{"id":3254,"date":"2004-12-22T11:21:50","date_gmt":"2004-12-22T16:21:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/3254.html"},"modified":"2004-12-22T11:21:50","modified_gmt":"2004-12-22T16:21:50","slug":"no-surprise-here","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/no-surprise-here\/","title":{"rendered":"No surprise here"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Oct. 8, during the second Bush-Kerry debate<\/a>, the president made it sound like drug reimportation, which is widely popular with the public clamoring for more affordable prescription medication, could be right around the corner.<\/p>\n

“And we’ve just got to make sure, before somebody thinks they’re buying a product, that it works. And that’s why we’re doing what we’re doing. <\/p>\n

“Now, it may very well be here in December you’ll hear me say, ‘I think there’s a safe way to do it.'”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Well, it’s December. And now that the election is over, Bush is saying the opposite<\/a>.<\/p>\n

President Bush dangled his support for legalizing prescription drug imports before voters during this year’s campaign, but his administration declared Tuesday it’s too costly to do safely. <\/p>\n

Regulating the purchase of prescription medicines from abroad would wipe away most savings and diminish investment in new drugs, said a report from an administration task force studying the feasibility of legalized drug imports.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Raise your hand if you’re surprised.
\n
\nA few quick reactions. First, this “task force” was hardly a neutral investigating team. More than half<\/a> of the panel’s 13 members were Bush political appointees, hand-picked for their opposition to reimportation. This was a team designed from the start to give the White House the answer it wanted in the first place.<\/p>\n

Second, Bush seems to have forgotten about it, but the FDA looked into the same question three years ago and said it would cost just $58 million<\/a> a year to establish a safe reimportation system that would then save seniors billions<\/a> a year on medicine.<\/p>\n

Third, is it me, or is it painfully ridiculous to hear the administration emphasize drug safety for medicine coming from Canada when the administration can’t even accomplish drug safety<\/a> through the FDA?<\/p>\n

And, finally, could the administration be any less transparent? Releasing the reports a few days before Christmas because they know Bush’s position is in sharp conflict with the public’s demands and the White House doesn’t want anyone to know about this? They have no shame.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Oct. 8, during the second Bush-Kerry debate, the president made it sound like drug reimportation, which is widely popular with the public clamoring for more affordable prescription medication, could be right around the corner. “And we’ve just got to make sure, before somebody thinks they’re buying a product, that it works. And that’s why […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3254","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3254","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3254"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3254\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}