One More and Done

        Ok, one more and done. This in regard to Herman Cain's insistence that somehow the Epi-pen price hike must be laid at the feet of every Democrat and Mrs. Clinton in particular. He further maintains in a display of ignorance more worthy of Michele Bachmann, that Epi-pen's "monopoly" is somehow illegal or different from every other copyright or patent ever issued.

       If in, say 1995, I had gone into a Godfather's Pizza store, secretly copied exactly the methods they used to make pizza and then left to open my own store, using those methods  and called it "Godfather's Pizza" I'd have been guilty of two crimes. The first and most egregious would have been the inflicting upon humanity of even more fairly  shitty Pizza. The second and a legally thornier one would have been the blatant copyright infringement I had committed. What would Godfather's CEO at the time , Herman Cain, have done? He'd have sued my ass off in court and won  and he's have been justified in doing so.

        So apparently the only time a copyright or patent isn't legal is when it's held by a company whose CEO is the daughter of a Democrat member of Congress.  Don't misunderstand - I think Heather Bresch and Mylan Pharma are blood sucking leeches for the Epi-pen price hike. They should be publicly whipped for pricing a vital drug so far above cost, especially considering that the drug itself, Epinephrine, costs less that $1 per dose in much of the world. All that said, patent protection, by its very nature creates a monopoly for the holder until its expiration. Blaming Mrs. Clinton for this is not just wrong, it's insanely wrong. In fact, it is industrialists just like Cain, who has been on the boards of Nabisco, Whirlpool and several other companies who are the usual staunch defenders of intellectual property rights. Imagine if another company had made a sandwich cookie, chocolate on both sides with cream in the middle and called it Oreo?  Cain's head would have exploded.

  

      Of course Cain cites "excessive regulation" as the demon here and of course blames every Democrat who ever lived for it. In truth, the solution for all instances such as the Epi-pen fiasco, (and there are more and worse than this, but, it's an election ergo mud-slinging year) might well be more government regulation. Let me explain before your head explodes. When electricity became a household product in America Power generation companies immediately began stringing lines and, of course, charging customers for the use of their product.

         Many municipalities also realized that  whichever company managed to string lines into a given municipality first would probably be the only one to do so, and  therefore would have a de facto monopoly,  not by law (as with a drug or invention patent) but by circumstance , which would basically allow the electric generation entity to dictate rates to consumers, fair or not . The solution was the establishment, essentially everywhere in America, of  elected Public Utilities Commissions. Their job is to either allow or disallow rate increases  when requested by the producer. In like manner, most states do the same with Insurance. The FDA  is such  a regulatory body, but with a critical difference. While the FDA can control when or if a drug is declared safe and effective for sale and  public use, it lacks the authority to exert any control whatsoever on the price charged by a drug manufacturer. Look at how incredibly much money Big  Pharma spends on lobbying and you'll know why this is so.

         What Cain probably doesn't know, or will never admit if he does,  is that 58%  of Pharmaceutical Industry lobbying funds  in the form of campaign donations in 2015 went to Republicans, who already have and have had a majority in both houses of the US Congress. Price controls are a touchy subject in a capitalist economy, but we already acknowledge that certain services (as shown in the case of Insurance and Public Utilities) are too essential to allow robber baron capitalists to use monopoly to abuse the public. Similarly, certain drugs, such as Epinephrine in a push/click delivery system are, to many with severe allergies, a life and death issue. Roosevelt and  Taft broke up the giant trusts of the turn of the century, but they weren't patent holders, just monopolists.  We have held patents and copyrights sacred since 1789 when the Constitution established them.  Controlling price reasonably without dismantling patent protection might be a good compromise.

        In any case, Herman Cain, who has served big business and numerous companies with trade secrets and patents and copyrights for  over 40 years, knows better than this. Unfortunately his lack of moral fiber and character have left him un-objective in this matter.