The Competitive Enterprise Institute Daily Update

Issues in the News

1. CONGRESS

The House of Representative approves legislation requiring the government to negotiate lower drug prices for Medicare patients.

CEI Expert Available to Comment: President Fred L. Smith, Jr. on the long-term threat from the legislation:

“There is little doubt that coercive government power could lower drug prices, creating some short-term accounting savings. The question is whether those ‘savings’ today might not worsen health care tomorrow. Driving down drug costs might push pharmaceutical sector revenues below the rates of return needed to justify continued investment. And reducing investments in a world where medical progress is both important and costly means a slower rate of medical progress. Are lower prices of this sort really a good thing?”

2. HEALTH

A new outbreak of avian flu spreads in Asia.

“Vaccination to prevent viral and bacterial diseases is modern medicine’s most cost-effective intervention. Vaccines to prevent the expected avian flu pandemic could save the lives of millions—if vaccine R&D were not in such a sorry state, as the result of an unfortunate confluence of biology and public policy.”

3. REGULATION

Anti-tobacco activists attempt to ban smoking in apartment buildings and condominiums.

CEI Expert Available to Comment: Policy Analyst Brooke Oberwetter on Washington, DC’s recent smoking ban:

“The interest groups that pushed for the ban are hailing the ban as a victory for non-smokers’ rights. Making this an issue of rights—a right to clean air versus a right to smoke—is a ploy designed to illicit sympathy for non-smokers, but it’s a gross mischaracterization of what smoking bans are all about. To a certain extent, it’s a matter of personal liberty; certainly in places where smoking is banned outdoors–everywhere from sidewalks to beaches to public parks, personal liberty is at stake. But in the case of DC, the bigger threat behind the ban is the threat to the economic liberty of business owners.”