Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
But we're not here to talk about shutdown so much
today because Michael Cannon is not their tax and budget guy.
He's the director of health policy Studies at the Cato Institute,
and he joins us once again. And yesterday during my show,
there was a whole prece event going on at the
White House that I did not cover because there were
other things going on yesterday where the President and some
(00:23):
of his big shots in the health space were. They
are with I think the CEO of Pfizer talking about
some agreement that Pfeiser has made with the federal government.
And I will note just one thing before jumping into
the conversation with Michael Cannon, and that is peiserstock went
(00:43):
up a lot on yesterday's news a lot, and now
it's up a bunch more today. Right So, just this week,
so Pfiser was trading around just under twenty four dollars
for most of the week, and right now it's over
twenty seven dollars. So it's up something like I don't know,
(01:05):
eleven percent or some number like that since they announced
this thing.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
And if that were the case.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
If that's the case, then it's very hard to see
this as some kind of big win for the American taxpayer,
or the American drug buyer, or the American anything, although
I suspect that we will hear Donald Trump talking about
it as the greatest drug deal ever. All Right, Michael Cannon,
welcome back to KA. It's good to see you.
Speaker 4 (01:32):
Great to be back. How are you.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
I'm all right. Why don't we start with the high
level thing? And that is what was announced yesterday? What
do we need to know?
Speaker 3 (01:41):
So for some time, what the President has been saying
is ever since the executive order earlier this year, that
he's going to get drug prices down, not by being
a smarter negotiator through the Medicare or the Medicaid program,
which would be welcome because if we get those programs
to pay low price is it would reduce the tax
(02:02):
burden of those programs. And federal health spending is the
largest category of federal spending in the budget. So when
you say I'm the healthcare guy, that means I am
the tax and budget guy. And it's also the only
category of federal spending that is growing is a share
of GDP other than the debt, but that's just mostly
(02:23):
because of healthcare. So it would be great and actually
supported the provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act that say
that medical care can set lower bids for the prices
that for the drugs that adviuse. But that's not what
the President did the other day. What he's been saying
ever since that executive order is we are going to
(02:44):
use the full force of the federal government to bully
private companies drug companies into offering not just the United
States government but all US purchasers the lowest price that
they offer anybody. What what they're talking about there is
not the government offering a lower bid to opening bid
(03:07):
to drug companies, but the government using force, government force
to set the prices not just in government programs, but
in the private sector as well, and using the FDA
and the FTC and the Department of Justice and every
other branch of the federal government that the Trump president
(03:28):
could think of against companies that don't agree to play Paul.
This is the uggish behavior. This is the government. I
mean that Donald Trump doesn't have any authority to set
prices in the private sector, much less to use all
these government agencies in order to bully drug companies into
doing it.
Speaker 4 (03:46):
But that's what he's doing.
Speaker 3 (03:48):
And this is why people are worrying about authoritarianism because
we have an executive branch that is totally run amok.
Speaker 4 (03:56):
Congress is sitting.
Speaker 3 (03:58):
On the sidelines pretending it has nothing to do with
govern Instead of all, Congress could be cutting off funding
for all of these illegal activities that the President is
and on constitutional activities that the President is engaging in.
Speaker 4 (04:11):
They're not doing it.
Speaker 3 (04:13):
And the folks at Peiser and other drug companies are thinking, look,
you know, the President is slapping us with one hundred
percent tariff on drug imports. The President has threatened he's
going to use other branches of the federal government against
us and tie us up in court for years, if
not decades, spending millions and millions of dollars. Of course,
(04:34):
they're going to show up at a press conference with
the President to make an announcement if that's what the
president wants. And you'll notice that the President did back
off of the one hundred percent tariffs on prescription drugs.
Speaker 4 (04:44):
That's because he's using them.
Speaker 3 (04:46):
As coercive leverage over private companies to do something that
the president has.
Speaker 4 (04:49):
No authority to do.
Speaker 3 (04:50):
Okay, now, as for Pfizer's stock price, that tells us
that this might all be window dressing, that this might
all be nonsense, and and that the president is not
getting lower prices out of out of Pfizer, that the
president did that Trump did chicken out in this case,
and that all that he wanted was the press conference.
