Spilling Pharmaceutical Seed Corn
Greg Mankiw nails it. Price controls on drugs today spills the metaphorical seed corn for the future. As for me, I expect that I will get sick later rather than sooner, so I advocate letting the science whiz kids of the world make huge money by developing the cures now for the dread diseases that me and mine will get decades hence. Thus we must dispense with the noxious platitudes that we have a "right" to healthcare. "Healthcare" is another person's expertise, their creativity, their scientific insight, their hard work, their tools and sometimes just their bedside manner. Regardless of what it is, I am not entitled to any of these by rights. Each of these was acquired through somebody else's resources and initiative, and I am not entitled to it. I must get whoever can provide "healthcare" to offer it to me via a mutually beneficial and voluntary exchange.
More here and here and here.
More here and here and here.
posted by Donny Baseball at 10:21 AM
4 Comments:
Regardless of what it is, I am not entitled to any of these by rights. Each of these was acquired through somebody else's resources and initiative, and I am not entitled to it. I must get whoever can provide "healthcare" to offer it to me via a mutually beneficial and voluntary exchange.
That's mighty big of you. So when can we expect a statement in favor of immediately repealing all patent laws, which forcibly exclude generic drug makers from making "mutually beneficial and voluntary exchange" with willing patients, for a term of up to twenty years from the development of new drugs?
Charles-
See other comment. The economics behind patents and products like pharmaceuticals are a little more complex than other products and markets. There are significant free-rider problems to factor in and patents have been an enormously successful way that we have promoted innovation for hundreds of years. If you look around the world, drug development only takes place where intellectual property laws are strong and backed up by patents. Without an intellectual prooerty regime such as this, drug development would not take place.
As to being "big" I hear people say all the time that 'healthcare should be a right' without examining that claim, without understanding what healthcare actually is and then cogently explaining why that is a right. It is common sense.
Donny,
I'm familiar with the economics behind patents and products like pharmaceuticals.
Saying "Oh, well, if it weren't for patent laws there wouldn't be enough investment in new drugs" has its own problems as an argument (enough for what? enough for whom?). But even if it were uncontroversially true that you get better results with patent laws than without them, I don't see how that answers the question.
You didn't say that healthcare should be provided through "mutually beneficial and voluntary exchange" except when you can get better results from using coercion (e.g. by threatening legal force against firms that would be willing to provide generic medicines to willing customers). If that's the principle you intend to endorse, then go ahead and endorse it, but you'll need to drop the universal pronouncements about "mutually beneficial and voluntary exchange" (since you're willing to discard that principle in the name of expediency) and you shouldn't be surprised when every busybody and medical welfare statist comes along with a new scheme for forced care, or forced denial of care, or forced prices for care, which would get better results for somebody or another.
If, on the other hand, you think that healthcare should always be provided through free, mutually beneficial exchanges, whatever benefits you might be able to extract through coercion, then you'll have to explain how that could possibly be compatible with fining or jailing people for peacefully producing generic medicines and providing them to willing customers, in a "mutually beneficial and voluntary exchange," if they did so before an arbitrarily-declared, government-controlled time limit had expired.
Charles-
OK, I see what you are driving at. I was not actually talking about drug development in my post. I was talking about basic healthcare, i.e. seeing a doctor and getting 'treatment' be it a procedure, drugs, or gjust advice. As an oversimplified principle, this activity should not be intervened upon by a third party, whether by dictating price or acceptably treatments. Also, the arrangements that an individual makes to pay for such healthcare, such as insurance should not be dictated by third parties. If you want the current employer provided insurance model fine, but if you want true risk-based insurance like life insurance for things like hernias and appendectomies, then you should be able to have that too. I do believe in an intellectual property regime backed by patents for drug development, but more importantly we need to abandon the tax favored status of employer-paid insurance. We furthermore need to reduce state mandates and we need to allow a national market for health insurance. As I see it, one of the biggest barriers to this policy lineup is the weird notion that healthcare is a right, as if healthcare was simply just 'out there' for us to partake of in unlimited quantities and uniform quality. Healthcare is a scarce resource like anything else. That should but my post in greater context. Cheers.
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