Re:Illinois governor signs law capping insulin costs at $100...
by shadowgovt on Wednesday January 29, 2020 @11:26AM
(#22182284)
An inflexible cap can always be suspended via state of emergency declaration in the scenarios you're positing.
Hell, via state of emergency declaration the state can use tax money to buy the insulin.
Re:Illinois governor signs law capping insulin costs at $100...
by ceejayoz on Wednesday January 29, 2020 @11:27AM
(#22182290)
> That's completely unrelated to what I'm explaining.
Then this is a https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/if_my_aunt_had_balls,_she%27d... scenario.
If IL were capping below cost, that'd be a problem. They're not, though.
Re:Illinois governor signs law capping insulin costs at $100...
by jerf on Wednesday January 29, 2020 @11:31AM
(#22182358)
The topic is price fixing; the discussion is about the efficaciousness of price fixing.
Why cap when they ought to have the power to look at the root problems? Why fix this one particular thing in a dangerous and probably-ultimately-ineffective way when they ought to be able to address the whole issue of price-gouging medicines more systematically?
(Other than the possibility of this being a band-aid while they do that, but I wouldn't trust a politician's word on that even if they were promising it.)
Others are observing that the current prices are not currently anywhere near $100. That's completely unrelated to what I'm explaining.
I'd also point out that is a temporary fact, not a permanent fact. If, let's say, in two months the Coronavirus has mutated into a mark 2.0 and is sweeping through Illinois [1], getting insulin may become much more expensive due to all the measures needed to prevent spread of infection. If it becomes more than $100 worth of expensive, it's going to be difficult to distribute. There can be supply disruptions due to source contamination, whoknows what else. Even if today this seems like a generous cap, an inflexible cap can still be a problem tomorrow.
Of course, the last few years being what they are in online discourse, a large number of you will be inclined to read this as a defense of high prices, rather than what it actually is, which is an observation that price fixing has certain effects and that we don't know the future very reliably. Screwing around with insulin prices just because you can is evil and should be the grounds of a presumptive collusion, oligarchy, or monopoly investigation. But that doesn't mean that fixing the price is a good idea, or going to fix it. Personally I'd suggest getting a few state attorney's together and digging into why the price is so high, with an eye towards criminal charges or anti-trust action, would be much more effective. You might even find that "feels better" than mere price caps. Remove the incentives for people thinking they can get away with this sort of thing scott-free, rather than trying to treat the symptoms far down the pipeline from the root cause.
(Downvoters are invited to consider my replacement suggestion of criminal charges or significant antitrust action before deciding that I'm "defending" anything. This is a silly papering over of the problems by people who ought to have the power to do a lot more.)
[1]: A totally absurd, impossible scenario, of course. https://chicago.cbslocal.com/2020/01/24/first-case-of-corona...