(05:12):
That would be not a I wouldn't call it a
best case scenario, but maybe the best of all of
these awful case scenarios that I could envision. And note
that that would mean that the president is also not
doing anything constructive on the prices that Medicare and Medicaid
pay for prescription drugs.
Speaker 4 (05:32):
Otherwise Pfizer's stock would not be headed upward.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
Okay, so you said a lot of stuff there. Let
me address a couple of things. So two things that
were talked about yesterday was this what they're calling Trump RX.
And by the way, I really don't like it when
the Trump administration creates these new federal programs and names
them after Trump rather than you know, something American or
something generic or something whatever. I really really despise that
(05:59):
sort of personalization of new federal programs, whether you are
for or against the federal program in the name of
a particular president. That is just way too much narcissism,
and that is not what this country is supposed to
be about. But anyway, trump our X is going to
be this thing that at first when I read about it,
I thought that trump our X was going to be
selling drugs directly to consumers. But all it seems like
(06:19):
it's actually gonna be is a website that you can
go to and if you want to try to buy
a particular drug directly from the drug manufacturer at some
kind of discount, it will link you to that drug
manufacturer's own web page where you can go do that.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
So it seems like it's really not very much at all.
Speaker 1 (06:34):
And and Michael, you will know better than I do,
but what percentage of American drug buyers would be open
to buying their drugs directly rather than being in medicare,
being in medicaid or being on health insurance where you're
going to go through some kind of pharmacy benefit manager
or something to buy drugs. So I don't even know
(06:55):
how many people are going to benefit from this, you know,
even hypothetically.
Speaker 4 (07:00):
You know how zoron On Donney got all this.
Speaker 3 (07:03):
This is the Democratic candidate for mayor in New York
got all sorts of criticism from Republicans because.
Speaker 4 (07:10):
He wanted government run grocery stores.
Speaker 3 (07:13):
They're going to compete with the private stores and make
food more affordable or something.
Speaker 4 (07:18):
They all mocked them for that.
Speaker 3 (07:19):
And yet when President Trump goes out there and says
I'm gonna create my own website that's going to compete
with good RX and Mark Cuban's website and so forth,
they all hail him.
Speaker 4 (07:32):
They hail the dear gear leader as if he's brilliant.
Speaker 3 (07:34):
But this is a totally dumb idea, because the government,
if those sorts of websites provide value, then the private
sector will provide them, or if they don't provide and
if they don't provide value, the government shouldn't subsidize them.
And if there's some policy reason why, you know, they
would provide value but the private sector can't do it
(07:58):
because there's some regulatory barrier.
Speaker 4 (08:00):
Then the government should eliminate that regulatory barrier.
Speaker 3 (08:02):
In no case should the government be offering this sort
of service, creating this sort of website itself.
Speaker 4 (08:09):
It's just nonsense. But to be clear, it is.
Speaker 3 (08:13):
Regular garden variety within normal parameters.
Speaker 4 (08:17):
Nonsense.
Speaker 3 (08:18):
And so I don't want to put this anywhere near
on a par with what the President is doing in
terms of bullying private companies by slapping them with terraces,
sticking the FTAC and DOJ on them, and pulling their
you know, peaceful productive workers off the streets and out
of factories using armed government agents.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
Okay, so you know, I'm.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
I share your libertarian sensibilities generally, although I think of
myself more as objectivist than libertarian. And my son's middle
name is Rand, so that's kind of where I'm where
I'm coming from on this.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
But I am going to push back on you a
little bit.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
So I'm not down with government telling private companies what
to do, and I am always exceptionally hesitant, and I'm
going to sort of play devil's advocate here, maybe more
aggressively than I actually feel. But still, we are in
a situation where other governments of other nations impose price caps,
(09:19):
and that definitely has an effect of where they're lowering
the prices that everybody in Canada or England or France
or wherever is going to pay for a drug, and
the pharmaceutical companies need some ROI in order to justify
the work for inventing this drug and going through the
(09:41):
approval process, and so that tends to lever up the
prices of pharmaceuticals that Americans pay. And I don't think
that's right. I don't think we should tolerate that. And
I think maybe it's a legitimate function of our government
to say to these drug companies, if you're going to
(10:05):
give preferential pricing to every other company, then we expect
you to give that same price to us. I don't
hate that as much as you do, and I'm trying,
and I'm trying to understand. So you said, if these
websites would offer value, then the drug companies would do
it anyway. That's not true, and it's especially not true
(10:27):
because many drugs, not every drug, but many drugs are
either their own monopoly, or at least the small oligopoly
that operates in a way where you would have for
many years, let's say airlines, if there's only one or
two airlines servicing a market, they wouldn't price cut, and
they didn't have to agree to it, they just wouldn't.
