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Politics : Ask Michael Burke -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Freedom Fighter who wrote (76102)	2/17/2000 5:59:00 PM
From: Knighty Tin	Respond to of 132070

Wayne, America has been letting its middle class seniors not be able to afford drugs for decades, so it is not a sure thing they will help them now. It is funny. If you are on welfare or in prison, you get any expensive drug you need. But if you worked for a living and retired, you have to figure out a way to pay for them on fixed incomes. The Republicans say "let them buy insurance." Where, would be my question. No insurance co. will take most seniors. There are three plans being suggested. 1. The govt. controls the price of drugs to seniors the way they control the cost of doctor and hospital services. This would be the toughest for the druggies. They price gouge Americans to pay for research and sell near cost in foreign countries. If the price gouging for a huge sector like seniors disappears overnight, so do about half of dope co. profits. The govt. will give them a profit margin, but not the silly margins they have today. The worry here is that the drug cos. won't do research unless they are allowed to rip off Americans. I don't buy that. As long as there is a profit margin, which includes R&D as an expense, there will be plenty of research done. 2. The govt. will insure seniors can buy drug insurance at a reasonable price. This would have less effect on the drug cos. because there is no insurance co. as big as the govt. who can force them to dance to their tune. This one bothers me because it would be a welfare program that would soon be in the red. In other words, #1 makes the rich drug cos. eat the cost. #2 will make the insurance cos., first, and finally, the govt., eat the cost. 3. Let seniors buy drugs directly from the GSA. Along with foreigners, big players also get much lower prices on drugs, and the GSA is the Godzilla of drug buyers. The problem is, you would have to build a retail group to distribute the drugs and this is not something at which the govt. is good. I think Clinton will shoot for #1 and the Republicans for #2. The dopers will probably voluntarily lower prices as they did during Billary to prove that they aren't the monsters they really are, and this will make a watered down program the most likely result. But the stocks will go to hell while the ideas are bouncing around. That is what happened during Billary when I was able to buy Pfizer at 17 times.