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Article Artículo

Abortion

Washington Post Runs Anti-Sanders Editorial In News Section

The Washington Post's difficulties in separating its news and opinion pages showed up again in a piece by David Fahrenthold that warned the public against Senator Bernie Sander's agenda in his presidential campaign. The piece is headlined "how Bernie Sanders would transform the nation."

Fahrenthold is quite direct about his opinion of Sanders. He begins by referring to Sanders' proposal to have free tuition at public colleges, then tells readers:

"And, once government was paying for college, colleges would run by government rules. Sanders’s rules. For one thing, Sanders thinks student centers are a waste of government money. He’d make sure they didn’t get any more of it.

"If he becomes president, Sanders would spend an enormous amount of money: $3.27 trillion. At the very, very least. But he is not just a big-spending liberal. And his agenda is not just about money.

"And his agenda is not just about money.

"It’s also about control."

 Got that? Bernie Sanders wants to control everything. Better not vote for that guy.

As folks familiar with Washington politics know, government largess comes with varying degrees of control, depending largely on who the beneficiary is. For example, TANF, the government's main benefit program for low income families, comes with all sorts of controls, including work requirements. When Planned Parenthood gets government money, it has to commit itself not to spend any on of it on performing abortions.

On the other hand, the government hands out tens of billions a year in tax breaks to homeowners on their mortgage interest and imposes virtually no controls. It gave big companies subsidized loans through the Export-Import Bank and also imposed almost no controls. And, it gives drug companies patent monopolies—threatening to arrest competitors—again with no controls.

The government already gives substantial aid to colleges, largely in the form of subsidized loans and Pell grants. The government already puts conditions (i.e. control) on the institutions that get this money. Will Sanders put more controls in place if the government is picking up the full bill? Perhaps, but presenting this as a zero/one story, as Fahrenthold implies, is just silly.

It also would have been helpful if Farenthold tried to express the $3.27 trillion figure in a way that provided information to readers rather than just scare them with threats of "enormous" spending. This sum is equal to a bit less than 1.4 percent of projected GDP over this period. By comparison, at their peak, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan raised military spending by 1.8 percentage points of GDP compared to the pre-9/11 level.

Dean Baker / October 01, 2015

Article Artículo

Health and Social Programs

United States

Farid Fata Case Shows the Dangers of Fee-for-Service Medicine

Various news outlets have been reporting on the case of Farid Fata, the former hematologist and oncologist who has been sentenced to 45 years in prison after being found guilty of Medicare fraud. In many ways, the term “Medicare fraud” understates the severity of Fata’s misconduct: over the course of six years, Fata reportedly over-treated a number of his patients in ways that were harmful to their health, all for the sake of personal gain. In total, 553 of Fata’s patients received $35 million in needless chemotherapy. Some of the patients had cancer and were terminally ill; in these cases, Fata prolonged their misery with unnecessary chemo. Many were forced into bankruptcy to pay for this treatment. In other instances, Fata lied to perfectly healthy, cancer-free patients, telling them that they had cancer and needed chemotherapy. The results for many of his patients were disturbing (from Newsweek):

Fata also bamboozled patients into receiving additional doses of the immunosuppressive drug rituximab even after they were successfully treated for their lymphoma — in some instances, for as long as three years. By the time Fata was arrested, their immune systems had been permanently devastated. Others were left with decaying jaws and never-ending bouts of intense pain by the bone cancer–fighting drug Zometa.

CEPR and Nicolas Buffie / September 30, 2015

Article Artículo

The Post Follows Industry Trade Group in Telling People Drug Prices Held Steady

It must be nice to have a trade group that is so powerful that it can get newspapers like the Washington Post to parrot your line even when it is not true. The folks at Pharma will presumably be toasting a Wonkblog piece that told readers:

"The drug industry trade group keeps reminding the public that drug spending has been holding steady for years, at about 10 percent of the total health-care pie. They point to that as evidence that drugs are a special area of the health care industry, unlike almost any other sector, where competition occurs and prices actually go down over time."

That's great, we're supposed to debate why drug prices have been holding steady as a share of total health care spending. That will be a classic Washington Post debate, since drug prices have actually been rising considerably faster than overall health care spending. As noted last week:

"According to the National Income and Product Accounts (Table 2.4.5U) prescription drug spending increased at average annual rate of 6.3 percent over the years from 2004 to 2014, rising from $203.6 billion in 2004 to $374.7 billion in 2014 (Line 122). By contrast, spending on health care services rose at annual rate of 4.7 percent over this period, going from $1240.1 billion in 2004 to $1954.0 billion in 2014 (Line 168)."

Furthermore, over the last five years the gap in growth rates is even larger, with prescription drug spending rising at a 6.2 percent annual rate and spending on health care services rising at just a 3.7 percent annual rate.

So we can follow the Washington Post and debate why 3.7 percent is the same as 6.2 percent or we could talk about developing a more efficient and less corrupt method of financing drug research. We don't need to hand out government granted patent monopolies to finance research, we can pay for the research upfront.

Dean Baker / September 28, 2015