Legislating Lists

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) is busy with lists this week:

He wants a national do-not-spam list. (Virtually nobody else thinks it will work.)

He wants a national website listing the price of every drug at every pharmacy.

He does not want the wireless industry to create a directory listing all cell phone numbers.

Comments

[Paul Z]

Remember it was Schumer who once said "assault weapons" should be banned because "no reasonable person should ever want to own one." This kind of thinking gets him to the top spot on any list of creepy federal government control freaks; even a notch above Ashcroft.

[garym]

Schumer's defense of torture shouldn't be surprising. He thought that raids based on ineptly formulated warrants, sleep deprivation as a siege technique, and withholding of firefighters when people were burning were perfectly reasonable at Waco.

[Mark Fox]

In order for consumers to comparison-shop for drugs, they would have to know more details about the products, and I imagine many wouldn't bother to learn. By keeping information privy to only pharmacists, doctors, and accountants, we help protect people from making their own mistakes.

Eg: If one notices that a 50mg and 100mg tablet cost the same, why not split the big pill? Say the tablets have an enteric coating, the splitting will compromise the medication. Try explaining this to Granny, or, imagine the suits against everyone when Granny drops dead after taking the "prescribed" 50mg dose (in split-tablet form).

[Rick Barton]

Chuck Schumer should mind his own business.

[Brock]

While he is at it, I just ran out of smokes.

[Brock]

While he is at it, I just ran out of smokes.

[dead_elvis]

People bitch about the cost of health insurance and want to encumber us with a nationalized health insurance in part because they are shielded from the actual cost of medicine and health care. When I go to a pharmacy I pay my copay and I have no real reason to inquire about the real cost, and it's the same with office visits and hospital services. If people were not shielded from the real cost, they would likely realize that they are getting a reasonable deal from their insurance, if they have it. In this regard, perhaps we can infer that Published Prices=Less Pressure for Nationalized Health Care.

[KentInDC]

dead elvis,
Sorry to hear of your demise. If there is anyone I trust to know about prescription meds, it is you. Didn't you move to Kalamazoo to be near Upjohn? Maybe you should contact the other Senator from NY and tell her to oppose Schumer's proposal on listing drug prices lest it detract from her efforts to institute nationalized health care.

[KentInDC]

dead elvis,
If there is an expert on prescription drugs on H&R, it is you. Sorry to hear of your demise. Perhaps you should contact the junior Senator from NY so that she can head off this unintentional effort to thwart nationalized health care.

[KentInDC]

Oops. Didn't realize the first post worked.

[jc]

People bitch about the cost of health insurance and want to encumber us with a nationalized health insurance mostly because they want to keep their own costs down. It's not about getting a reasonable deal, it's that they need health care right now and those healthy fuckers are getting off scot-free (or at least co-pay free).

Sick people look at illness as a form of coercion and they want healthy people to be coerced too. Insurance, nationalized or otherwise, isn't about "saving for a rainy day", it's about getting someone else to help out with the payments. A ponzi scheme.

[Lil' Jon]

PJ said it best:
"If you think health care is expensive now, just wait 'til it's free."

[Larry A]

This must be the first week he doesn't want a list of gun owners and what they own.

[KentInDC]

Why stop with listing drug prices. Old folks need food and clothing, too. Why shouldn't every store selling food and clothing be required to list prices on all such items? I've noticed significant differences in prices of food between Giant and 7/11.

[garym]

A national "do-not-spam" list would be one-stop shoppping for spammers.

[dhex]

i have to wonder if schumer spends his evenings getting drunk and throwing darts at a board covered in "hot poll topics."

[s.m. koppelman]

The do-not-spam thing is ridiculous beyond comment.

But putting libertarian dogma aside for a minute, what would be bad about publishing drug prices, atn least from chains? Pharmacies don't exactly slap price labels on drugs, and they sure don't let you wander around behind the counter and look around. If you're lucky enough to have good insurance, the only dollar figure you generally hear is your fixed copay, and unless you ask very precisely you won't find out whether you're getting a brand-name drug or a generic, or what the price difference is between the two.

Retail prescription drug pricing is more opaque than bakery pricing. Would you shop in a supermarket that posted no prices for anything?

I know libertarian dogma states that if pharmacies are going to be pressured into publishing prices the most legitimate source of pressure should be that of consumers taking their business elsewhere. Yeah, yeah. So how do consumers exert pressure, exactly? By writing letters to the Walgreens VP of retail operations? By taking their business to.. oh, wait.. none of the pharmacy chains publish their prices. By boycotting pharmacies altogether and threatening to drop dead?

