Markets, like facts, are stubborn things

Wishful thinking and cliches don't work as our Singular leader is finding out.  George W. Bush started the destruction of our Pharma market and the Obami are now trying to finish it off.  Couple this with the truly evil FDA regulatory risk aversion and you have a recipe for death after death after death.

Which I fear many Lefties consider a feature, rather than a defect of state run medicine.  A rather more genteel approach to population culling than Soylent Green.

Obama on Drugs

Like all price-control schemes, this would inevitably lead to shortages. If Medicare forces the drug companies to sell their products at rates that fail to cover costs, these companies will simply stop manufacturing those drugs. To counter this inconvenient reality, the supporters of Obama's approach to "cost control" point to the Veterans Health Administration (VA), which has negotiated directly with pharmaceutical companies for years. What such people usually fail to mention is that the VA covers far fewer drugs than does Medicare. As health care economist Austin Frakt puts it, "The VA's national formulary covers 59% of the top 200 drugs while Medicare PDPs cover between 68% and 93% of those drugs, averaging about 85% covered. So, if Medicare plans looked more like the VA, a lot fewer drugs would be covered."

The reduction in the number of drugs available to seniors is only the beginning of the harm that would be caused by Obama's scheme. Even deadlier will be its stifling effect on innovation. As Sally Pipes writes, "Developing just one new medicine costs a drug company nearly $1.5 billion.… If investors fear that Medicare will refuse to cover new, expensive treatments, then they'll simply refuse to fund the research and development needed to create new drugs."

Catron reminds us that Team Obama removed pharmaceutical price controls from ObamaCare to buy Big Pharma's public support of the PPACA but honesty wasn't exactly this administration's strong suit in pushing their health care law. Plus, asking big-government types to resist the urge to expand government is like asking water to not be wet.

Which brings us to the only upside of the President's proposal. No small amount of schadenfreude is to be had from the squealing of drug industry representatives. They, like the leadership of the American Medical Association (AMA), pursued a quisling strategy on Obamacare in order to avoid this very contingency. And, like the AMA, they have now been double-crossed. John J. Castellani, CEO of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), is clearly not amused; "Implementing government price controls in the Medicare prescription drug program would not achieve better patient care, sustainably cut the deficit, foster the development of future medical advances or grow the economy." Mr. Castellani, like the collaborators of the AMA, sold out and now complains that the check bounced.

Meanwhile, as I wrote in First, Do No Harm, while George Bush exploded Medicare with the new senior drug entitlement and Barack Obama embarks on price controls, the free market has roared and delivers results that politicians simply cannot. Without a single bureaucrat or government overseer, a private enterprise lowered the price of their top 331 medications to $4 per month (and later to $10 per three months) and forced every pharmacy in America to drop their prices too.

And, by the way, Wal-Mart pays their own bills rather than dumping them on my yet-to-be-born grandchildren.