Hearing on nitty gritty laws that allow pharmaceutical firms to keep prices high via anti-competitive practices. judiciary.house.gov/calendar/event…
These members don't understand product hopping. The scheme is that when a doctor writes a prescription, a branded drug can only be substituted with an identical generic that’s the same dosage form. The new product intentionally screws that equivalence up.
So @DarrellIssa @RepDanBishop et al understand non-drug patents, but Hatch-Waxman creates a special drug patent process to move to generics. They are right the FDA and patent office should stop allowing all sorts of nonsense patents though.
Sometimes the new product is the same or worse. Take Asacol, for which the 'innovation' for the new product was to take something that was in tablet and put it into a capsule. Voila, new patent and old product off the market. media.ca1.uscourts.gov/pdf.opinions/1…
Now @tedlieu is acting very concerned about the rights of pharmaceutical companies to lie about generic competitive products so they can keep people paying for high-priced pharmaceuticals.
All of these members are arguing about pharmaceuticals, using the metaphor of Ford releasing a new truck and encouraging people to upgrade. But there are no generic trucks and no branded trucks! Pharma is weird and pharma patents are weird.

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More from @matthewstoller

27 Sep
"Public opinion polling found majorities, ranging from 54 percent of Poles to 83 percent of Austrians, affirming that if there were a conflict between the United States and China, they would choose to actively support neither."

This is not an alliance.
nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/auku…
Europe has no effective military forces, they don't want to align with the U.S. economically, they aren't poor and threatened by Soviet armies. What's the rationale for the U.S. committing resources to European defense?
The current relationship between the U.S. and Europe is dysfunctional. By shielding Europe militarily and economically, the U.S. incentivizes Europe to under-project power, which is as dangerous as over-projecting it.
Read 4 tweets
26 Sep
The Villains Behind Our Medical Supply Shortages mattstoller.substack.com/p/the-villains…
It's been 18 months since the pandemic started. Why are we *still experiencing* shortages in basic medical supplies? Look at a series of monopoly middlemen in hospital buying for the answer. mattstoller.substack.com/p/the-villains…
The shortage problem in health care wasn't caused by Covid. Medical personnel have been seeing shortages for years. Here's one reader. mattstoller.substack.com/p/the-villains… Image
Read 4 tweets
23 Sep
Here’s Merkel praising China’s totalitarianism and attacking democracy. We can work with European countries where it makes sense, but it’s time to come to grips with Western Europe being in China’s sphere. Democracy has lost its legitimacy in Europe.
After reading this I can’t see how NATO is viable without significant restructuring. The US needs to have a hard conversation with our allies about whether they want access to our markets and defense umbrella. wsj.com/articles/angel…
I spoke in Germany a few years ago at a political conference and the normies in the audience asked Chinese speakers tough questions on human rights. The German political elites were offended that their own people were so rude.
Read 4 tweets
22 Sep
It's concentrated capital that's suppressing wages and causing shortages, not the flow of people. A pro-worker society requires having pro-production policies. Neither party has those yet. mattstoller.substack.com/p/shortagewatc…
The conservative framework of 'let's stop immigration so that wages will go up' conflicts with 'how come no one wants to work at low wages?!?'
It turns out we have this thing called a government, and it can do stuff. Right now it does stuff like enforce contracts that 30 million Americans had to sign forcing them to stay at their jobs instead of getting higher wages.

It could do other stuff tho.
Read 4 tweets
21 Sep
1. A lot of people are getting really freaked out by shortages. And they should be. But so far, no one has proposed answers. That's starting to change. mattstoller.substack.com/p/shortagewatc…
2. The shortages we're seeing were predictable, and I (among others) predicted them. This is because the supply chain problems have been obvious for decades. wired.com/story/covid-19…
3. What is the problem? In short, we stopped caring how we make and distribute stuff. Since the 1970s, policymakers allowed relentless cost-cutting in the name of efficiency. That has meant in practice lower pay, fewer production lines, more monopolies. mattstoller.substack.com/p/counterfeit-…
Read 15 tweets
21 Sep
It's nearing time for the U.S. to basically lay out conditions for continuing NATO. Enough of this dance where Europeans get super pissy at us for paying for their defense while they coddle China. Either we're allies, or we're not.
I've never had such contempt for European strategists. It's just remarkable. They know that Biden is the best American partner they will ever have, but their bureaucratic sloth and constant searching for fake unity means they cannot act to concede anything.
This @andreaskluth oped on Europe's own internal problems is right. There's a reason no one takes Europe seriously. bloomberg.com/opinion/articl…
Read 5 tweets

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