Copyright © 2004 The Quad-City Times | www.QCTimes.com
Flu shot shortage shows the need to reform
Posted on 11/15/2004 11:08:06 AM PST by newgeezer
Copyright © 2004 The Quad-City Times | www.QCTimes.com
Flu shot shortage shows the need to reform
Toward the end of the campaign, President Bush offered his small variation on JFK’s famous line: Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can not do for your country.
“My call to our fellow Americans is, if you’re healthy, if you’re younger, don’t get a flu shot this year.”
I have followed the patriotic edict to go unarmed into this flu season. In fact, unlike certain members of the Congress who shall remain nameless, I have no choice but to follow it.
At the same time, I have been collecting various little anecdotes for The Flu Story 2004.
Take the assorted elders in New Jersey who celebrated their vaccinations as if they’d won the lottery. In fact, they had won a lottery.
If we are lucky, if the flu season is mild and the crick don’t rise, this may not be a disaster. But for the moment, we have the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention rationing the last 10 million doses and we have Illinois and New York City independently ordering its own vaccine from Europe.
Eery American is getting a chance to see what life’s like for people without health care insurance and just how precarious the health care system really is.
The strain of flu that is coming our way has been dubbed by one reporter as the Free Market Flu. The entire debacle comes from the fact that preventing the flu isn’t as profitable as, say, treating erectile dysfunction. The major American drug companies, who continuously tell us that their profits are for our benefit, don’t do flu vaccines anymore.
For some years, flu prevention has been outsourced without oversight.
Chiron Corp., one of the vaccine manufacturers, had worried the FDA as long ago as 1999, but it was the Brits who blew the whistle on them in October when this year’s batch of vaccines was contaminated. We were left dependent — mon dieu! — on a French company, Aventis Pasteur.
As James Morone, a political scientist at Brown University says, “If there were a sudden run on watches or sofas it wouldn’t be a problem, but health care can’t work that way.”
Instead of sofas and watches, it might be life and death. About 36,000 people died from the flu last year and that was when vaccine was available.
After 9/11 with all the talk of bioterrorism there was the beginning of a dialogue about strengthening the public health system. But today we rarely talk about the basics, like vaccines, as a public good.
Americans have long been told that national health care would mean long lines, rationing and second-class medicine. Despite spending more of our gross national product on health care than any other country, we rank 29th in life expectancy, right between Slovenia and Portugal.
Maybe it takes the Free Market Flu to remind us that sometimes we need a public health system as much as we need a fire department or a military.
For the moment, however, a casino in Las Vegas has generously donated its 5,000 doses to the local health department.
Meanwhile back home, I think I will tie a patriotic yellow ribbon around a great big pot of chicken soup.
Contact Ellen Goodman at ellengoodman@globe.com.
Copyright © 2002 The Quad-City Times
Yeah, right, Ellen.
What a maroon.
The headline actually was OK; just insert "tort" before reform. Why would an American company take on the task of manufacturing the vaccine only to be sued by JEdwards and crew?
And the FreeRepublic Dunce Cap goes to...
True. From which follows nothing in the article. Typical of the shallow thinking, magical thinking, and non-thinking of Ellen Goodman. If you think health care is inaccessible to large numbers of people now, wait till it's "universal." If you think health care is expensive now, wait till it's "free."
Well said.
No mention of Hillarycare® Vaccines For Children? How odd!
Every problem for the left comes down to national un-health-y insurance.
If only we had NHI, terrorists would stop hurting us because we'd just go to the free doctor to fix up our radiation sickness or shrapnel removal or whatever, and they'd find it a pointless exercise.
If only we had NHI, we could increase our productivity 'cuz we could all go to the doctor for every sniff and twinge and be healthy and happy.
Argh!! They can put ANYthing in the NHI context, I believe.
Last year, and in the years before that, there were public announcemants all over the television BEGGING people to get the flu shot. I remember these flu shot "campaigns".
In 2003, they were throwing the stuff away because so much was left over (sorry, heard on radio dr. show, so no source)
Now, all of the sudden thousands of people are having to "go without". BS, I say! Most doing without it this year, have done so every year before now. . .including myself.
she's right - we do need reform: We need to reduce manufacturer's liability and to price the vaccines so that the companies are profitable again. THEN things will straighten themselves out.
"Maybe it takes the Free Market Flu to remind us that sometimes we need a public health system as much as we need a fire department or a military."
Or, then, perhaps we just need to get rid of the ability for millionaire ambulance-chaser lawyers like John Edwards to drive individuals out of the business of making vaccines by threatening extravagant lawsuits!!!!
The "I'm fighting for you," drivel that this small-town NC boy spouted during the campaign boiled down to "I've been fighting for me so hard that I've made $39 million in the last 10 years driving your insurance premiums and health care costs up."
Ellen Goodman's so-called "public health system" would work like her so-called "public education system" already works. It would produce mediocrity and scarcity--not excellence (as American health care is today) and plenty.
why is the shortage only seem to be here in America???does the rest of the world not get the Flu or are we the only suckers that they can get to buy the shot!for that matter why must we Americans subsidize the rest of the world when it comes to pharmaceuticals.
Dear Ellen,
Get the government out of the business of funding flu shots and let citizens pay the market value. This is how they will be more available and of an acceptable quality.
Flu vaccines are risky and expensive investments for companies to pursue. These are biological treatments instead of chemical ones, so they must be developed and done very carefully. Even when done correctly, the demand may not be there in any one season and the firm will have to toss the whole lot.
But you, dear affluent and overprivileged Ellen, are too pig headed to pay what it costs but demand that it's always there and is less than what it costs to produce. So you demand that the government gets involved to charge much less than what the shot is worth. Without forking over your own wallet (funny how that works out).
Great. Once the government gets involved, you drive away businesses and you take quality on a downward spiral.
We can only look forward to health care going into total bankruptcy, like TennCare (modeled after HillaryCare and KerryCare), only to receive maggots to "treat" infection and buffalo dung poultices instead of real medicine.
Well said. The "reality paradox" is not understood by people in the "Blue States".
BUT, because George W. Bush is the President of the United States, we suddenly have a crisis of epic proportions on our hands.
These idiots are the same ones who think a cold is the flu.
10 years ago there were (13) making the flu shot....now down to (1)....Thank you tort lawyers
Oh yeah, that will be heaven won't it?!
Well .. since this was the Clintons' MESS .. why doesn't Ellen talk to Hillary.
No kidding. My (liberal) sister commented on coming back from a trip across Canada how almost universal it was for Canadians to flash headlights warning of impending speed traps ahead. I asked her why she thought that was so, and she answered, "Well, because of free health care. They all stick together."
So, there you have it: government health care fosters impromptu conspiracies against traffic cops.
In the leftist mode of coining snappy slogans for public policy debates, how 'bout this one:
Universal Public Health Care: think DMV...giving prostate exams.
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