July 12, 2015
That’s not quite how the paper put it, but it is in fact what it reported. The story according to the headline is “bipartisan partnership produces a health bill that passes house.” According to the article the bill instructs the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to use information from doctors’ practices and drug registries in determining whether to approve new drugs rather than just relying on clinical trials. The problem with this approach is that the industry often pays doctors to say good things about their drugs. It would difficult for the FDA to know for certain that the information it is relying upon was not paid for by the company seeking approval of a drug.
The piece also includes the interesting tidbit that the cost of additional funding for the FDA, another provision in the bill, would be covered by selling off some of the country’s petroleum reserve. This shows the remarkable cynicism of the deficit hawks in Congress.
Selling oil reserves is simply a shuffling of assets, it is not a way of either improving the government’s financial situation or reducing the drain on the economy from the budget deficit. It’s analogous to a household pawning its silverware to avoid having to borrow. There is no economic reason to prefer selling off this asset to adding debt, it is just a silly ritual that apparently is taken seriously in Washington policy circles these days.
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