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Conservative Groups Fight Government Price Fixing Scheme
During a recent broadcast of a Los Angeles Dodgers game, Vin Scully, the team’s legendary play-by-play announcer of 67 years, provided more insight into socialism with a few sentences than Gwen Ifil and her news team at PBS did during a recent broadcast on the economic crisis in Venezuela.
Scully, who has seen a lot in his 88 years, spoke the truth when Milwaukee third baseman and Venezuela native Hernan Perez stepped up to the plate during a recent game. In his unique style, Scully said:
“Perez, 25 years old, originally drafted by the Tigers. Lives in Venezuela. Boy, can you imagine you’re a young kid, you’re playing in the United States, you’re from Venezuela, and every time you look at the news it’s a nightmare… Socialism failing to work, as it always does, this time in Venezuela. You talk about giving everybody something free and all of a sudden, there’s no food to eat. And who do you think is the richest person in Venezuela? The daughter of Hugo Chavez. Hello!”
Meanwhile, over at taxpayer-funded PBS, Gwen Ifil narrated a fictitious story about Venezuela’s collapse, blaming the “collapsing economy, skyrocketing crime and inflation rates, and major food shortages” for the devastation facing the country. Never once did she mention the “S” word.
We find ourselves facing a similar situation regarding Medicare Part D, a program designed to permit private companies to compete and negotiate within Medicare. This program allows patients to purchase drugs at much lower rates than would be available through a government-price mandate. Not surprisingly, President Obama, Hillary Clinton and Sen. Bernie Sanders are all pushing a scheme to undermine these free market reforms and empower the government to dictate socialist drug pricing. As Americans for Prosperity Vice President for Government Affairs Brent Gardner said:
“Medicare Part D is a rare anomaly among government programs in that costs run below initial projections. Allowing government to meddle with this program and engage in price fixing would have devastating consequences on both seniors and taxpayers. This concept was already tried and failed with Medicaid – we shouldn’t repeat the same mistake.”
Americans for Prosperity recently released a letter signed by over 25 conservative organizations protesting the efforts to price-fix negotiations:
In the final months of the Obama Administration, the White House and Congress will engage in another round of negotiations regarding government spending. The President and his allies will likely continue to support a proposal to raid the Medicare prescription drug benefit program to pay for high spending levels in other areas of government. On behalf of the millions of Americans that our organizations represent, we encourage you to oppose misguided Medicare Part D rebate proposals.
Although Medicare Part D is far from perfect, and many of the signatories opposed the program’s creation, the program has successfully used market mechanisms such as competition and choice to improve access and control costs. Through negotiations between insurers and pharmaceutical companies, seniors can purchase drugs at lower prices, often as much as 30 percent off the sticker price of brand-name drugs. As a result, Part D has cost taxpayers 45 percent less than originally estimated in the first decade following enactment, an anomaly among government programs.
The President proposed in his 2017 budget request to repeal the non-interference provision at the heart of this successful competitive market in favor of government price-setting. The budget would also require pharmaceutical companies to “rebate” up to 40 percent of their drug sales back to Medicare. This is not a “rebate” in any true sense of the word. Rather, this is an attempt to force drug makers to sell to insurance companies at a loss, as the government does with the poorly-performing Medicaid program. Government forcing companies to turn money over to the Treasury is not a rebate, it’s a tax.
Among the key signatories: The American Conservative Union, the Center for Freedom and Prosperity, American Encore, Americans for Constitutional Liberty and over a dozen more groups.
Whether it is Bernie Sanders’ naïve supporters, Hillary Clinton’s wanna-be approach, or willful ignorance from people like Gwen Ifil, we live in a world where socialism has renewed its appeal. We need more Vin Scully’s willing to let the world know the true face of socialism — and the effort to impose a government price fixing scheme for Medicare Part D is just another example of it.
The post Conservative Groups Fight Government Price Fixing Scheme appeared first on RedState.
Source: http://www.redstate.com/diary/dukefergus/2016/06/22/conservative-groups-fight-government-price-fixing-scheme/
