If America made itself more like Europe, it would produce fewer medical miracles, develop and export fewer life-saving innovations, and make less money.
When he’s not planning to “Make America Healthy Again” — by force of compelling government authority, whether you like it or not — Donald Trump’s nominee-designate to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is plotting out his campaign of vengeance against one of America’s most profitable enterprises: the pharmaceutical sector.
RFK Jr. has previously expressed his desire to see the U.S. impose legal restrictions on the ability of pharmaceutical manufacturers to air direct-to-consumer advertisements. He even seems to believe that the laws protecting the right of private firms to retail (provably true) claims to the public can be accomplished via presidential pen-stroke. On “my first day in office, I will issue an executive order banning pharmaceutical advertising on television,” Kennedy wrote when he was still running for the presidency. “We are one of only two countries in the world that allow pharmaceutical companies to advertise directly to consumers on television,” he added. “Not surprisingly, Americans consume more pharmaceutical products than anyone else on the planet.”
As far as I can tell, the fact that the United States extends (relatively) unique liberties to the pharmaceutical sector is the closest thing to a rationale for such a ban: America should be more like Europe. If America continues to behave like America, however, the idiots who populate this country (not you and I, of course, but them) will languidly persist in their addiction to self-harm. In the absence of a benevolent government sherpa to hold Americans’ hands and tell them not to swallow fistfuls of anti-depressants and avoid consuming Cap’n Crunch and Cheez-Its exclusively, the country cannot survive. The GOP owes Michelle Obama an apology.
This is the sort of patronizing narcissism we should expect from a lifelong progressive Democrat. But sentiments like these should have no place within the party of individual liberty and personal responsibility.
The pharmaceutical industry — indeed, medical innovation generally — is one of this country’s most profitable enterprises for a reason. Unlike much of the rest of the world, the U.S. does not regulate pharmaceutical prices, making drug development a worthwhile endeavor. Its legal structure is designed to encourage public-private pharma research and development projects — a condition anathema in countries where access to pharmaceuticals is treated as a right and, thus, where innovation is all but entirely stagnant. Those countries rely on U.S. medical exports as well as the clinical trials it conducts overseas. If America were to make itself more like Europe, it would produce fewer medical miracles, develop and export fewer life-saving innovations, and make less money.
What is the basis for a pharmaceutical advertisement ban? As far as I can tell, the logic in its favor is predicated on a mistrust of the profit motive in the health-care sector because the health-care sector should run on altruism alone. We used to call that type of person “a leftist.” Today, lest we encounter any discomfiting cognitive dissonance, they’ve been branded the “New Right.” But there’s nothing “new” about any of this, much less “Right.”