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I'm not saying there's no regulatory capture, I am saying that an angry citizen calling their congressman is a very different kind of problem then cozy relation
by entee 10y ago
I'm not saying there's no regulatory capture, I am saying that an angry citizen calling their congressman is a very different kind of problem then cozy relations between industries and the agencies that regulate them. Both exist, but they have quite different political and policy ramifications, and I would suggest that citizens calling congressman is more fraught than agency/lobbying reform (already difficult in its own right).
You can already see people calling the FDA saying, "let this drug through, it helped me, though it failed its clinical trial." Right now, the FDA has some insulation from political meddling, but that's not a guarantee, and I think that problem gets 10x worse if the government gets involved in direct negotiations and price setting.
For example what happens when if/when Medicare says, "we're not paying more for name brand than generic."? You'll get tons of people calling their congressman saying, "I need NameBrandSuperDrug because GenericSuperDrug doesn't work." Despite the science being quite clear that the generic is virtually always fine.
- joe_the_user 10y ago"I'm not saying there's no regulatory capture, I am saying that an angry citizen calling their congressman is a very different kind of problem then cozy relations between industries and the agencies that regulate them." - What I would say has roughly similar results is a cozy relationship between regulated industry and regulator versus a cozy relationship between regulated industry and congressmen they finance - and even patient groups they finance, advertising strategies they follow, etc.,etc. I mean "Cui bono" comes up strongly here. Your argument seems like an elaborate summary of the tree of the forest of health care corruption-in-a-broad-sense. I'm sure you can find a few more "trees" I didn't know about in this discussion but it seems like your approach still follows the path of ignoring this metaphorical forest for its trees.
- entee 10y agoNot sure how I'm ignoring the forest, I'm just saying you may need a different chainsaw depending on the trees ;)