FDA cracks down on drugmakers, drugmakers crank up the prices

In an age of skyrocketing medical costs, it is in the Federal government's best interest to ensure our medicines are as safe and precisely targeted as possible. Enter the FDA, charged with regulating and monitoring drug safety. Unfortunately, their recent efforts to lock down drugs has resulted in 50x increases in drug prices for patients who can ill afford the cost, by creating pseudo-monopolies. Thus, increasing medical costs for everyone, including the Federal government.

Beware the well-intentioned bureaucrat!

Until January, colchicine was sold by many companies and cost as little as 10 cents a pill. Now it's available only under the trade name Colcrys, sold by a Philadelphia company called URL Pharma—for five dollars per pill.* The colchicine story, and a few others like it, have provoked ire among some patients and doctors about an otherwise praiseworthy effort by the FDA to get rid of old, untested, potentially harmful drugs.

Take the case of 17 alpha-hydroxyprogesterone caproate (17OHP), a synthetic hormone designed to prevent preterm births in pregnant women...The drug's retail price jumped from $15 to $1,440 per treatment, a shock to obstetricians and their patients, as well as to those who write checks at insurance companies and Medicaid. The tens of thousands of women who receive the treatment each year typically require 20 injections during the course of their pregnancies.

To be fair, though, it appears that the FDA is not entirely deaf to these complaints, and is taking some action.

Feds again stop Oil Spill efforts

The story of the Katrina debacle was a story of the Federal government falling over itself and failing to deliver. The story of the Gulf Oil Spill debacle is a story instead of the Federal government impeding local action. Over and over, local individuals, companies, and agencies try to stem the damage from the disaster. And over and over, a random Federal bureaucrat steps in to stop it for his/her own petty reasons.

The newest example is over sand dredging which the Fish and Wildlife Department has stopped for fear of the location of dredging. While I realize in isolation they are just doing their job, this shortsightedness is becoming endemic. It is time for the President - or some other high-ranking official - to step in and personally take responsibility for these snafus. We are past the point of "figuring out what is going on" and have run out of excuses.

Voters take note. This is one that can not be laid at the feet of George W. Bush. Vote accordingly in the mid-term elections. The Democratic Party deserves to lose their majority. The president has proven he needs someone to hold him accountable.

If you wonder why some fear Universal Government Care...

...then it is time to read this report from Britain, where some experts are claiming patients who are not dying are being caused to die by an uncaring bureaucracy.

In a letter to The Daily Telegraph, a group of experts who care for the terminally ill claim that some patients are being wrongly judged as close to death.
Under NHS guidance introduced across England to help doctors and medical staff deal with dying patients, they can then have fluid and drugs withdrawn and many are put on continuous sedation until they pass away...The warning comes just a week after a report by the Patients Association estimated that up to one million patients had received poor or cruel care on the NHS.
The scheme, called the Liverpool Care Pathway (LCP), was designed to reduce patient suffering in their final hours...It has been gradually adopted nationwide and more than 300 hospitals, 130 hospices and 560 care homes in England currently use the system.

It is important for Universal Health Care proponents to understand that opponents aren't (generally) saying that a government-run system can't be good. But opponents rightly fear that an actual government-run system would deteriorate the way Great Britain's has. If so, then the cure might be worse than the disease, if you'll excuse the pun.