Republicans believe we can streamline government and make it more effective through competition and privatization.... It is greater competition - not unchallenged government bureaucracies - that will cut the cost of government, improve the delivery of services, and ensure wise investment in infrastructure.
-From The 1996 Republican Party Platform.
Ten years later, the party of competition and government efficiency has given us a privatized war that is a breeding ground for billions of dollars in corruption, a $200 million bridge to nowhere, and the Medicare Part D program, widely praised among experts and beneficiaries alike for it's efficiency and the way it streamlined the delivery of government services through competition. Any lingering doubts about the newfound era of government efficiency will surely be dispelled by a story in today's New York Times, which chronicles the saga of BioShield:
a $5.6 billion effort to exploit the country's top medical and scientific brains and fill an emergency medical cabinet with new drugs and vaccines for a host of threats. “We will rally the great promise of American science and innovation to confront the greatest danger of our time,” President Bush said in starting the program.
After 5 years, this is what we got:
So far, only a small fraction of the anticipated remedies are available. Drug companies have waited months, if not years, for government agencies to decide which treatments they want and in what quantities. Unable to attract large pharmaceutical corporations to join the endeavor, the government is instead relying on small start-up companies that often have no proven track record.
"Unable to attract large pharmaceutical corporations to join the endeavor." Wow. First key indicator: when you've got Big Pharma walking away from a pot of money, something is dreadfully wrong with your program.
The Monkey-Boy administration has managed to promote competition among two small piss-ant little pharma's though. "Competition" in the same sense of the word as a backstage superdiva bitchslapfest. In a nutshell:
-The Department of Health and Human Services awards an entire $887 million contract to develop a new anthrax vaccine to one small biotech firm by the name of VaxGen, a company that has never taken a drug to market. It's first major product in 2003 was an AIDS vaccine. Weren't aware there was a vaccine for AIDS? There's not. It didn't work.
(When I first saw this story incidentally, I briefly entertained hope that the work could possibly inoculate me from hearing the work of the band Anthrax, whom I abhor. To my disappointment, the vaccine was to be against the fatal bacterial infection.)
-The maker of the current Anthrax vaccine, Emergent BioSolutions, seeing a threat to it's business, starts a fierce lobbying campaign to promote it's product, which has been linked to 6 deaths, complications such as lymphoma and multiple sclerosis, and does nothing to keep you from hearing that godawful song "I Am the Law." Emergent has spent over $1 million doing things like hiring ex-government officials who pushed for a new vaccine to lobby Congress instead to buy more of the old stuff. “The advice we were given was wrong.” Says former top HHS official Jerome M. Hauer, now on the payroll of Emergent. Large paychecks can do wonders to get a person to see the error of their former ways.
The result has been nothing. VaxGen and Emergent BioSolutions have been fighting a lobbying war, billions of dollars have gone down a rathole, and we are not one step closer to dealing with an anthrax attack. Which leads me to my favorite quote in the article. According to an HHS spokesman, "to come in and criticize BioShield as a failing program because we have not spent all the money and don't have all the products in the warehouse is completely and sorely misguided.”
Yeah, don't criticize us just because we haven't accomplished anything.
Now here's the kicker, again according to the Times,
Because of the perceived urgency of the threat, the project suspends some traditional standards. It allows new vaccines or drugs to be used in emergencies before completing the lengthy Food and Drug Administration approval process. Full testing on humans is also not required because it is too dangerous, even though that means no one will know with certainty whether the vaccines will work until used in a crisis.
THEY DON'T EVEN HAVE TO PROVE IT WORKS! AND THEY STILL CAN'T MANAGE TO MAKE ANYTHING!! AAAAAAAGGGGHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Calming down now, lets go back to that promising platform of 1996
A Republican administration will make competition a centerpiece of government, eliminating duplication and increasing efficiency.
Nothing more here for me to add. This clusterfuck speaks for itself.
Read the whole story here.
1 comment:
Wow. I knew there was a reason I registered democrat. It'll never change though. It'll just be even more of a clusterfuck later when everyone dies after being vaccinated. Or maybe they'll like grow new heads and stuff.
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