Posted on 01/19/2012 9:12:26 AM PST by 92nina
Congress is back this week in Washington, but the hysterics of nanny staters hardly ebbed over the holidays. In the New Year, activists have turned their ire to regulatory agencies, asking the government to pick winners and losers in private industry. Most recently, an association of pharmacies has demanded the Federal Trade Commission arbitrarily restrict the pharmaceutical industry rather than allowing businesses to respond to consumer demands.
In pursuit of this goal, the National Association of Chain Drugstores has launched a scare campaign: TooBigToPlayFair.com. The NACD alleges that a merger between two Pharmacy Benefit Managers (companies that work with both drug companies and insurers to provide effective and affordable prescription assistance; in this case two successful enterprises, Express Scripts and Medco Health Solutions) would allow the companies to become a monopoly in the pharmaceutical market.
Oddly enough, the NACD seems to resemble just that; its own website claims its members fill 72 percent of prescriptions in the United States. From that, one might conclude that chain retailers have an (unfair?) large part of the retail market. Yet these groups want consumers to believe that a PBM merger—which would result in a company that covers about a third of the prescriptions written annually—would be more harmful to consumers than their “total” representation of the retail market. Experts say this is an unfounded allegation - the PBM industry is still highly competitive.
Incidentally, the NACD also has the powerful AFL-CIO on their side. Labor unions are long-time campaign backers of Big Government Democrats, and their support of the anti-free market NACD effort shows the campaign is aimed at subverting, not maintaining, a fair and competitive marketplace.
Read more: http://www.atr.org/nanny-state-activists-hit-ground-running-a6690#ixzz1jvMoGM48
Take this article and others I found to the fight to the Libs on their own turf; put the Left on the defensive at Digg and at Reddit and in Stumbleupon and Delicious
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.