before leaving for Wisconsin, I had the opportunity to attend a conversation between President George W. Bush and Chris DeMuth of the American Enterprise Institute at the Mayflower Hotel here in D.C. It was a good event, not least because I was seated relatively front and center. Favorite moment from the event:
R. DeMUTH: Thank you. The U.S. is one of the — it’s the only advanced society that doesn’t have comprehensive price controls on pharmaceutical drugs. We have the highest-priced drugs, and we have the highest rate of innovation in life-saving new drugs. We’re moving, clearly, toward increased price controls at the administrative level and in Congress. Pharmaceutical companies are cutting back on their R&D investments. Do you think this trend is inevitable? Do you think that your Medicare Part D reforms will make that problem worse, or by introducing market mechanisms, help be the solution?
THE PRESIDENT: The whole medical debate is headed toward whether or not the government ought to be setting the price of medicine. I believe that we ought to resist that and cause markets to flourish. And we don’t have a real functioning market in health care right now. I’m going to get to the drugs in a minute but — generically [PRESIDENT PAUSES, DANIEL IS ONE OF THREE PEOPLE IN THE ROOM TO LAUGH AT THE PUN] to use a drug term — (laughter [AS EVERYONE ELSE GETS IT]) — that the problem is, is that you’ve got many people’s policies being paid by somebody else and there’s — so therefore there’s no market. People don’t say, well, how much is this costing or what’s the quality of health care with this person or this hospital?
So the consumer — there’s no consumerism. There’s no demand for better price. And so part of the policies I described early were to, like, do health savings accounts or changing the tax codes, all aiming at putting the patient in the midst of the market, getting that person to demand better quality at better price.
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Those darn corporations! Always trying to trick us with things like benefits! So you’re saying they could just start paying us more instead of giving health insurance? I wonder who wins from a tax standpoint in these two situations, and who has more influence over legislators. You know, “influence” is a code word for “campaign contributions”.
….sorta like his solution for the Big3, eh?
/sarcasm