Democrats & Liberals: Archives

Well, you know, up here in Canada our drug testing and safety rating is absolutely abysmal! We’re a third world country after all, never mind that our average life expectancy and standard of living are both on average higher than in the US. Why on earth would you trust US!?

Excellent points, blipsman.
The irony of Dubya’s statements about the flu vaccine during the debate was certainly not lost on me. When he claimed that he was going to try to get it from Canada, my husband and I looked at each other in surprise and laughed, because his only response for why he wasn’t allowing us to broker a better deal for ourselves by buying drugs over the border previously was that we could not trust the efficacy of their safeguards and testing procedures.
The man is a walking contradiction and yet he has the nerve to say flip-flop about _Kerry_? He’s a horrible manager in chief in every way possible, and yet he claims that only he can keep the country safe?
I might be finding all this more hilarious if my parents who are in their seventies and who have both managed to recover from serious illnesses in the past several years had already had their shots, but they haven’t, though they are on a lottery list for the chance to get them. My Dad talked about driving into Canada if they don’t “win”, but thanks to your article, I can save him and my Mom the long drive north.
Appreciatively,
Adrienne

canadian:

subtle sarcasm there……very subtle……

The economics of vaccines are simple. If you give a million shots, most people will be helped but some predictable number of people will have seriously adverse reaction. It is like the lottery. There is 100% chance that someone will win; we just don’t know who that will be. In the case of vaccine, it is a negative lottery. For each of us the risk is small and well worth taking, but somebody will suffer and maybe die. As our system works now, the company that makes the vaccine will be liable to pay unknown, but very large amounts of money for these victims. The government repeatedly tries to protect vaccine makers, but entrepreneurial lawyers figure out ways to get around these protections. Potential lawsuits could bankrupt companies and the returns on vaccines are small. This has driven most U.S. drug firms out of the market or driven them overseas. This has been going on for years. It is not something Bush has created.

Our Canadian friend was not being ironic. If you can get American medicine, there is none better, but his system is better than ours in respect to things like vaccines precisely because it is less rigorous. American firms defend themselves, must defend themselves, against very small probabilities that any reasonable system would accept as unavoidable. In using vaccine, a society trades a certainty of a small number of deaths for the probability to avoid a large number. It is a sound bargain, as long as you can keep the lawyers out of it.

Bush is the wrong target here. The problem is our lawyers and our liability laws. Talk to John Edwards. That is how he made his 72 million. The beaver is Canada’s characteristic animal. Lawyers are like beavers. When they get into the mainstream, they dam it all up. That’s America’s curse.

“If you can’t get flu vaccines to Americans how are you going to protect them against bioterrorism?” Kerry said yesterday.

Talk about scaremongering.

Everybody repeat after me: there is no connection between the flu and Al Qaida.

Changing subjects: since when were flu vaccines an entitlement program or a right to be guaranteed by the federal goverment? Perhaps they’ve come to be regarded as such, but the liberatrian streak in me tends to think they ought to be the responsibility of patients and their private healthcare providers.

Hillary Clinton is responsible for the current flu shot shortage.

Her “Clinton Government Vaccine Buying Program” forced pharmaceutical companies out of business with her price caps.

It really is as simple as that. You can post for the next 10 years on this subject but it will always come back to this: Hillary Clinton is responsible for the current flu shot shortage.

“If you can’t get flu vaccines to Americans how are you going to protect them against bioterrorism?” Kerry said yesterday.

Talk about scaremongering.

I never said or implied that the flu was caused by al Quaeda, nor do I believe that is what Kerry was saying. It think it was purely a comment on acquisition and distribution in a timely manner of certain emergency supplies.

Changing subjects: since when were flu vaccines an entitlement program or a right to be guaranteed by the federal goverment? Perhaps they’ve come to be regarded as such, but the liberatrian streak in me tends to think they ought to be the responsibility of patients and their private healthcare providers.

So what goverment services should be provided? I see this as exactly the time for a government to step in, even if looking at the situation in a libertarian view-point. As libertarians are not anarchists, they do see certain limited roles for government. Do you not want government providing roads, police, etc.? I don’t see flu vaccines an an “entitlement” program, because people aren’t asking for them for free — they simply want access to the product. The free market is not providing the supply to meet the demand. with the number of deaths the flu causes, there needs to be some external force to step in and increase the supply. The government could do this in a number of ways and pass on all or most of the cost to the consumer in the end. Whether it gives subsidies to drug companies, offers to buy unused doses, give low interest loans to comanies to expand production, etc.

But Americans are stepping up as the Bush administration fails them, trying taking matters into their own hands.

Oh nO! Not that! Not taking care of yourself! Next thing you’re going to tell me is that Bush wants us all to find our own jobs, our own houses and our own clothes!

