Every election is, at some level, an exercise in bribing various elements of the electorate. One of the big bribes both parties are handing out this year involves cheaper prescription drugs. This plays mainly to the elderly and is an important bribe since the elderly tend to vote in large numbers and tend to vote their interests. One of those interests, if not the main one, is to be able to get drugs cheaper. The Bush contingent has a plan and a program and elements of that program in place. The Kerry contingent has a plan for everything and a program for nothing since most of the details of its plans are effectively "secret."
The electorate in need of cheaper drugs already has both a plan and a program in place to save it money. The elements of this plan are "Canada," "Mexico," and "UPS/FedEx." Bush says he opposes this plan because he does not believe it is "safe." Kerry opposes Bush and promises lower taxes all around and a National Health Plan that, it would seem, will be achieved through a replication of Christ's miracle of the loaves and fishes.
Pharmaceutical companies look at the Bush plan and worry about it. They look at the Kerry Plan and start to refurbish their offices in the Bahamas and study
how to move plants to the north side of Kwaloon Harbor in Hong Kong.
In the meantime, people who must buy drugs but can't afford them, keep on with their current plan of importing them from outside the company much to the approval of various skeevy Internet companies. And the beat goes on.
But how good an idea is this Internet importing? My "Rule of Rising Spam" says that anything that can be purchased over the internet that has rising spam rates associated with it is usually a bad idea and should be avoided. Of everything that comes as large cans of Spam to the inbox, the 3Ps (Porn, Poker, and Prescription Drugs) top the list. Therefore the Rule of Rising Spam states that these things are, by default, to be avoided.
To confirm this about prescription drugs, Dr. Bob Finnerty, a surgeon in Tacoma, and the author of The Doctor Is In, offers a detailed, sensible, and lucid explantion of the core issues of prescription drugs from above and below the border in The Doctor Is In: Drugs from Canada
His main points are:
"It is impossible to speak in such a way that you cannot be misunderstood." -- Karl Popper N.B.: Comments are moderated to combat spam and may not appear immediately. Comments that exceed the obscenity or stupidity limits will be either edited or expunged.