(10:48):
And so I think that the American drug purchaser, pharmaceutical
purchaser is getting completely screwed by the operations of the
drug companies in cahoots with foreign governments, and based on
the way you talk about it, you leave me feeling
like a libertarian would say there is no solution, and
(11:12):
I would like to know what your solution is, because
I do not buy your argument that the drug companies
themselves will offer something that offers value to consumers.
Speaker 3 (11:22):
Well, I didn't say that the drug companies would offer
that website. I said someone would. And I think you'd
agree with me more if you understood all the ways
the government is creating the very problems.
Speaker 4 (11:35):
That you're complaining about.
Speaker 3 (11:36):
And the government is the only reason that the drug
companies are able to gouge you as patients, charge so
much higher prices here than elsewhere. Let me ask you this,
If the drug companies are charging a much lower price
in Denmark or wherever, why can't you just buy a
drug from Denmark.
Speaker 4 (11:54):
It's because your government prevents you from doing that.
Speaker 3 (11:56):
Government sets up a trade barrier that says you cannot
buy drugs from foreign countries.
Speaker 4 (12:02):
It also sets.
Speaker 3 (12:06):
Regulatory barriers that say the drug has to be approved
by the FDA. It can't be if it's the European
Medicines Agency. That's not good enough. The government does other
things to drive up drug prices here in the United States.
Everything from the tax code, to the Medicare and Medicaid programs,
to various regulations including Obamacare, drive up drug prices in
(12:26):
the United States. And the only way that drug companies
end up with a monopoly is if the government issues
them a monopoly through the patent system. Now, we can
maybe have a debate about whether that's valid or not,
and we can certainly adjust the patent system even if
we agree that one should exist. But in every case,
everything that you're complaining about is a problem that the
(12:48):
government created or makes worse. And so the appropriate response
here is not for the government to beat up on
the drug companies. The appropriate response is for the government
to remove the regulatory and other steps that it is
putting in the way of more affordable medicines. Let US
residents buy drugs from other countries at lower prices. Then
the drug companies will not be able to price discriminate.
(13:10):
It's only that trade barrier that allows the drug companies
to price discriminate the way that they are.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
That's a good point.
Speaker 1 (13:17):
And let me also say I don't need this drug
so much as I used to. But so many years
ago there was a very very well known drug called
viox and it got pulled off the market after a
bunch of lawsuits. Viox was a game changer for me.
It was the only drug that kept me out of
pain at the time. And it was pulled off the
market because, well, it is true that Merk lied about
(13:38):
and hid some of the statistics about modestly increased heart
attack risk that I was absolutely willing to take. I
was willing to take that risk to keep me out
of pain. Merk created another drug to replace biox that
has a slightly better cardiovascular risk profile.
Speaker 2 (13:55):
It's called Arcoxia.
Speaker 1 (13:57):
The generic is called etora coxib, and it is proved
around the world except in the US. And I buy
mine from India and I have it mailed to me,
So I can't buy that in the US even if
I want to.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
But I do like your idea.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
Let's say there is a drug that is approved in
the US and elsewhere, we should absolutely positively to be
able to buy it wherever we want. And that is
a website that probably already exists, and many other people
would would do and kind of like, uh, like, you
can go on Trivago the way they advertise, We're going
to scour all the hotel webs all the travel agency
(14:31):
websites to find you the best price per night on
that hotel room.
Speaker 2 (14:34):
Someone would would say, I'm going to.
