First-ever binding end to a border war: Missouri-Kansas UPDATED

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The House Democrats just released their drug pricing plan (summary) on the 19th. I read through it rather quickly and I found it to be interesting and having targets which could work. Rather than jump right into this, let’s talk about purchasing a bit and then what I believe would be better.

In a purchasing negotiation there are two typical ways used to negotiate a price to your company. The first strategy is to tell a supplier you have done a market study, another supplier can offer a better price, and  all things are equal between him and the other supplier. The supplier has a choice of beating the new price or offering something else of value to the customer which will negate the difference and can not be acquired from the other supplier (whip-sawing a supplier is unethical and many do it).

The second strategy requires more work and requires you to understand the cost of materials, the process and its cost, and the overhead involved. It does establish a base in which a buyer can use to negotiate with “all” suppliers. With the former strategy, you are guessing whether you have a good price because you do not know the cost of manufacture. Purchasing has to be a bit more than just a clerk.

The House plan intends to negotiate on pricing using other countries (Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, and the United Kingdom) pricing to measure against for the same drug. The legislation establishes an upper limit for the price as no more than 1.2 times of the volume-weighted average of the price of the six countries reached in their negotiation. Australia, Japan, and United Kingdom use a cost-based method of pricing a drug.

Here is a brief explanation of the House plan:

Year 1 and each successive year, the Health and Human Services (HHS) secretary would identify up to 250 brand name drugs appearing to lack pricing competition and having the greatest cost to Medicare and the US healthcare system. The data would be collected from Medicare, Medicaid, and healthcare insurance to determine aggregate cost based upon price and volume of sales.

The total of 250 items picked with:

• the top 125 drugs in Medicare Part B responsible for a full 96% of Part B spending,
• and 125 drugs responsible for 45 percent of the spending in Part D.

As show in the chart. “More” to be read after the leap.

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UkraineGate: What Will Volker Say?

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The White House released this document on Wednesday, September 25, 2019. It details a July call between President Trump and President Zelensky of the Ukraine. About midway through it, there is a warning of the contents not being a “verbatim transcript.” I have taken some time to include the notes (red) which are found at the end of the post and have notated the particular passages to which the notes are detailing. If you need direction other than the notation at the end of the sentences, I can do so. I did not want to alter this more than what I did in adding the word “note.”

It is a surprising transcript showing Trump’s boldness.

The President: Congratulations on a great victory. We all watched from the United States and you did a terrific job. The way you came from behind, somebody who wasn’t given much of a chance, and you ended up winning easily. It’s a fantastic achievement. Congratulations.

President Zelenskyy: You are absolutely right Mr. President. We did win big and we worked hard for this. We worked a lot but I would like to confess to you that I had an opportunity to learn from you. We used quite a few of your skills and knowledge and were able to use it as an example for our elections and yes it is true that these were unique elections. We were in a unique situation that we were able to achieve a unique success. I’m able to tell you the following; the first time, you called me to congratulate me when I won my presidential election, and the second time you are now calling me when my party won the parliamentary election. I think I should run more often so you can call me more often and we can talk over the phone more often.

The President: [laughter] That’s a very good idea. I think your country is very happy about that.

President Zelenskyy: Well yes, to tell you the truth, we are trying to work hard because we wanted to drain the swamp here in our country. We brought in many many new people. Not the old politicians, not the typical politicians, because we want to have a new format and a new type of government. You are a great teacher for us and in that.

More of the transcript after the leap plus the notes concerning intent and meaning.

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What Kurt Eichenwald says – Saving the Republic

When I’m not reading and writing about the economy, I do occasionally comment elsewhere on political topics.

So it was on Thursday when, in response to this post asserting that Democrats were powerless to do anything – (including enforcing THEIR OWN GODDAM SUBPOENAS!) – and that it was “green lantern-ism” to believe otherwise, I decided I had had enough (see comment #25), for which I was called a “kook” and a disloyal Democrat. It would “hand the President a public relations victory,” it would have “undesirable optics,” and wouldn’t show “comity.”

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Take Your Pick of Left Wing Climate Change Narratives: Green Abundance or Righteous Austerity

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The Strike On Saudi Oil Facilities

This is going to be a tentative post because there is much that remains unclear. What I am going to do is to make it clear that stories that are being told by US authorities and largely repeated by the MSM with little critical commentary is highly questionable.

As it is, it looks like the economic impact of the knocking out of about 60 percent of Saudi oil processing capacity by an attack by 20 drones will not amount to too much. The Saudis have now announced that they should have 70 percent of their damaged production capacity back in operation within a week or two. While crude oil prices initially surged 20 percent up, they have largely fallen back toward where they were before the attack. This is a massive contrast with how all this used to be back in the 1970s when, for example, crude prices would triple or even quadruple with a supply disruption from the Persian Gulf, with dramatic stagflationary effects on all the oil importing national economies. This does not look remotely likely to happen.

