Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal (2004)

that would, of course, be 2005, god forbid that it should happen....

Some of these people have to go public in order to preserve their reputations. They have to support Kerry.

The Republican core constitutency is loony without exaggeration: Armageddonists, free-market fanatics, plunderers, "nuke-em-now" barbarians. But they can't win without a lot of moderates and "rational conservatives", and right now they're keeping their support. The core people make the decisions and the moderates are slaves.

Put on your anti-Godwin tinfoil hats: in Germany, a lot of people who knew better came to regret having been on the winning side in 1932.

"...we have no specific information now about any al-Qaeda threats to our food or drug supply," said Brian Roehrkasse, spokesman for the Homeland Security Department.

But we do have a specific information about the state of Vermont filing suit against the FDA for blocking access to Canadian drugs.

Former IL governor Jim Thompson refused to endorse Alan Keyes for senate. There is a line that some of the GOP grownups will not cross.

Bush just confiscated a shipment of drugs for a MN group. Kerry or Edwards should go to MN and spend a week talking about nothing but drug importation. MN is a swing state.

Good God! To think that the package from Casalini Libri I openend today could have contained who knows what instead of books. Books of Mass Destruction -- who'd a thunk it?

The sane Republicans you speak of form a set of measure zero apparently.

There are probably just as many insane Democrats supporting Bush.

I don't doubt there are relatively sane Republicans out there who are just as scared as I about a second (lame duck) Bush presidency. Can't you possibly give a few more hints about who these people might be or what, if anything, they're doing about it? I am all for sane Republicans. I live in a state that sent Sen. Mathias to Congress for many years, until he lost heart because of how he was treated by his "fellow" Republicans, so I am not a yellow-dog Democrat. Or at least I was not born one. Now, of course, it's hard to see a realistic alternative. But more information would be helpful.

Brian Boru writes:
>
> Good God! To think that the package from Casalini Libri I
> openend today could have contained who knows what instead
> of books. Books of Mass Destruction -- who'd a thunk it?

Clearly not you. More seriously, all of this stuff has been foreseen by the Medium Lobster, whose work is, alas, not yet syndicated nationally, but does appear at a blog near you:

http://fafblog.blogspot.com/

The Medium Lobster's most recent post is on "A show of intelligence", and the beauty of its logic brought tears to my eyes. (I feel okay giving this plug in another person's blog because Brad DeLong is also an admirer of the Medium Lobster.)

bakho writes:
>
> Bush just confiscated a shipment of drugs for a MN group.
> Kerry or Edwards should go to MN and spend a week talking
> about nothing but drug importation. MN is a swing state.

That's one way to do it, but I think an even better way is to set up a civil disobedience situation. So imagine you can get a dozen or so different people to buy drugs for various debilitating diseases that are available much more cheaply in Canada. You then have them re-enter the country at an appropriate place in Minnesota where you can film everything and have them officially declare "drugs to save my life that are available at half the cost in Canada". John Edwards is on the American side, waiting to see what happens. If members of the group are detained, you give speech A. If they are not detained, you give speech B. Speech A is the SHORT speech where you ask what justice there is in this country when Americans can be detained for (etc.). Speech B is the one where you declare victory. If they let these 10 souls across, how will they ever detain anybody for this alleged crime and point out that in the Kerry-Edwards administration, nobody else will ever face prosecution for importing legal drugs from Canada with a valid perscription. Either way, you win. In the spirit with the best civil disobedience campaigns, your opponent loses no matter what action is taken.

Man, this isn't rocket science; why didn't somebody in a real campaign think of this first?

My question is why is there feigned surprise? Wasn't it obvious that the administration was beholden to Phrma? And wasn't it obvious what McClellan was up to when instead of bringing in experts in health policy, he brings in a bunch of think tank crazies? (and would it be surprising if McClellan, from his office at CMS, is still influencing policy at FDA, USTR, etc....?)

I understand there may be some illegal gambling in Casablanca....

OK, m pet peeve about low Canadian drug prices is that the advocates and politicos are always discussing importing Canadian drugs (usually for seniors) because they are less expensive.

There never seems to be a discussion of why they are less expensive (the negotiating power of Canadian Nation Healthcare), or that Medicare would have similar pricing power, or that those low prices in Canada, or France, or Sweden, or the UK are subsidized U.S. drug consumers paying higher prices to support the pharma industry earnings.

