Let the market decide.
You’re not gonna believe this from a kos diarist.
Oh wait, of course you will:
The Bush administration said Tuesday it will fight to keep meatpackers from testing all their animals for mad cow disease.
You read that right. The Bush “administration” will fight to keep meatpackers from testing their animals for mad cow disease.
WTF? How does stupid shit like this always end up happening?
A beef producer in the western state of Kansas, Creekstone Farms Premium Beef, wants to test all of its cows.
Great! Wonderful! Everybody’s gonna want their meat from Creekstone Farms! Free enterprise at its best! Give the people what they want!
Not so fast, says the “administration.” The people can go Cheney themselves.
But why?
The profits of the large meatpacking cartels will suffer. It is that simple.
Tags: Bush, He said what?!?
Sadly, I think this has been the government’s stance since Clinton’s administration. Doesn’t make it right though.
Hate to shock you twice in one day…but I agree. It is stupid for them to get mixed up in this. The market should dictate. If people want to pay Creekstone more to ensure their beef was tested, then they have the right.
Unfortunately I have a feeling your position on this is more “anti-Bush” than “pro-market”.
Hate to shock you, but I’m a free market capitalist.
“Hate to shock you, but I’m a free market capitalist.”
Who hates any corporation that gets big through success?
A perfect free market has a perfect flow of information. One way government can help the free market work is by making sure manufacturers don’t conceal information.
How about they label their beef “Tested for Mad Cow Disease” and “Not Tested for Mad Cow Disease” and THEN let the market decide?
Then we could label politicians “Tested for Bullshit” and “Not Tested for Bullshit.”
What about if that corporation gets big through the ways and means committee? Would that be success, Chris?
Speaking of markets…
US government not for sale — pharma owns it and is happy!
U.S. Senators Financially Enslave Americans As Indentured Servants To Big Pharma
by: Mike Adams
The facts found in the report are almost as astonishing as the source of the report itself: USA Today, a mainstream media giant in the United States, has revealed the apparent financial conflict of interest by U.S. Senators who voted against the infamous S.1082 reimportation amendment. That amendment would have ended Big Pharma’s monopoly over U.S. consumers and ultimately saved American citizens, businesses and governments tens of millions of dollars by allowing them to import medicines from other nations with approved safety records (such as Canada or Japan).
But 49 Senators voted against the amendment, defending the Big Pharma monopoly that continues to force Americans to pay the highest prices in the world, by far, for medicines. As I’ve documented in my book, Natural Health Solutions and the Conspiracy to Keep You From Knowing About Them, some pharmaceuticals are marked up 500,000% or more over the cost of their ingredients!
What could have prompted these 49 Senators to vote to protect the profits of drug companies? Follow the money and you’ll find your answer. As it turns out, nearly every one of the 49 Senators who voted against drug reimportation has accepted money from drug companies. USA Today reported the top offenders who voted against the bill, along with the dollars they’ve accepted from drug companies since 2001:
U.S. Senators’ Drug Money
Richard Burr, R-N.C.
$520,694
John Kerry, D-Mass.
$304,888
Joe Lieberman, I-Conn.
$281,040
Arlen Specter, R-Pa.
$259,699
Orrin Hatch, R-Utah
$241,850
Max Baucus, D-Mont.
$199,000
Tom Carper, D-Del.
$183,794
Mike Enzi, R-Wyo.
$174,338
Notice that these Senators represent both major political parties, and there’s even one independent in the mix. Consumers should remember that no political party will defend the people against powerful corporations. Ultimately, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle will sell out in order to protect their own power and reelection funds.
I should think you liberals would love the fact that we pay such high drug prices. We are bearing all the research costs for the entire world. Countries like Canada make laws to keep a lid on the costs. When they do the pharma companies have to cover research costs in other ways…you guessed it…us. If that legislation had passed it would have spelled the end to any further medicine development, except government sponsored research we works OH so well.
The answer is not in clamping down on our own costs alone. Rather we need to make the rest of the world step up and pay their share of the research costs.
So once again…we are supporting the world. I thought you guys liked that….
Do you lay awake at night trying to think up nonsensical things to type? Truly, you have a rare gift.
“I should think you liberals would love the fact that we pay such high drug prices. We are bearing all the research costs for the entire world.”
It is not the R&D – it is the obscene profits.
Chris: A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, and you are extremely dangerous.
Guess what – if drug companies thought they were getting burned in Canada or Mozambique or Estonia, they would pull out. The reason drug companies sell drugs in Canada is that they are making money.
Drug companies lost the right to whine about research costs when they started running all those ridiculous TV commercials. Maybe that’s why drugs are cheaper in other countries – they don’t have the overhead of paying for goofy Viagra commercials or the cartoon butterflies that put you to sleep.
“Chris: A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, and you are extremely dangerous.”
Well is seems better than the NO KNOWLEDGE you seem to have on the issue.
“It’s obscene profits”
Oh yes…the familiar liberal mantra when it comes to corporations. And Jason calls himself a market capitalist.
The drug companies are so filthy rich that they are constantly merging and being bought out just to keep from going under. They are so filthy rich that they keep layoffing workers…something you always do when you are rolling in dough. Must be the weight of all those obsecene profits. As for the direct to consumer marketing…that is as a result of needing to find alternative revenue sources to support themselves with regard to falling profits. Honestly, I swear that you think any company with more than 10 employees is some sort of filthy rich criminal organization. Well except for Soros Fund Management LLC. They are the good guys..
Once again the facts have a liberal bias.
Lilly, the sixth-largest American drug maker, reported two weeks ago that its third-quarter sales had risen 7 percent, to $3.9 billion, and its profits were up 10 percent, to $874 million, compared with 2005. According to Lilly’s published review of the quarter, the sales gains resulted almost entirely from Lilly’s prices rising 11 percent in the United States, while actually falling in Europe and Japan.
For big drug companies, the new Medicare prescription benefit is proving to be a financial windfall larger than even the most optimistic Wall Street analysts had predicted.
And maybe they would not have to “keep layoffing workers” if they were not spending $172 million a year to lobby guys like Tom Carper.
“Americans are forced to pay the highest prices for medications in the world,” says Dr. Paul Zickler of DoctorSolve Healthcare Services (http://www.doctorsolve.com). “Yet their politicians continually sabotage any efforts to assuage this cruel fact.”
Why? Because there is more money in fleecing Americans than looking after their best interests. In 2006 alone, the drug industry spent $172 million on lobbying efforts. That’s the kind of money that can make a break a political party’s chances for re-election.
Meanwhile, the plan that was intended to bring pharmaceutical prices down is doing quite the opposite. According to a report, released by the consumer health organization Families USA, the median Part D drug price increase was 9.2 percent — almost four times the latest inflation rate of 2.4 percent, and almost three times the increase in this year’s cost-of-living adjustment in Social Security (3.3 percent).