: historical examples where the government set prices on steel and coal - in private transactions where neither buyer or seller were government. "You may only sell steel at X dollars per ton". Now, that's price-fixing - not "give me a volume discount instead of list price". They are two very different things and you can't call them by the same name.

Your attempts at diversion ( and to limit the definition of price-fixing to one unnaturally narrow so as to support your case ) to the contrary notwithstanding---sure I can, and I do, and shall. The definition is merely:

Main Entry: price-fix·ing
Pronunciation: 'prIs-"fik-si[ng]
Function: noun
: the setting of prices artificially (as by producers or government) contrary to free market operations

There is no requirement that it be done via legislatively set prices ( though of course "bargaining" cannot be done without legal authorization, as we are seeing ).

http://www.keepmedia.com/Register.do?oliID=225

I recognise that prices to one large consumer affects prices to others, but that's supply and demand, not price-fixing.

Supply and demand indeed, but warped by undue and coercive market power oon the part of the demander. Even outright monopolies or horizontal pricing conspiracies by industry are operating on supply and demand curves. Very inefficient ones, and harmful, but supply and demand nonetheless. Nor does price-fixing depart from supply and demand---it merely twists both unnaturally. They are not somehow different things.

Individuals not in the vaccine for children program, for example, do not get the price the government obtained within the program.

Well, that's so much better---only half of the market is warped....

A harm is a harm, and I do not see how it is made otherwise by the fact that it doesn't harm all equally.

The bottom line: there were 20+ domestic producers of flu vaccine before government got involved in "bargaining" down the prices. Now there are none.
This is not coincidence. And I can see no merit in extending a harmful practice to other areas of the health care field.

There was a free market system, called "fee for service", and doctors, hospitals and pharma companies charged what the market would bear. Costs were really high (they remain high, but that's a story for another day). You say "HMOs and other supposed cost containment measures probably would not have become necessary had the market been permitted to operate and solve long-term problems on its own." Well, the market was unable to solve this problem.

See, here is perhaps the root of the problem: you seem to consider "high" prices a "problem". They are not, if they are the result of the interaction of supply and demand freely operating. They are how the market allocates scarce resources, such as medical care. And they are how the market induces the production of resources ( such as doctors, or drugs ) which have high costs of production. Government intervention seldom manages to make matters any better. Usually to the contrary.

its your obligation to show which "bits of Hillarycare meddling" cause the non-Medicare/non-Medicaid system to work as it does:

Ah, now who is "differing from the original point being made"?

Perhaps you'd like to point out where I've linked Hillarycare with Medicare or non-Medicare or what have you? I brought it up specifically in regard to the vaccines, and said that on that basis I think it's a horrible precedent to apply to other drug programs. I have not extended it into other areas of the health care field at all---I have said only that government meddling generally has warped the operation of the free market in the health care industry. You are now haranguing on about something I did NOT say. Bit of a straw man, what?

It's the non-governmental _coercive power_ of the HMO that makes this possible. The government has nothing to do with it.

And who enabled the HMOs in the first place? Does the HMO Act of 1973 ring any bells? And which entity heavily regulates the ways HMOs can do business? And which entity is the 800 pound gorilla with which HMOs must cope?


http://www.cchc-mn.org/issues/hmorise.php3

http://www.privatemd.com/Federal_control.htm

http://www.house.gov/paul/congrec/co...9/cr100499.htm

Remember: the reason the whole subject of drugs came up is that people learned that drugs cost less in Canada and Europe than they do here. The drug companies charge less for the same merchandise.

Yes, but WHY do they charge less there? Out of the goodness of their corporate hearts? Because they like Canadians better than Americans? Because Canadians are more deserving? Or because they are given no choice?

Both proving your half of "uses sarcasm", and at least as applicable to you.

Oh, yes. I can give back what I get, to be sure. Drop the superior attitude and perhaps things will get a bit more civil....

I have a mental list of Inq's "divorced from reality" claims; I even had to make an acronym for it, FITFOR (Flies In The Face Of Reality), that I think when I see you make a howler.

You seem to have a mental something, that's for sure.

You're entitled to your opinions regardless of citizenship or profession. Great thing about this country, that right to think and say as you please. Though, I was under the impression that you were in law enforcement. Was I mistaken?

Relevance? What does the one have to do with the other?

If you merely prepended "In my view..." to "The vast majority of the goods and services the government buys are unnecessary" I would have had no argument with that either.

Consider it done, then. It is my view, formed and informed by free market economic theory as it is currently understood...