Litigation

Regulatory creep in action

By Ted Frank

So: the Supreme Court and Congress refuse to provide protection under tort law to pharmaceutical manufacturers who comply with federal labeling-law regulation, forcing transfers of billions of dollars from researchers to attorneys, and the Obama administration acts to roll back preemption even further (except when local government seeks to follow federal law and investigate immigration violations). And then creates a gigantic health-care intervention that suggests that new pharmaceutical inventions down the line will be subject to monopsony pricing. And is now surprised that pharmaceutical research and development spending has dropped, so proposes to create a new bureaucracy to spend $1 billion on politically attractive pharmaceutical research projects that the free market has not thought worthwhile, all while ignoring the absence of basic research supporting the spending. One can quickly see this won't end well (it's reminiscent of the $20 billion wasted by the Carter administration on "synfuels"), but you won't see the left pointing out that the Obama administration is politicizing science. Or that the problem of pharmaceutical companies being deterred from research spending has a tort-reform solution that is both much more efficient and much cheaper to taxpayers.

Full post as published by Point of Law on January 24, 2011 (boomark / email).