The economics profession has produced endless studies estimating the losses from 10 percent tariffs on shoes and 15 percent tariffs on shirts. They have worked hard to ensure that all right thinking people believe that such barriers to trade are crimes against humanity.
For some reason economists don't show the same zeal in documenting the costs associated with patent protection for prescription drugs. This patent protection typically raises the price of drugs by several hundred percent above the competitive market price, often the price increases are several thousand percent above the free market price.
As economsts know, the monopoly profits created by this sort of government intervention also provide enormous incentives for corruption. For example, they provide incentives for drug companies to give kickbacks to doctors for prescribing their drugs in cases in which they may not be helpful or may even be harmful.
The NYT reports on one such case, in which doctors who prescribe antipsychotics for off-label uses on children were paid substantial fees for giving lectures to other doctors. If would have been helpful if the article had gotten an economist to explain that such behavior is a predictable result of government granted patent monopolies.
A second Trump administration will cement a right-wing majority on the Supreme Court for a generation, and put our collective future in the hands of someone who will be virtually unchecked by our institutions. The country has shifted rightward, and the reverberations will ensue for potentially the next few decades. In this climate, a robust independent media ecosystem will be more important than ever. We're committed to bringing you the latest news on how Trump's agenda will actually affect the American people, shining a light on the stories corporate media overlooks and keeping the public informed about how power really works in this country.
Quality journalism is expensive to produce, and we don't have corporate backers to rely on to fund what we do. Everything we do is thanks to our incredible community of readers, who chip in a few dollars at a time to make our work possible. Any amount you give today will help us continue reporting on what matters to our democracy.
