Price controls are more about control than price.
If there’s one constant message I’ve tried to convey here at TWF (and every television or radio interview I give, every opinion column I write, every speech I give and everywhere else when I can) it is that the free market works and health care is not immune from basic economic laws.
Price controls and regulatory burden are stock-in-trade for big-government types and they always fail spectacularly. Promises of lower prices is the siren’s song but usually sooner rather than later the supply chain dries up. Why? People aren’t stupid. If the government makes it unprofitable to supply a product or a service, people will not supply them. File that one under ‘Duh’. Big-government types then attempt to impose control over the suppliers and force them into service. Case in point: ObamaCare took over student loans to exert more control over doctors entering the field. A free doctor won’t be forced into servitude but one owned by the government in the form of crushing debt will do as he or she is told.
Pharmaceutical companies are not immune from the devastating effects of price controls and regulatory burden either. Add the ever-present lawsuits from ambulance chasing lawyers and it becomes increasing difficult to keep your company’s doors open.
Drugs For Critically Ill In Short Supply
O’Neal said he’s concerned that as supplies shrink, measures will have to be taken.
“We are dangerously close, we believe, when we will have to ration care to the critically ill. I would say within days or weeks,” said O’Neal.
“Price controls” is an oxymoron because price, in its actual economic nature, cannot be controlled except by coersion which immediately kills the nature of price. The term originated with Herbert Hoover during World War One and then popularized by Kenneth Galbraith during World War Two. The reality is rationing and controlled curtailment of the supply stream. Free stream economics does allow for irrigation to benefit certain supply forces. Today, the government is irrigating wind and solar energy projects, diverting investments toward unproven insufficient technologies, with disasterous results; but, during more rational times, the government diverted the Colorado River supplying water to the abundent agricultural riches of the Imperial Valley of California.
Another oxymoron is “Price Supports” when the US Constitution, written by mercantilists farmers and traders, stipulates market supports imposing means offering maximum market pricing and distribution. Artificial product pricing will flood the market beyond actual needs or curtail supply to the point of scarcity and privilege allowing the government the powers of controls and punishments.
Electrolytes are in things like Gatorade and so many other sports drinks.
But there are specific blends for babies and people who have been very ill.
The last American company to make them are being regulated out of business by Obama.
That’s OK.
The Chinese love to adulterate baby formula with poisons and toothpastes with antifreeze.
They will export supposedly excellent bottles of this stuff to us.
Remember, imports are only spot checked.