Next,as with meat, we'll hear about how pricing is a trade secret, except that it isn't because the chains all have people whose job consists of gathering prices from the competition. Then the AEI will publish a report estimating a $400 billion cost for publishing information that even most mom-and-pop pharmacies already have impeccably organized in an internet-connected computer, and which the chains and the independent-pharmacy coops already publish on the private B2B systems they use to process insurance billing. Then for good measure Tech Central Station will run a piece predicting that the cost of publishing this readily-available, already-computerized information will destroy the entire retail pharmacy sector.

I'd be happy to see this transparency brought along by private initiative, but right now the insurance companies, who have the most leverage with pharmacies, don't seem interested enough to mandate it themselves. They're happy enough with their prtivate access to pricing information and to heck with the consumer.

[DaveInBigD]

The last bit, about the wireless industry, is not inappropriate. He's not banning it, just setting two parameters on the companies' behavior.

1- He wants them to make the list opt-in, so no one is automatically listed without their knowledge.

2- He wants to prevent them from charging a fee not to opt-in.

Given that most wireless companies use contracts with expensive early-termination penalties to keep customers locked in (contracts enforced by the government through US courts), it's not inappropriate to require them not to change the rules on people.

I got a cell-phone with the explicit understanding that I would have an unlisted number. I also got in with a two-year contract. If VerSprintUlar changes the rules and I start getting telemarketing calls on my mobile, that's gonna suck, and I won't have much recourse, other than to blow $200 in early termination fees.

The other two plans are clearly foolish. A Do-Not-Spam list is a free distribution list for Russian and Chinese spammers, and lots of poor Comcast users whose PCs were hijacked as spambots. And the drug price thing - that's laughable, man.

[Tim]

If you would like to know the cost of your drug call the drug store and ask them. It's that simple. Simply state that you don't have insurance and that you are looking for the price of a particular drug. There is just as much difference in price from store to store as there is on any other product.

I don't think forcing Walgreens to list their prices is really the solution to anything other than to appear that you are "doing something" in Washington.

[KentInDC]

s.m. koppelman,
Anyone who can access the proposed website can also buy their meds online. The online pharmacies - including Walgreen's - DO list prices.

Insurance companies probably don't pressure pharmacies to publish prices because they realize that policyholders with prescription drug coverage have little incentive to economize.

[Mark Denovich]

Years ago I worked for a company that wrote software to adjust hospital pricing. The goal was to jack up everything that insurance (particularly medicare) would pay, and lower the price of anything charged to the patient. The dead/poor never pay. (Hospitals write-off more than 50% of patient owed bills.)

The upshot was that the hospital dramatically lowered their prices across the board, but saw significant increases in revenue, because Uncle Sam pays his bills.

I think pharmacies should start taking similar approaches (if they don't already.) They could advertise the fact that they save _YOU_ money. Not sure how this helps the true cost of medicine at all, but I find all the pricing shenanigans facinating.

[Liberty Lover]

Sorry to have burdened the rest of you with such an idiot.

But I have a feeling I'm not alone in that sentiment about which politicians represent us from our own area.

[Douglas Fletcher]

Maybe he could make up a list of people who shouldn't be Senators. I can think of one or two from New York, just to get started.

[JD]

Schumer's been talking about torture lately, too:

Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), who has taken a tough line against terrorism suspects, alluded to the "high dudgeon" of his Democratic colleagues [regarding the Ashcroft torture memo], saying he wanted to "interject a note of balance here.

"We ought to be reasonable about this," he told the crowded committee room. "I think there are very few people in this room or in America who would say that torture should never, ever be used, particularly if thousands of lives are at stake."

In other words, Schumer thinks we should be "reasonable" and torture some people. A charming guy all around. (Given what he thinks of "assault weapons", I wonder if he thinks it would be acceptable to torture someone to make him give up the location of a cache of AW?)

[kevrob]

I'm sure that, in the interest of returning power to the consumer, s.m. koppelman will join me in reforming our tax code, so that $1,000 paid by my employer for health insurance on my behalf has the identical tax treatment, for the company and for me, as a grand paid to me in cash, with which I can buy my own damn insurance. Then, when I, and not my insurer, am the customer, I'll have some clout in the market.

My plan to neutralize Schumer: dispatch a fleet of TV news trucks, complete with microwave antennae rigs for beaming live feeds back to the station. Place them strategically between Chucky's lodgings and the entrance to the Capitol. As he leaves home for the Hill, he will approach the first truck, compelled to bless the nation with his visage. When the stand-up concludes, the second truck is spotted,
and the Senator will make a bee-line for it. Leapfrog the trucks all along his route. Like Xeno's arrow, he'll never reach the Senate floor to cast his votes.

I'd try this on "Live Shot" Kerry, but those Secret Service boys are pretty sharp.

If this doesn't work, I've got the Mosquito Magnet people working on something.

Kevin
NY'er in exile

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