This is how it goes. The government bungles its distribution scheme for flu vaccines, causing an unanticipated supply shock, and suppliers face an upward pressure on prices. If the high price is charged, then your anal neighbor, who regularly receives flu shots even though he is in a low-risk category for catching the flu, decides to forego the shot this year, leaving a shot for someone who needs it more. The high price also signals to suppliers to get into the vaccine or vaccine substitute business, which they most certainly would in a less regulated environment.
But the government then threatens to throw suppliers in jail for responding to the upward price pressure, so they don’t. People like your anal neighbor (who also showers twice a day) still get them. The government, assuming the task that otherwise would have been performed by the price system, tries to allocate flu doses to parties that value them most, on the margin, with the same success that the Soviets enjoyed. Meanwhile, it bemoans the evil of gouging, a few weeks before election day.
It’s an old story, and one that is guaranteed to persist, until a free market in medicine is demanded.
{ 12 comments }
I have not checked this out yet, so please do so yourself. Just heard it on the Web yesterday.
If you are not in a high-risk group, you could consider the “flumist” nasal spray vaccine. It is not (reportedly) suitable for the high-risk group, so there’s none of the guilt attached to taking a shot that could have gone to a sick person.
Unfortunately, the nasal vaccine is more expensive and most insurance companies don’t cover it. They may change their minds under the present circumstances. Call your doctor and your insurance company and find out.
And if that isn’t enough, ID Biomedical in Canada has 1.5 million doses, but the FDA may not let them sell the vaccine in the US.
(Link)
It’s clear we need a new government department to ensure that this vaccine fiasco never happens again. That, and a “Vaccine Czar”. No scratch that – a “Homeland Bioimmunity Defense Secretary”. Ahhhh, that feels better.
P.S. Not only is Florida on the forefront of Advanced Broken Window Economics, they are also in the vanguard of shocktroops fighting those vile, capitalist gougers who actually think that buying 30 chainsaws at Walmart in Texas and driving with them all night to Florida actually deserve to receive more for those chainsaws than what they paid for them. The nerve! Good thing Jeb is on the job. I’m going to put him in charge of kicking the butts of those dirty capitalist vaccination pirates.
From the Loompanics Unlimited school of public health thought: influenza vaccines are bad because big drug companies secretly put AIDS virus or other objectionables in the doses & the mercury in the preservative will stupefy you if not give you Alzheimer’s disease. Quit arguing over peripherals, people. I have had exactly 1 influenza vaccine, in 1996, in my 44 years & have not had influenza for several years. I either sicken each winter or do not, usually not. So there.
I heard on Rush Limbaugh today that the Clinton Administration socialized flu vacines. As a result many business have opted out of flue vacine manufacturing. Someone at Mises.org should issue a report on this. This situation provides a good example that hits home with Americans, providing a sample in real life of what it will be like to live in a socialist economy.
The flu vaccine shortage is being handled by government command and rationing of supply by long lines. This is the kind of thing that happens when you don’t allow the market to decide. This is the kind of thing that you expect in a totalitarian society such as the former Soviet Union.
I wasn’t surprised to see today that some US government officials that aren’t in the high-risk groups are receiving vaccinations. At least the press is still allowed to report it.
Here is a link to the AP story from KCBS.com.
I’m not sure that Clinton began the socialized flu vaccines. I seem to recall the Swine Flu scare of the 1970s, in which the governments of USA and Canada encouraged “at risk” people and those in critical occupations to get the shot. As it turned out (if my memory serves) the vaccination was a disaster and killed many people, and the Swine Flu epidemic never happened. I believe that this happened on Gerald Ford’s watch.
Google’s first hit turned up this paper on the affair.
Does anyone else remember Gerald Ford’s “Whip Inflation Now” (WIN) campaign? Methinks old Gerry wasn’t much of a right winger.
And going back further in the history of socialized vaccinations in the U.S., during the smallpox scare a year or two ago, some news services showed file photos of Americans lining up around the block to get smallpox shots in the late 1940s. Was there a similar panic (and screwup) back then?
http://influenza.blog-city.com/
International response to the distribution of a H2N2 influenza virus for laboratory testing: Risk considered low for laboratory workers and the public
Although their a shortage on vaccines, how can on protect hem. I read about Tamfilu and other vaccines and the news say there is a great shortage.. is this just propaganda? is there really a shortage or just hype?
Tamiflu“The government bungles its distribution scheme for flu vaccines, causing an unanticipated supply shock, and suppliers face an upward pressure on prices. If the high price is charged, then your anal”
Although their a shortage on vaccines, how can on protect hem. I read about Tamfilu and other vaccines and the news say there is a great shortage.. is this just propaganda? is there really a shortage or just hype?
Posted by: Jim Orich at October 17, 2005 09:30 PM
Hi Jim, most of new’s and media will have you think that there is a shortage of Tamiflu the reality is that the percentage is very low of fatalities that can caused by the bird flu. Although i’ve never tried it myself I have met people who have and swear by it.
Comments on this entry are closed.