Speaker 1 (14:36):
Scour England, Denmark, Mexico, Canada and find the best price
on drug XYZ.
Speaker 2 (14:42):
And I do think that's a great idea.
Speaker 1 (14:44):
I'm almost out of time here, But I mean, is
there anything that happened yesterday that you think was okay?
Speaker 2 (14:52):
No?
Speaker 3 (14:54):
I mean the government's shut down. The governments shut down,
which is fine, uh huh. But and I said, with
half of my household income comes from the government, my
worse for the government. And by the way she had
her action to drug similar to biox, Beckstrog gave her
one of the rashes that comes with that particular cox
to inhibit her. But THEX I talk about biox in
(15:17):
my book because it's not only illustrative of the dynamic
you mentioned, but that case also shows why we don't
need government regulation like the FDA. It was the private
sector that detected the problems that biox created, the elevated
risk of heart attack. It was a private health plan
(15:37):
Kaiser Permanente, that provided the FDA data that the FDA
itself could not generate, and so the private sector Kaiser
Permanente was doing the FDA's.
Speaker 4 (15:45):
Job better than the FDA was.
Speaker 3 (15:47):
We don't need these regulations, we don't need these trade barriers.
They are protecting drug companies at the expense of consumer.
Speaker 1 (15:55):
And I think we've gotten to the heart of it there.
I mean, to the extent that you are very much
against Pfizer and the government did yesterday. I think really
the big takeaway from this conversation is that they are
creating this massive Rube Goldberg machine and using the federal
government to leverage private companies to do what they want
in response to a problem that the federal government themselves created.
(16:16):
I literally have fifteen seconds for you here to wrap up.
Speaker 3 (16:21):
Trump did drop his threat of terrorists against pharmaceuticals, but
we don't give him credit for fogush behavior. I'm glad
that those terrorists are not going to be in place,
but Congress should strip him of this power immediately.
Speaker 1 (16:34):
Michael Cannon as director of Health Policy Studies at the
Cato Institute. Thanks as always, Michael, appreciate it anytime all right,
But we're not here to talk about shutdown so much
today because Michael Cannon is not their tax and budget guy.
He's the director of health policy Studies at the Cato Institute,
and he joins us once again. And yesterday during my show,
there was a whole prece event going on at the
White House that I did not cover because there were
other things going on yesterday where the President and some
(00:23):
of his big shots in the health space were. They
are with I think the CEO of Pfizer talking about
some agreement that Pfeiser has made with the federal government.
And I will note just one thing before jumping into
the conversation with Michael Cannon, and that is peiserstock went
(00:43):
up a lot on yesterday's news a lot, and now
it's up a bunch more today. Right So, just this week,
so Pfiser was trading around just under twenty four dollars
for most of the week, and right now it's over
twenty seven dollars. So it's up something like I don't know,
(01:05):
eleven percent or some number like that since they announced
this thing.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
And if that were the case.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
If that's the case, then it's very hard to see
this as some kind of big win for the American taxpayer,
or the American drug buyer, or the American anything, although
I suspect that we will hear Donald Trump talking about
it as the greatest drug deal ever. All Right, Michael Cannon,
welcome back to KA. It's good to see you.
Speaker 4 (01:32):
Great to be back. How are you.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
I'm all right. Why don't we start with the high
level thing? And that is what was announced yesterday? What
do we need to know?
Speaker 3 (01:41):
So for some time, what the President has been saying
is ever since the executive order earlier this year, that
he's going to get drug prices down, not by being
a smarter negotiator through the Medicare or the Medicaid program,
which would be welcome because if we get those programs
to pay low price is it would reduce the tax
(02:02):
burden of those programs. And federal health spending is the
largest category of federal spending in the budget. So when
you say I'm the healthcare guy, that means I am
the tax and budget guy. And it's also the only
category of federal spending that is growing is a share
of GDP other than the debt, but that's just mostly
(02:23):
because of healthcare. So it would be great and actually
supported the provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act that say
that medical care can set lower bids for the prices
that for the drugs that adviuse. But that's not what
the President did the other day. What he's been saying
ever since that executive order is we are going to
(02:44):
use the full force of the federal government to bully
private companies drug companies into offering not just the United
States government but all US purchasers the lowest price that
they offer anybody. What what they're talking about there is
not the government offering a lower bid to opening bid
(03:07):
to drug companies, but the government using force, government force
to set the prices not just in government programs, but
in the private sector as well, and using the FDA
and the FTC and the Department of Justice and every
other branch of the federal government that the Trump president
(03:28):
could think of against companies that don't agree to play Paul.
