Dark Age Democrats

Schakowsky and Emmanel ally themselves with the Dark Agers:

CHICAGO, IL - In the week marking the two month anniversary since the Medicare drug benefit took effect, U.S. Representatives Rahm Emanuel (D-IL) and Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) held a press conference calling on Congress to re-open the law and give the Secretary of Health and Human Services the authority to directly negotiate on behalf of Medicare beneficiaries. Emanuel and Schakowsky highlighted the Center for Economic & Policy Research (CEPR) report entitled, “The Savings from an Efficient Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit.” The study found that if Medicare directly negotiated with the pharmaceutical companies, the potential savings would be enough to fully fund the drug benefit with no contribution from beneficiaries and leave a surplus of $40 billion over 7 years.

But Thomas Lifson makes the point, via RCP:

Without the ability to protect (and profit from) intellectual property, there will be no innovation. Nobody will have an incentive to do things differently from the way they have always been done. The phrase for such a world is The Dark Ages.

There are many allies for the Islamists in the war against intellectual property. Poor countries want to be able to produce new drugs without paying royalties to defray the cost of the research necessary to discover and prove safe a new drug. Typically, that runs a billion dollars or more these days for a completely new compound. The manufacturing cost may be pennies, but the retail price may be $50, if the research costs are to be paid off.

Thanks, but no thanks. I'd rather not have to rely on Jan Schakowsky's snake oil and herbal supplements.