The fascist!

Blipman, it is not the job of the federal government to provide any of these things. If they are to be provided, they should be provided at the state level. Why?

1) Each state has their own need. By trying to create an ‘all encompassing’ program to meet the needs of everyone in the country, you are invarably going to fail to meet any needs out of the norm. I don’t think I have to bring up example after example for that, do I?

2) If one state has policies in place that help prevent need into the system created, it will not get as much back as that need is given to those in other states that do not follow suit and find a way for prevention of need as well. A whole campaign promise is based on making sure you get a certain percentage of the federal tax money back into the state. This nonsense should be eliminated as much as possible.

3) The federal tax dollar is being held over the state’s heads now in order to get them to play along with federal rules that the federal government currently does not have the powet to enforce. The best example of this is the interstate highway funds. So many ‘edicts’ from the federal goverenment are enforced with this by threatening to withhold a state’s alloted highway funds if they don’t follow along, such as the drinking age of 21.

Basically, the federal government was limited for a reason. That reason being that the states are better equipped to know the needs of it’s citizens than the federal beauracracy in Washington, DC does. It might be novel to actually let them try to do thier jobs instead of constantly over-reaching their constitutionally limited abilities. Want to have a department of education? Want to have prohibition? Want to prevent gay marriage? Be men and step to the plate with a constitutional amendment. The fact that they would never pass ought to tell you that it’s something you shouldn’t be doing, IMO

Blipsmith, as flu-shots are a product for individual use (as opposed to police or fire protection), won’t a less impeded marketplace be able to provide them?

If there’s a demand, market forces will step in to create and deliver a supply unless meddling lawyers and regulators get in the way. By all indications, that’s what happening now. True free enterprise hasn’t been given a chance.

I was joking—I know that neither you nor Kerry has said the flu is caused by Al Qaida. I was simply poking fun at the left’s constant refrain that there is no connection between Iraq and Al Qaida.

Oops, I meant “Blipsman.”

I was joking—I know that neither you nor Kerry has said the flu is caused by Al Qaida. I was simply poking fun at the left’s constant refrain that there is no connection between Iraq and Al Qaida.

you find no connection for war funny?

wow…..

Hi, rob.

What funny war connection again? Your post leaves more out than it says, so I’m sort of at a loss. Nonetheless, I’ll try to fill in the blanks.

I was poking fun at the boatload of bull repeated endlessly on left-wing blogs and fanatical leftist
major media outlets like CBS and the NYT that says that the admistration invaded Iraq on the justification that Iraq was behind 9-11.

All in fun—no harm done—just an innocent jab at a certain pervasive lie told again and again by some unscrupulous members of the political left in the media.

it’s actually the lack of wmd’s thats truly knee-slapping funny….

don’t cha think? i mean c’mon….we were told they were there! i mean, who’da thunk they’d be lyin??

hah..whoooo…boy is my face red or what….

and just to get back on track for a second….cuz i do love me thems random tangents i go off on….

the influenza virus is extremely adaptable…and we americans love our drugs so much, that we are now so dependent upon drugs and vaccines, that when this virus adapts to our modern medicines, it will be a huge loss of life.

scientist have been warning of this for some time. it’s only a matter of when the flu-strain will hit like the one in 1918.

now…is this bush’s fault that we don’t have enough vaccine? hell no…unless he was the one who went over to england and personally tainted the batch they were making for us….

this is a unworthy arguement to have….bush had nothing to do with this…it was just some bad luck…anyone claiming otherwise is just trying to see things in their favor.

you have so much more factual evidence to use to vote against him….

As our system works now, the company that makes the vaccine will be liable to pay unknown, but very large amounts of money for these victims.

Jack, you didn’t provide a link to back that up. I’ve never heard of that happening. Maybe you could post a link to an example of a company getting sued for flu vaccine.

It is all a matter of economics. If we make it unprofitable to do business, then companies will get out of that business and do something else instead. Without question, strict liability, or liability without fault, has contributed to that unprofitability. Here is an article that details how lawsuits drove drug companies out of the vaccine business. Interestingly, here is a link to a law firm’s web site seeking clients to sue companies over flu vaccines.

On the other hand, an alternative view is presented here.

Great post Rob, most people have no idea.

Thanks for being even-handed, Troy. I’m familiar with the “alternative view”, which seems more credible to me. The article you linked from William Kristol’s neo-con Weekly Standard left me unimpressed.

Without question, strict liability, or liability without fault, has contributed to that unprofitability.

Apparently, it is questioned. From the article you linked to,

According to a 2003 report by the National Vaccine Advisory Committee (part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services), “vaccine shortages do not appear to be liability related”