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What Happened to The Vaccine?
J.V. Mitchell
On a recent CNBC program, Jerry Seib was asked, "Why is there a shortage of flu
vaccine?" He replied that there are only two companies manufacturing
vaccine now. There were twenty five at one time, but the federal government
became the largest customer. So, the government was able to control the price,
to force it down. It reduced the profit level to a point that most of the
manufacturers quit making the vaccine.
With the very best of intentions, to supply vaccine to the citizens at a low
cost, the government has caused a shortage of a needed medicine.
For its next act, the government has passed a law which is intended to
supply needed medicine to retirees, at the lowest possible price. And, there
are older Americans who can't afford to buy the medicine they need.
However, the majority of retirees have a pension plan, including medical
coverage, from their former employers, which helps defray the cost of
medicine. For example, a retiree may buy a prescription with a modest
co-payment of ten or twenty dollars, with the balance of the cost born by
the pension plan. Such plans have no extra monthly premium to pay, no
deductible to satisfy. These persons may well find that the new Medicare
plan will cost them considerable amounts of money. It is quite possible that
most employers will drop the drug portion of their pension plans, to save
money and increase the corporate bottom line.
It will be interesting to see if the government will attempt to control the
cost of medicine, in response to an ever increasing cost of the plan. If so,
perhaps we will eventually see shortages of many medicines.
This new drug plan may be seen as another step down the road to socialized
medical care, and that road is a downward one. In Canada and Great Britain,
various medicines and surgical procedures are rationed in order to control
the cost of the health care plan. For instance, in December of 1994, Ontario
had to close its hospitals, except for emergency rooms, for a month because
the plan had run out of money. In both Great Britain and Canada, some types
of elective surgery, hip replacements for instance, are sometimes postponed
for long periods to save the taxpayers money.
Is this where our government is taking us? With the very best of intentions?
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