This is the uggish behavior. This is the government. I
mean that Donald Trump doesn't have any authority to set
prices in the private sector, much less to use all
these government agencies in order to bully drug companies into
doing it.
Speaker 4 (03:46):
But that's what he's doing.
Speaker 3 (03:48):
And this is why people are worrying about authoritarianism because
we have an executive branch that is totally run amok.
Speaker 4 (03:56):
Congress is sitting.
Speaker 3 (03:58):
On the sidelines pretending it has nothing to do with
govern Instead of all, Congress could be cutting off funding
for all of these illegal activities that the President is
and on constitutional activities that the President is engaging in.
Speaker 4 (04:11):
They're not doing it.
Speaker 3 (04:13):
And the folks at Peiser and other drug companies are thinking, look,
you know, the President is slapping us with one hundred
percent tariff on drug imports. The President has threatened he's
going to use other branches of the federal government against
us and tie us up in court for years, if
not decades, spending millions and millions of dollars. Of course,
(04:34):
they're going to show up at a press conference with
the President to make an announcement if that's what the
president wants. And you'll notice that the President did back
off of the one hundred percent tariffs on prescription drugs.
Speaker 4 (04:44):
That's because he's using them.
Speaker 3 (04:46):
As coercive leverage over private companies to do something that
the president has.
Speaker 4 (04:49):
No authority to do.
Speaker 3 (04:50):
Okay, now, as for Pfizer's stock price, that tells us
that this might all be window dressing, that this might
all be nonsense, and and that the president is not
getting lower prices out of out of Pfizer, that the
president did that Trump did chicken out in this case,
and that all that he wanted was the press conference.
(05:12):
That would be not a I wouldn't call it a
best case scenario, but maybe the best of all of
these awful case scenarios that I could envision. And note
that that would mean that the president is also not
doing anything constructive on the prices that Medicare and Medicaid
pay for prescription drugs.
Speaker 4 (05:32):
Otherwise Pfizer's stock would not be headed upward.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
Okay, so you said a lot of stuff there. Let
me address a couple of things. So two things that
were talked about yesterday was this what they're calling Trump RX.
And by the way, I really don't like it when
the Trump administration creates these new federal programs and names
them after Trump rather than you know, something American or
something generic or something whatever. I really really despise that
(05:59):
sort of personalization of new federal programs, whether you are
for or against the federal program in the name of
a particular president. That is just way too much narcissism,
and that is not what this country is supposed to
be about. But anyway, trump our X is going to
be this thing that at first when I read about it,
I thought that trump our X was going to be
selling drugs directly to consumers. But all it seems like
(06:19):
it's actually gonna be is a website that you can
go to and if you want to try to buy
a particular drug directly from the drug manufacturer at some
kind of discount, it will link you to that drug
manufacturer's own web page where you can go do that.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
So it seems like it's really not very much at all.
Speaker 1 (06:34):
And and Michael, you will know better than I do,
but what percentage of American drug buyers would be open
to buying their drugs directly rather than being in medicare,
being in medicaid or being on health insurance where you're
going to go through some kind of pharmacy benefit manager
or something to buy drugs. So I don't even know
(06:55):
how many people are going to benefit from this, you know,
even hypothetically.
Speaker 4 (07:00):
You know how zoron On Donney got all this.
Speaker 3 (07:03):
This is the Democratic candidate for mayor in New York
got all sorts of criticism from Republicans because.
Speaker 4 (07:10):
He wanted government run grocery stores.
Speaker 3 (07:13):
They're going to compete with the private stores and make
food more affordable or something.
Speaker 4 (07:18):
They all mocked them for that.
