H.L. Mencken on Education

Did EpiPen Inject Crony Capitalism into Drug Price Gouging?

There has been an uproar over the exposure of Mylan Pharmaceutical raising the cost of EpiPens over 500% since the company acquired rights for the drug in 2007. These anti-anaphalaxis injection devices spiked to a cost of $600 for a two pack, prompting an exasperated mother to exclaim that her family no longer had a college fund but were saving to pay for Epipens.

After a tremendous hue and cry from the public and calls from many in Congress to investigate EpiPen price gouging, Mylan tried to remedy the medical marketing mess.  First the big Dutch pharmaceutical  announced that low income (families of four making under $97,000) would have no out of pocket costs. When this did not quell the controversy, Mylan later announced that it would produce it's own generic which would cost half as much.

From a public policy perspective, it is worth considering if EpiPen is an example of how crony capitalism injects price gouging.

• Mylan's exclusivity was beginning to erode but the FDA blocked Teva Pharmaceutical's generic alternative by requesting more data.  In addition, Sanofi Pharmaceutical withdrew Auvi-Q because of dosing concerns.  So EpiPen had a virtual monopoly thru 2017
• Under the School Access to Emergency Epinephrine Law (2013), the federal government offers  states a financial incentive for schools to stock EpiPens.,
• Mylan's CEO Heather Bresch is the daughter of West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV), who has been conspicuously silent about the EpiPen outrage
• Mylan Pharmaceuticals has been a significant foreign corporate contributor to the Clinton Foundation and has partnered with the Clinton Foundation since 2009.

One of the consequences of Obamacare is that many heath insurance consumers are being forced into high deductible health plans, meant that consumers could not qualify for volume formulary discounts. 

More and more it seems that there is a nexus between requiring Americans under Obamacare into having high deductible insurance and pharmaceutical profits. 

The only remedies seem to be public outrage aimed at the District of Calamity to alleviate outrages or wait for a total collapse of the Obamacare insurance system.

Sam Adams on Liberty

Ambassador John Bolton: Vote for Hillary-- Not Indicted Yet

 

Obama's Leverage with Iran?

After months of claiming that the Iran Nuclear Deal was on a separate track to the negotiations with Tehran about the four American hostages, now the Obama White House takes a different tact.

The ironically named Obama White House Spokesman Josh Earnest does not deny that the $400 million in cash to Iran served as leverage to release the hostages.

It is telling that now the Obama White House is wearing weakness with the Islamic Republic of Iran as a badge of honor of keeping the "peace", getting deals done and allegedly saving American taxpayers money. 

Yet it seems that President Obama has things inverted, as hostages and cooperating to participate in farcical Farsi conceits seemed to be levers to get Mr. Obama to acquiesce to dumb demands which America will later regret

Lord Acton on Liberty

Is Mr. Trump Really Mr. Brexit?

As Republican Presidential nominee Donald Trump (R-NY) took on a third campaign manager in as many months, he assumed a new image.  On Fox and Friends, Trump anointed himself "Mr. Brexit".




A day did not pass before a primary champion of the Brexit Leave movement, UK MEP Daniel Hannan, disputed Trump's claim.





This leads casual observers to wonder if Mr. Trump is really Mr. Brexit.  For those who dig deeper, the question really is what Trump meant.  

• If Trump sought to cast himself as the "comeback kid" who defied the polls, that may be credible.  

• If he sought to associate the Trump campaign with the triumph of the working class over the elites, there might be some parallel.  

• If Trump sought to compare the Leave Movement with his form of populist anti-free trade nationalism, this is a dubious nexus.

Thomas Paine on Principles

Angus King Exemplifies the Artifice of Independent Politicos

Senator Angus King ("I"-ME) sought to be coy about with whom he would caucus when he was elected in 2012.

King's rationale supposedly was that he wanted to get the most for Maine.  So it was understandable that he would align himself with the majority Democrats after the Presidential election.  King played the same fan dance in the run up to the midterm elections, claiming that he might caucus with the GOP if they won. 

 Yet even after the GOP wave victories, King still announced that he would caucus with the Democrats.  Either King does not understand the way things work as a minority member of the Senate or his non-aligned words were of wind. 

Some non-conformists have hailed third party candidacies as it opens up choice and may stop the merging of parties.  However, Angus King's revealing rhetoric on MSNBC's "Morning Joe exemplifies that an independent is at best a subterfuge or more likely indicating lacking the courage to stand up for a label which  he or she will later embody.

Pat Caddell's Prophetic Predictions Against the Political Class

[Even though Pat Caddell's caustic philippic from CPAC 2013 was targeted at the GOP Establishment Class, the charges of mixed messaging and poor expenditures of paid media still rings true for Donald Trump in 2016]

One of the most striking speeches at CPAC 2013 were Pat Caddell’s remarks on the “Should We Shoot All the Consultants Now?” panel.  Caddell indignantly observed:

When you have the Chief of Staff of the Republican National Committee and the political director of the Romney campaign, and their two companies get $152 million at the end of the campaign for the “fantastic” get-out-the-vote program… some of this borders on RICO violations. 

Rush Limbaugh was so impacted by Caddell’s caustic comments that he spent nearly twenty minutes of airtime reading the excepts, because El Rushbo could not get his hands on any audio.  

Serendipitously, Politichicks TV Michelle Moons caught Caddell’s emphatic indictments against Mitt Romney and his reliance on self-centered political consultants on video.  Unfortunately, it was shot at an unfortunate angle and has spotty audio quality.   Still, the damning appraisal deserves to be heard by anyone interested in public policy and good governance, so listen again with earphones in necessary.

With this in mind, this animation attempts to put a better face to Caddell’s prophetic condemnation of the Cocktail Party’s Political Class.   Since Caddell often would make asides during his remarks, the audio was slightly edited to keep focused the corrosive effect of crony capitalism among the GOP establishment.




h/t: Breitbart
h/t: Politichicks