Thank you for sharing your thoughts, and they are very reasonable points.
I actually don’t think Perry’s route to funding the program in Texas would have worked out well. It would have depended on parents caring enough to submit their opt-out... too many parents either don’t care or just aren’t involved enough in their children’s lives.
The route Rick Perry took also did not have a good “PR” appearance to it at all. While he was trying to figure out a way to fund that program locally with private funds instead of using federal, tax-payer funds as all the other states were at that time, if he was against the state legislature at that time who apparently wanted to just use tax payer money to pay for the vaccines instead, he should have kept his actions beyond reproach. While in effect, he was not giving any more money to Mereck to pay for the vaccines than any other state or any other governor to pay for their vaccines in all the other states, nor would he have been giving Merck any more money through private funding as opposed to public funding, his little self-push against the legislature did and still does not come off well.
Still, to pound on Perry for payments for the vaccines from private funds - as opposed to the other states using tax payer funds to pay for them - just doesn’t ring well with me as far a crony capitalism. OK, a lobbyist for that company worked on Perry’s staff. ALL the states and ALL the governor’s were implementing Gardasil programs. Those vaccines were going to cost something, and Merck would get money for those vaccines REGARDLESS of how they were paid. Should all the other states implementing Gardasil at that time be charged with crony capitalism for giving Merck tax-payer money they took to pay them, or should we just blame Perry for trying to keep the funding and oversight at the local level?
The insurance law in Texas is that if a vaccine is mandatory, then it must be 100% covered by insurance. Providing this benefit is a condition of selling insurance in Texas. So, mandating the vaccine would certainly cause more sales of Gardasil - and that is the point, even if the motivation is to reduce the number of cervical cancers.
What would have happened is that insurance rates would have gone up, to cover the cost of the mandatory benefit. Uninsured and poverty patients are/were covered by public health programs - that's that case even now, with Gardasil being an optional vaccine. There is strong interest to increase the rate of vaccination, and public money is spent, today, to do so.
-- Should all the other states implementing Gardasil at that time be charged with crony capitalism for giving Merck tax-payer money they took to pay them, or should we just blame Perry for trying to keep the funding and oversight at the local level? --
Other than Texas, the only states that mandated Gardasil are Virginia and Washington, DC (not a state, I know). The Republicans in Virginia passed a reversal of the mandate this past January, but the Democrats in the Virginia Senate prevented that from passing.
It's much harder to make a charge of cronyism stick, when a great number of policy-makers are involved in vetting and implementing the policy.
Cronyism isn't just about money. George Bush nominated Harriet Miers, in part because she was a friend. She was not the best available choice for the job, or for the country.