Mark Thoma highlights a story that I had missed–a bargain between the pharmaceutical industry and the Obama Administration on health care reform.
Aug 10 2009
Inspired by Tyler Cowen, let me offer my most generous characterization of progressivism: Progressives are the proud heirs to a tradition of experiments in public policy that brought about significant social improvements. Its antecedents go back before the Civil War to the anti-slavery, temperance, and women's moveme...
Aug 10 2009
Mainstream macroeconomics is "hydraulic." There is something called "aggregate demand" which you adjust by pumping in fiscal and monetary expansion. I wish to reject this whole concept of macroeconomics. Instead, I want to get economists to think about unemployment in terms of the economic calculation problem. [Be...
Aug 9 2009
Mark Thoma highlights a story that I had missed--a bargain between the pharmaceutical industry and the Obama Administration on health care reform.
READER COMMENTS
Paul Zrimsek
Aug 9 2009 at 8:34pm
Poor Thoma! Just as he should be waking up refreshed from his long nap during the auto bailout, the drug companies have to go and spoil everything by inventing rent-seeking.
Joey Donuts
Aug 9 2009 at 9:01pm
Has “rent seeking” become the economist’s euphemism for Fascism?
E. Barandiaran
Aug 9 2009 at 11:35pm
Why would the drug companies trust that Obama will deliver his part of the agreement (think what has already happened with most of his promises)? Frankly, if indeed there is an agreement, there must be something else.
Granite26
Aug 10 2009 at 10:01am
I’ll never understand how this is a failure of democracy. Big Pharm has no power that dumb voters don’t give it. Fixing anything but the leaky dumb voters is a poorly applied patch.
I think people love on democracy so hard, that they are forced to think of anyone who exploits it’s failings as destroying democracy itself.
Freedom Thinker
Aug 10 2009 at 1:06pm
Interesting and written by Robert Reich, too!
Eric H
Aug 10 2009 at 5:14pm
I think this is great news. It could mean Obama’s coalition is crumbling.
From what I understand of “Hillary Care” from Christopher Hitchens’ No One Left To Lie To, coziness with big insurance providers was a factor in undermining “progressive” support for the plan.
A quote, from page 51 of that book, from Patrick Woodall of Public Citizen:
“The managed competition-style plan the Clintons have chosen virtually guarantees that the five largest health-insurance companies–Aetna, Prudential, Met Life, Cigna, and The Travelers–will run the show in the health-care system.”
I don’t think Hitchens is the keenest economic observer, but he was right to be alarmed by the ease with which the Clintons cozied up to Big Insurance. It’s strangely satisfying to hear such concessions made by the Obama. Maybe the news will disabuse progressives of their belief in his purity and infallibility.
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