Speaker 3 (07:19):
And yet when President Trump goes out there and says
I'm gonna create my own website that's going to compete
with good RX and Mark Cuban's website and so forth,
they all hail him.
Speaker 4 (07:32):
They hail the dear gear leader as if he's brilliant.
Speaker 3 (07:34):
But this is a totally dumb idea, because the government,
if those sorts of websites provide value, then the private
sector will provide them, or if they don't provide and
if they don't provide value, the government shouldn't subsidize them.
And if there's some policy reason why, you know, they
would provide value but the private sector can't do it
(07:58):
because there's some regulatory barrier.
Speaker 4 (08:00):
Then the government should eliminate that regulatory barrier.
Speaker 3 (08:02):
In no case should the government be offering this sort
of service, creating this sort of website itself.
Speaker 4 (08:09):
It's just nonsense. But to be clear, it is.
Speaker 3 (08:13):
Regular garden variety within normal parameters.
Speaker 4 (08:17):
Nonsense.
Speaker 3 (08:18):
And so I don't want to put this anywhere near
on a par with what the President is doing in
terms of bullying private companies by slapping them with terraces,
sticking the FTAC and DOJ on them, and pulling their
you know, peaceful productive workers off the streets and out
of factories using armed government agents.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
Okay, so you know, I'm.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
I share your libertarian sensibilities generally, although I think of
myself more as objectivist than libertarian. And my son's middle
name is Rand, so that's kind of where I'm where
I'm coming from on this.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
But I am going to push back on you a
little bit.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
So I'm not down with government telling private companies what
to do, and I am always exceptionally hesitant, and I'm
going to sort of play devil's advocate here, maybe more
aggressively than I actually feel. But still, we are in
a situation where other governments of other nations impose price caps,
(09:19):
and that definitely has an effect of where they're lowering
the prices that everybody in Canada or England or France
or wherever is going to pay for a drug, and
the pharmaceutical companies need some ROI in order to justify
the work for inventing this drug and going through the
(09:41):
approval process, and so that tends to lever up the
prices of pharmaceuticals that Americans pay. And I don't think
that's right. I don't think we should tolerate that. And
I think maybe it's a legitimate function of our government
to say to these drug companies, if you're going to
(10:05):
give preferential pricing to every other company, then we expect
you to give that same price to us. I don't
hate that as much as you do, and I'm trying,
and I'm trying to understand. So you said, if these
websites would offer value, then the drug companies would do
it anyway. That's not true, and it's especially not true
(10:27):
because many drugs, not every drug, but many drugs are
either their own monopoly, or at least the small oligopoly
that operates in a way where you would have for
many years, let's say airlines, if there's only one or
two airlines servicing a market, they wouldn't price cut, and
they didn't have to agree to it, they just wouldn't.
(10:48):
And so I think that the American drug purchaser, pharmaceutical
purchaser is getting completely screwed by the operations of the
drug companies in cahoots with foreign governments, and based on
the way you talk about it, you leave me feeling
like a libertarian would say there is no solution, and
(11:12):
I would like to know what your solution is, because
I do not buy your argument that the drug companies
themselves will offer something that offers value to consumers.
Speaker 3 (11:22):
Well, I didn't say that the drug companies would offer
that website. I said someone would. And I think you'd
agree with me more if you understood all the ways
the government is creating the very problems.
Speaker 4 (11:35):
That you're complaining about.
Speaker 3 (11:36):
And the government is the only reason that the drug
companies are able to gouge you as patients, charge so
much higher prices here than elsewhere. Let me ask you this,
If the drug companies are charging a much lower price
in Denmark or wherever, why can't you just buy a
drug from Denmark.
Speaker 4 (11:54):
It's because your government prevents you from doing that.
Speaker 3 (11:56):
Government sets up a trade barrier that says you cannot
buy drugs from foreign countries.
Speaker 4 (12:02):
It also sets.
Speaker 3 (12:06):
Regulatory barriers that say the drug has to be approved
by the FDA. It can't be if it's the European
Medicines Agency. That's not good enough. The government does other
things to drive up drug prices here in the United States.
