Mississippi Raises Prices of Your Sudafed

From the Clarion-Ledger: “Gov. Haley Barbour has signed House Bill 512, making any medicine that contains pseudoephedrine — a key ingredient in methamphetamine — a controlled substance as of July 1.”

That in turn will mean that if you have a routine, it-comes-every-year, easily addressable condition popularly known as “hay fever,” you’ll have to pony up for a visit to your doctor.

One judge quoted in the article blithely waved off the extra cost, which he cited as a $20 copay.

And a box of Sudafed otherwise costs, what, $10?

Comparative Effectiveness Research Isn’t Always Effective

Saving money? Good idea. Conduct research? Good idea. Using research to save money? Again good–but not as easy as it first appears.

The health care reform preferred by the political class will create a bevy of new bureaucracies meant to conduct comparative effectiveness research (CER). To borrow language from President Obama, that’s the effort to determine whether you get the same bang for the buck from the blue pill as you do from the red pill.

But as Tomas J. Philipson of the Manhattan Institute says, it’s easy to get comparative effectiveness research wrong. In particular, it “is a good idea but can be harmful when done through centralized methods.” And what could be more centralized than health care dictated by Congress?

Philipson uses the history of antipsychotic drugs to illustrate how CER can lead to higher, rather than lower costs, and worse health outcomes: “Because of widespread variation in patient response, the more restrictive the payment policy the higher the lost value in human life and productivity from excess side effects or non-responsive drugs, even when the cheaper drug seems to be a good bargain.”

It reminds me of the knowledge problem, a fundamental insight of the economist Friedrich Hayek.

Any modern economy, capitalist or state-run, is a great soup of private “know-how” dispersed among the specialised participants. No one, he said, not even a state agency, could amass all the knowledge that each participant “on the spot” inevitably acquires. The state would have no idea where to invest. Only capitalism solves this “knowledge problem”.

The human body is, like the human economy, incredibly complex. It would be folly to think that any council of “wise men” could set out rules that would benefit each person.

Lessons from the Medicare Prescription Plan

The Wall Street Journal’s David Wessel ponders some lessons for health care policy from Medicare Part D, the prescription drug benefit enacted by Congress and President George W. Bush.

What have we learned?

• When government subsidizes something, people buy more of it.
• Patients do shop for premiums, but they ought to consider total expenses, by figuring out out-of-pocket spending.
• Insurance companies can and do negotiate lower prices.
• When people have money to spend on their own behalf, companies will advertise to reach them. (Is  this a bad thing? Some people think so.)

So the prescription drug plan is a qualified success. It didn’t cost as much as as expected, and it has reduced some hospitalization costs.  But Medicare is still going broke, and more government programs, even ones delivered  by private companies rather than government agencies, will still be financial problems that lead to  rationing or degraded care.

Kentucky Narcotics Cops Call for Crackdown on … Allergy Meds

When you’ve got a failed policy, there’s nothing like doubling down on it.

Kentucky is now “on track to have a record number of meth labs this year despite having various controls in place.” These controls include making people show an ID and register in an electronic log if they wish to buy a simple product to fight seasonal allergies.

Now the professional drug fighters–the Kentucky Narcotics Officers’ Association–wants more. It’s calling for the state to require prescriptions for allergy meds containing pseudoephedrine, a common ingredient that is also abused, in the making of methamphetamine.

This move would increase health care spending (getting a prescription requires a visit to a doctor). It’s also likely to increase the use of health insurance for predictable, minor, conditions, thereby increasing the warped way in which we pre-purchase medical spending and call it “health insurance.”

In addition, the criminal production of meth will continue (and perhaps become more lucrative), while thousands of ordinary, law-abiding citizens will be harassed.

And the “war on drugs” will continue to inflict collateral damage.

Existing Programs Unused

Lost in the controversy of the various health reform bills is the fact that there are already public programs out there that aren’t being fully used. Medicaid is one, as a certain portion of the uninsured (I forget the number) are eligible for Medicaid but haven’t signed up.

Another public program going unused is West Virginia Rx. According to one report, only 6% of the eligible population is using it. The program gives free medications to people with incomes that are 200% of the federal poverty level or less. They can’t, however, be enrolled in a government insurance program such as Medicare or Medicaid.

Ohio Stockpiles Flu Vaccine

From the Cleveland Plain Dealer comes the news that salvation might come from government vaults:

Should commercial supplies run short, the Ohio Department of Health has agreed to transfer doses of antiviral drugs from the state stockpile to four large retail pharmacy chains. Giant Eagle, Walgreens, Meijer and Kroger will then distribute the medications to stores where supplies are low.

I suppose it’s good to know that there are ready reserves of vaccines out there. But food is just as important for health, and we (rightly) ridicule the idea of government cheese. (In fact, “Government Cheese” is the name of a punk band!) Why government vaccines? Given the proper incentives and regulatory environment, there would be no need for people to wonder “Does my state government have enough cheese/vaccines stockpiled?”

Pharmaceuticals Won’t Speak for Themselves

North Dakota Collects Unused Prescription Drugs

In what is one of the more benign uses of government power when it comes to health care, the Grand Forks, North Dakota police department will let members of the public drop off unused prescription drugs. Presumably the drugs will be incinerated or otherwise disposed of in a way that doesn’t let them enter the groundwater. Officials are touting it as a way of preventing teens from getting unauthorized access to drugs.

Big Pharma = Big Loss for Patients

It’s one of those ironies of life that you can’t depend on businessmen to defend free markets.

Exhibit A may be prescription drug companies. Back in 1994, they were active in the fight against HillaryCare. This year, they’ve decided to throw in the towel and give into ObamaCare–even to the point of surrendering profits and pledging to spend millions of dollars to plump for a government takeover of our health care industry.

In an editorial today, the Wall Street Journal reminds us of the dangers that pharmaceutical companies pose your health freedom. Speaking of the CEO of Pfizer, the Journal said that he has gone so far as “to endorse even such political inspirations as comparative effectiveness research, which while fine in theory will inevitably be used to ‘prove’ that more expensive medications aren’t worth the costs to government when ObamaCare’s spending detonates. In England, these kinds of studies were used to try to ban Pfizer’s Stutent, a treatment for kidney cancer.”

When certain medications are banned or rationed by government fiat, drug companies may lose profits on those particular drugs. But patients thus denied may suffer something worse–death.

A New Twist on the War on Drugs

New Jersey officials asked residents to drop off unused prescription drugs for incineration. They got an estimated 3.5 million pills.

The stated reason for “Operation Medicine Cabinet”: It’s for the children. “For a majority of young people — especially first-time users — the most common way to find those pills is to hit their parents’ bathroom. ‘It is our belief that these are a real gateway drugs,’ Angelo M. Valente, executive director of the Partnership for a Drug-Free New Jersey.”

At least the DEA didn’t conduct random bathroom searches, looking for Vicodin pills from 2003.