Flu vaccine info - John Kerry and Hillary Clinton blame Bush for the shortage of flu vaccines. Others say the shortage is due to regulations implemented by Hillary and Bill Clinton in the 90s. No profit, no point in producing a vaccine. Lawsuits against vaccine producers are a problem. Whatever, it apparently makes for a good news story.
1. - "More dumb people. Hundreds and thousands are lining up for flu shots like it was the cure for the plague or something. It's only the flu, darnit. Andif you get the flu, you'll be sick and if you're smart you'll stay home and get over it and maybe miss work. Sure, nobody wants that, and I do understand that some people run a risk of actually dying if they get that sick. But before you start thinking I lack compassion, listen to the facts, please."
"The fact is that you are witnessing an hysteria. Everybody was okay until you told them they couldn't have a flu shot. Many of these people refused the shots in years past, but once you tell them they cannot have one, they snap. Government officials say that tens of thousands of doses of flu vaccine are right now on the way to U.S. doctors."
2. - "Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton accused the Bush administration on Monday of being "asleep at the switch" and mishandling the flu vaccine shortage, which she said was part of an overall breakdown in the country's health care system."
"Clinton was joined by New York Rep. Jerrold Nadler, a Democrat, who condemned the Bush administration for its "lack of planning and foresight." To prevent similar shortages, Nadler said, the government should contract several medical companies to produce large amounts of vaccine doses and buy them back if it turns out the public doesn't need them all."
3. - "Americans have been shocked to learn a flu-vaccine shortage will keep many of them from getting their flu shots this year. They shouldn't be. What they are experiencing is the effect of the most basic law of economics. Guess what? When it ceases to be profitable to make a vaccine (or a prescription drug, or anything else), companies stop making it."
"Litigation, regulation and government pricing have hammered vaccine makers during the past two decades, chasing them out of business. Democrats "have a plan" -- as John Kerry would put it -- in response to the flu-vaccine debacle, which is to bring the same model of failure to the prescription-drug market and make it just as unprofitable. Then there will no longer be any of those "greedy" pharmaceutical companies. Problem solved!"
"In the 1980s, many vaccine makers were driven out of business by litigation costs. Congress eventually passed legislation protecting vaccine makers from out-of-control lawsuits. But the damage had been done."
"Another blow came from Hillary Clinton. She championed getting the government into the pediatric vaccine business in a big way in the 1990s. It now buys 60 percent of pediatric vaccines, dictating cut-rate prices that have dried up vaccine-manufacturing capacity. More regulation inevitably accompanied the government purchases."
4. - "John Kerry is putting out the word that it's the Bush administration that's responsible for the current shortage in the flu vaccines. In point of fact, it was the liberals' ideas of price controls and runaway liability suits that are responsible."
"In the Clinton administration, the idea was proposed for the government to buy huge quantities of flu vaccines in bulk and distribute them country-wide each Fall-- essentially a good idea (in part) that would reduce their cost when bought in bulk and insure an adequate supply. Unfortunately, they ALSO instituted arbitrary and artifical price controls on how much "the government" would pay for those vaccines and did absolutely nothing about the trial lawyers' penchant for filing suit against any company whose vaccine resulted in injury--however minor--to anyone receiving the vaccines--even those with an previously- undiscovered allergy to such medicines."
"The end result was that American drug companies decided that they would opt out of a system that forced them to take a loss and which never considered the cost of production in setting prices or the cost of litigation whenever a (real or imagined) bad outcome resulted from the administration of the vaccines. As a consequence, the only company even MAKING the vaccines today willing to sell them in bulk to the American government is based in Great Britain...sort of "forced outsourcing," as it were."
"Unless and until we get the regulatory and taxation burden on our own drug companies reduced (and ALL companies, for that matter), we will continue to see "outsourcing" of other vital industries--especially the expense that is highest for any company...labor. Like it or not, it's the profit motive that moves the entire world and makes us productive. When arbitrary and artificial restraints on profits are imposed by any government, productivity suffers and any competent businessman or woman will do whatever is necessary to keep his/her business viable--even if it means moving "off- shore."
posted by jr to health at 3:46 P.M. EST
(2 Comments)
Comments ...
"State and federal prison officials are giving flu shots to inmates. That's not sitting well with some folks who are being turned away from flu shot clinics."
posted by jr at 11:02 A.M. EST on Fri Oct 22, 2004 #
"Democratic representative, Marcy Katpur, says she got hers at an annual physical before the shortage was discovered."
Doesn't take much to make the news anymore. Unbelievable. Now we're getting continuous coverage about who has received flu shots.
posted by jr at 11:08 A.M. EST on Fri Oct 22, 2004 #
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