Everything from the tax code, to the Medicare and Medicaid programs,
to various regulations including Obamacare, drive up drug prices in
(12:26):
the United States. And the only way that drug companies
end up with a monopoly is if the government issues
them a monopoly through the patent system. Now, we can
maybe have a debate about whether that's valid or not,
and we can certainly adjust the patent system even if
we agree that one should exist. But in every case,
everything that you're complaining about is a problem that the
(12:48):
government created or makes worse. And so the appropriate response
here is not for the government to beat up on
the drug companies. The appropriate response is for the government
to remove the regulatory and other steps that it is
putting in the way of more affordable medicines. Let US
residents buy drugs from other countries at lower prices. Then
the drug companies will not be able to price discriminate.
(13:10):
It's only that trade barrier that allows the drug companies
to price discriminate the way that they are.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
That's a good point.
Speaker 1 (13:17):
And let me also say I don't need this drug
so much as I used to. But so many years
ago there was a very very well known drug called
viox and it got pulled off the market after a
bunch of lawsuits. Viox was a game changer for me.
It was the only drug that kept me out of
pain at the time. And it was pulled off the
market because, well, it is true that Merk lied about
(13:38):
and hid some of the statistics about modestly increased heart
attack risk that I was absolutely willing to take. I
was willing to take that risk to keep me out
of pain. Merk created another drug to replace biox that
has a slightly better cardiovascular risk profile.
Speaker 2 (13:55):
It's called Arcoxia.
Speaker 1 (13:57):
The generic is called etora coxib, and it is proved
around the world except in the US. And I buy
mine from India and I have it mailed to me,
So I can't buy that in the US even if
I want to.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
But I do like your idea.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
Let's say there is a drug that is approved in
the US and elsewhere, we should absolutely positively to be
able to buy it wherever we want. And that is
a website that probably already exists, and many other people
would would do and kind of like, uh, like, you
can go on Trivago the way they advertise, We're going
to scour all the hotel webs all the travel agency
(14:31):
websites to find you the best price per night on
that hotel room.
Speaker 2 (14:34):
Someone would would say, I'm going to.
Speaker 1 (14:36):
Scour England, Denmark, Mexico, Canada and find the best price
on drug XYZ.
Speaker 2 (14:42):
And I do think that's a great idea.
Speaker 1 (14:44):
I'm almost out of time here, But I mean, is
there anything that happened yesterday that you think was okay?
Speaker 2 (14:52):
No?
Speaker 3 (14:54):
I mean the government's shut down. The governments shut down,
which is fine, uh huh. But and I said, with
half of my household income comes from the government, my
worse for the government. And by the way she had
her action to drug similar to biox, Beckstrog gave her
one of the rashes that comes with that particular cox
to inhibit her. But THEX I talk about biox in
(15:17):
my book because it's not only illustrative of the dynamic
you mentioned, but that case also shows why we don't
need government regulation like the FDA. It was the private
sector that detected the problems that biox created, the elevated
risk of heart attack. It was a private health plan
(15:37):
Kaiser Permanente, that provided the FDA data that the FDA
itself could not generate, and so the private sector Kaiser
Permanente was doing the FDA's.
Speaker 4 (15:45):
Job better than the FDA was.
Speaker 3 (15:47):
We don't need these regulations, we don't need these trade barriers.
They are protecting drug companies at the expense of consumer.
Speaker 1 (15:55):
And I think we've gotten to the heart of it there.
I mean, to the extent that you are very much
against Pfizer and the government did yesterday. I think really
the big takeaway from this conversation is that they are
creating this massive Rube Goldberg machine and using the federal
government to leverage private companies to do what they want
in response to a problem that the federal government themselves created.
(16:16):
I literally have fifteen seconds for you here to wrap up.
Speaker 3 (16:21):
Trump did drop his threat of terrorists against pharmaceuticals, but
we don't give him credit for fogush behavior. I'm glad
that those terrorists are not going to be in place,
but Congress should strip him of this power immediately.
Speaker 1 (16:34):
Michael Cannon as director of Health Policy Studies at the
Cato Institute. Thanks as always, Michael, appreciate it anytime all right,
The Ross Kaminsky Show News
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