If you want a protectionist argument made, so much better to get a free-trader to do it. Here Doug Bandow opposes free trade in pharmaceuticals. Are American drug prices “too high”? Well, they are market prices, given the anti-competition FDA, so beloved of the pharmaceutical industry; the anti-competitive patent laws, so beloved of the pharmaceutical industry; and the vast, artificial stimulus to demand from Medicare, Medicaid, and a hundred other welfare programs, so beloved of the pharmaceutical industry. Dick Armey’s thinktank, which paid for this article and more, gets drug money. On his last day of Congress, he told a friend of mine: “Ha, ha: I am starting at $1 million a year as a lobbyist.” Gee, what industry might be among his clients?
