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Politics : A US National Health Care System? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lane3 who wrote (4705)	2/21/2008 11:40:48 AM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42652

One of the comments to that blog post links to this - -- Ignorant for our own Good Recently, parliament passed one of the worst laws in recent memory. However, it has gone unnoticed. Perhaps we can’t keep pace with the rate of legislative inflation. I am referring to the new Medicine Law which, among its many sections, includes a most hypocritical and surprising measure. It states that "promoting, advertising or providing information to the pubic regarding products included in section 1 is expressly prohibited." And what do we find in section 1? Medicines "which do not receive public financing." The law is the Spanish application of a European directive that maintains "member states will prohibit in their territory advertising to the general public of medical products, whose cost can be reimbursed." In other words, the State pays for a wide range of medicines to ensure all potential consumers can afford them. But it blocks those who need medicines from learning of their existence through the most efficient mechanism available for transmitting product information: advertising. The reason is that the nanny state is paying the bill. Only a bad nanny wouldn't want her "children" discovering where they could find a solution to their sickness or pain. But the state wants to keep costs down. This is even more surprising when we remember that, contrary to the new law, every official institution, not just the Ministry of Health, tells us it is important for citizens to always be well-informed so they can make responsible decisions. Clearly this is true. The problem is it contradicts the Medicine Law's prohibition on advertising. The Juan de Mariana Institute published a study listing the dangers this law holds for the economy and public health. Its conclusions are unsettling. Aside from the data on illnesses that will go untreated and lives that will be lost because individuals won’t know there are medicines available, it is interesting to examine the unseen consequences brought about by banning advertising. It reduces the incentive for technological innovation. Europe is engaged in a long-standing fight against drug companies and there is no doubt it has been effective: If in 1980 Europe developed eight of every ten new pharmaceuticals, that number today reveals the exact opposite. Eight of every ten are produced in the United States. The law encourages the European pharmaceutical industry to go offshore. Europe loses no less than half a million of its best scientists to the United States. The state faces a clear problem financing medicine. But banning advertising for drugs covered by the state has a terrible impact on public health. Statines, for example, save between 60,000 and 70,000 lives, but only half the Europeans who should take this treatment are receiving it. Moreover, none of this is necessary. The state has gradually assumed the expensive role of breaking the relationship between needing a medicine and paying for it. It would be enough to restore a reasonable level of individual payment. juandemariana.org On that same site there is a similar article Against Free Information juandemariana.org