Friday, August 20, 2004
Free markets at home beget free markets abroad
[Roger Pilon, "Drug Reimportation: The Free Market Solution," Policy Analysis No. 521, The Cato Institute, 4 August 2004.]
From The Cato Institute, here is another statement of the counter-intuitive argument that the best way to end market price abuses from socialized countries is to allow reimportation. Certainly, there is a case to be made that opening our markets here to free trade will actually drive socialized nations toward true pricing. The problem remains, however, that current WTO agreements allow those countries to estentially steal patents from American companies. Pilon's solution apparently is to hope for the best, and then reimpose the reimportation ban should the experiment fail:
“Drug reimportation” has become the focus for a host of drug problems that have become political problems primarily because drugs are so highly regulated, both here and abroad. The natural solution to such problems is to allow greater scope for market forces. That is the correct intuition, which animates, initially, all of the proposals for lifting the reimportation ban now in place in America. However varied or mistaken the different proposals may be, they all turn on the basic idea that free markets and the competition they encourage, not price controls, are the way to produce more and better drugs at lower prices. Indeed, what is the reimportation ban if not an impediment to free trade and a free market?
[Roger Pilon, "Drug Reimportation: The Free Market Solution," Policy Analysis No. 521, The Cato Institute, 4 August 2004.]
From The Cato Institute, here is another statement of the counter-intuitive argument that the best way to end market price abuses from socialized countries is to allow reimportation. Certainly, there is a case to be made that opening our markets here to free trade will actually drive socialized nations toward true pricing. The problem remains, however, that current WTO agreements allow those countries to estentially steal patents from American companies. Pilon's solution apparently is to hope for the best, and then reimpose the reimportation ban should the experiment fail:
“Drug reimportation” has become the focus for a host of drug problems that have become political problems primarily because drugs are so highly regulated, both here and abroad. The natural solution to such problems is to allow greater scope for market forces. That is the correct intuition, which animates, initially, all of the proposals for lifting the reimportation ban now in place in America. However varied or mistaken the different proposals may be, they all turn on the basic idea that free markets and the competition they encourage, not price controls, are the way to produce more and better drugs at lower prices. Indeed, what is the reimportation ban if not an impediment to free trade and a free market?
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