In “How government created the vaccine crisis”, Rich Lowry explains the current Flu vaccine problem in the U.S.
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. Once a company gets out of the business, it is difficult to get back in because it loses its manufacturing capacity and its expertise.
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. “It’s a snowball effect of more and more regulation over the past decade, driving more and more vaccine makers out of business,” says Grace-Marie Turner, president of the free-market-oriented Galen Institute.
PTBC was founded by Mr. Johannesen in 2000.
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