by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist
While our national government, which is in the pocket of the pharmaceutical industry, constantly struggles to find ways to maximize drug companies profits and control over our lives, and most state governments fail to worry about anything other than stopping abortions, proliferating the sale of guns, and keeping minorities from voting, California appears to be on the verge of doing something that will actually help people afford their medicines.
California's Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, is making big political waves with his plan for California to start producing its own brand of insulin products - life-saving medicines that the state will offer to consumers at "just above" actual cost. Governor Newsom, who announced his plan several weeks ago, has just signed a state budget which allocated $50 million for the development of the insulin products, and another $50 million for a facility in which to manufacture those products.
Governor Newsom has also indicated that the state of California intends to branch out and work on the low-cost manufacture of other drugs as well.
Insulin is priced well beyond its actual cost of production, and the few companies who make insulin for the US market all manage to keep their prices almost exactly the same - artificially high. It's a process called "price-fixing" and it guarantees obscene profits for the pharmaceutical manufacturers, the people who then stuff the pockets of members of Congress. It's a mean, nasty business, and one which California intends to bring under control - without the aid of Congress.
Billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban has also gotten into the discount drugs business. Cuban has formed an on-line prescription service called "Mark Cuban's Cost Plus Drug Company." Both Cuban and the state of California seem to sense that there is such a wide profit margin in the drug business that there is plenty of room for businesses to significantly undercut the prices set by the big drug manufacturers and still make a profit.
And insulin is a great place to start! People in America are literally dying because they cannot afford this lifesaving drug, one that is priced obscenely beyond its actual cost to manufacture. Congress not only condones this national price-fixing, but it has also forbidden Medicare and Medicaid to negotiate with the drug companies for lower prices. Other countries, Canada for instance, can and do negotiate drug prices, and that is why Americans often try to slip across the Canadian border to buy their medicines - because the exact same prescription drugs are significantly cheaper in Canada.
So while our government continues to burden us with unaffordable pharmaceuticals as a direct result of campaign contributions to politicians by American drug manufacturers, state governments (one so far) and individual entrepreneurs are stepping around Congress and leveling the playing field for consumers.
Big energy had better be paying attention because states and local communities are already starting to pursue their own energy initiatives, again often in response to the failure of Congress, which is also in the pocket of big energy, to do anything other than massage the continuing dominance of coal, gas, and oil on our national energy landscape. And then comes telecoms with many communities, both large and small, moving to take control of their own wifi markets.
Congress has a long history of being a well-fed dinosaur with no interest in reforming anything, but states, communities, and even individuals have begun stepping into the void of Congressional inaction and giving American's some actual control over their own lives.
The dinosaur, it would seem, has forfeited its relevance and outlived its usefulness.
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