"Oh why can't whe have a better press corps"

OK, my pet peeve about low Canadian drug prices is that the advocates and politicos are always discussing importing Canadian drugs (usually for seniors) because they are less expensive.

There never seems to be a discussion of WHY they are less expensive (the negotiating power of Canadian Nation Healthcare), or that Medicare would have similar pricing power, or that those low prices in Canada, or France, or Sweden, or the UK are subsidized U.S. drug consumers paying higher prices to support the pharma industry earnings.

"Oh why can't whe have a better press corps"

Well, if we can't get drugs from Canada, there's always Mexico, where they're even cheaper. Of course, the package insert is in Spanish, but if it's a drug you've been taking all along, who cares?

BTW, what negotiating power does anybody have for a brand- name drug? Legal monopoly and all that.

The "drugs imports from Canada issue" is one of the great illustrative political red herrings of our day.

First, there are 300 million people in the US and 30 million in Canada. The US isn't going to be exporting drugs for 330 million people, or any substantial fraction thereof, to Canada. Fuhgetaboutit.

Second, the price differential is over-hyped greatly. Due to a much more competitive market in the US, generic drugs in the US cost less than not only the Canadian name-brand versions of the same drugs, but also less than Canadian generic versions of the same drugs. http://www.fda.gov/fdac/features/2004/404_generic.html

Yet for some reason these two facts are never mentioned in all the controversy and to-do about Canadian drug imports as a "remedy" for US prices.

Which leads one to conclude we need a better-quality press corps ... and a better-quality AARP, better-quality government at explaining reality, better-quality political opposition at propping up straw men to wail against, and better-quality blog commentators as well.

And perhaps we need a better-quality cadre of senior citizens too. After all, one needn't be a genius to realize that 300 million into 30 million will not go, before getting all worked up into a frenzy about the prospect of it.

I have zero respect for any 'senior Republicans' who are 'truly scared' about a second Bush administration and yet aren't out there working their high income tails off to make sure it doesn't happen. It wouldn't take many senior level defections from Chimpy to conclusively swing the vote Kerry's way.

The suggestion af an Al-Qaeda-Canada connection is so insane that maybe later you will find out that some 'senior Republicans' who were 'truly scared' about a second Bush administration and WERE THERE working their high income tails off to make sure it didn't happen...?

nice try to change the subject, people.

The bottom line is that it is Krazy Insane to try to connect AQ to the drug reimportation, regardless of the merits.

Krazy Insane.

It was this bit of news that sent me over the edge.

Jim Glass wrote: "The drugs imports from Canada issue" is one of the great illustrative political red herrings of our day."

Jim, you've got your facts about generics right on the money, but you've failed to point out one significant fact...There are a large number of new medications out there with no generic equivalent.

While I agree that reimportation is only a poor "band-aid" to try to cover a bad situation. It does have an enormous amount of political momentum behind it. Until Congress does some really heavy lifting (in the face of all those PhRMA donations) and changes the way FDA regulates drugs so that new meds are compared with existing therapies, we will not see significant changes. Of course, there's always that pesky legal prohibition in the MMA that keeps the Government from demanding lower prices for the meds it buys, but who's counting?

Steve Holmes: "There never seems to be a discussion of WHY they are less expensive..."

Somebody correct me if I'm wrong, but as I understand it, drugs (like software) require a large amount of upfront R&D costs, but have very low marginal costs. Therefore, if the drug companies were to pick one price, it would be a relatively high one to recoup the R&D costs (and once these costs were recouped, it would behoove them to lower the price to increase volume).

When other countries negotiate for lower prices, drug companies are still willing to sell to them because those prices are still above the marginal cost, and U.S. consumers paying the higher price essentially subsidize the R&D costs for other countries, which are free riders.

Allowing importation would end the free ridership. While better than price controls, is this necessarily a good thing? This might mean the drug companies will just stop selling to other countries, since that would remove the subsidy they need to recoup R&D costs. Is this something best decided on a country-by-country basis?

fling93
If US companies flatly refused to sell drugs to foreign countries, those countries could [and presummably would] break the patents and authorize new suppliers. The real issue is whether or not this would result in:

Risk that Pharma cannot recoup R&D costs rise ==> Pharma cuts investments in new drugs ==> Medical cures 10, 20, 30 years are much lower than they would have been ==> millions (and once you take integrals, maybe billion+) of net premature deaths relative to current practice.

I figured the effects might be along those lines.