The matter that remains very much in the air, with a threat of war breaking out worse than it is already happening, involves the source of the attack on the facilities in Khurais and Abqaiq. SecState Pompeo outright said the attack came from Iran. Supposedly US intelligence agencies are supporting this, although there seem to be doubts. Buried deep in the press reports are caveats suggesting that maybe not quite all the attacks came from there. Of course, it is essentially impossible to evaluate these claims as we know these agencies have their secret methods and sources they are not leaking. But then we see both the Saudis and President Trump holding back from fully going along with this report.

So why might this be wrong? Well, at least one alternative version appears to have been decisively repudiated. That is that the attack came from Shia militias in Iraq. This theory was put forth by Bibi Netanyahu of Israel, perhaps as a desperate part of his reelection campaign, with it looking like he has not done well in that election, although the full outcome is still not known. But this apparently blatantly ridiculous report may be the beginning of the end of people taking publicly announced Israeli intelligence reports as things to be taken seriously.

However, the more serious alternative to Iran as a source is the Yemeni Houthis. Almost certainly the drones were from Iran, although even that is not definitely certain. In any case several statements have come supposedly from US intel agencies that the Yemeni Houthis could not have done this, even though they themselves have been loudly claiming that they did it, while the Iranians are loudly denying that they did it. Supposedly this all distraction from the role of the Iranians. But Juan Cole has pointed out things that the media are simply not reporting things that suggest that indeed the Yemeni Houthis appear to have the capability. In particular in May the Houthis launched a drone attack on an oil pumping station at al-Duadimi, well over 800 miles from Sana’a. The sites struck in this attack are only another 100 miles further, and the Shehad 129 Iranian drone supposedly can travel a full 1100 miles. Why are we seeing no reports of this in the media?

As it is, it may be that both the Saudis and even Trump may be aware of this matter that has not been well publicized. If so, no wonder they are not fully signing on to saying it was Iran, quite aside from a reluctance to get into a new war there. Whatever has really gone down, let us hope at least there will be no new war.

Barkley Rosser

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About the time I finished up my post on Biden, I get this article from Dan discussing how Biden is kissing the butts of drug companies to more-than-likely get campaign donations. Everyone else has been concentrating on individual (you know people of lesser means) donations and many candidates have refused to take corporate donations. Biden is not ashamed to take money from corporations. Gee, whata surprise!

Candidate Joe Biden: “By the way, great drug companies out there — except a couple of opioid outfits,” the former vice president told donors at the Dallas home of David Genecov, a craniofacial surgeon.

Biden’s comment came during a discussion of medical research and the cancer “moonshot” initiative he launched during the Obama administration following the death of his son, Beau Biden, in 2015. That effort included his push for companies to collaborate more on research.

While praising the research of pharmaceutical companies, Biden also complained, complained about the high drug prices being experienced by people. Such issues had not stopped him before in supporting Republican candidates for Congress in the last election.

In 2018, Joe Biden came to Michigan’s 6th Congressional District to give a speech to the Economic Club of Southwestern Michigan and pivoted to the topic of Republican Fred Upton at the expense of the Democrat candidate Matt Longjohn. Matt came the closest to beating Upton and Biden gave Fred the boost he needed. Upton had won the district by 20% in previous elections and won it this time by less than 5%.

Biden was paid $200,000 to give a speech to a Republican business crowd supported by Fred Upton in Benton Harbor, Michigan during which he praised GOP Congressman Fred Upton even as Democrats were close to winning Upton’s seat in the gerrymandered Michigan 6th District during the midterms.

It was said Biden came to the 6th District to campaign for Fred Upton because Fred helped to push the 21st Century Cures Act through Congress in support of Biden’s moonshot plan. There is no confirmation of this. The Economic Club of Southwestern Michigan is heavily sponsored by Republican interests and also in one form or another by the Uptons. You would think with Repubs owning the House and the Senate back then, there would be a few issues of making this happen?

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Dean Baker considers whether Trump’s group of supporters would be able to manipulate the bureacracies of the federal government to alter the economic outlook of the nation in a more expansive way than Larry Kudlow and others, but the data itself ( if that is even needed?)  He says not likely, but how creative would one need to be?

Dean Baker wonders out loud…

Would Trump Try to Manipulate Economic Data Before the Election?

I talked to a reporter last week who wanted to know if Donald Trump could manipulate economic data for political advantage. For example, could Trump make the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) show a lower rate of unemployment or the Bureau of Economic Analysis show a higher rate of GDP growth, just before the election next fall?

…First, the people at these and other statistical agencies are dedicated professionals.

…Furthermore, since so much of the data are publicly available, it would be very hard to do this without being detected.

…Theoretically, someone could do something like this, but it would have to be a person who was very knowledgeable about the data. And, they would almost certainly need the cooperation of at least 20 or 30 people at the BLS.

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The other night, ten Democratic presidential, hopeful, nominees took stage and debated their plans for America’s future. There never was a mention beyond a few garbled words hastily thrown together about an issue which is plaguing many young voters ing to raise families and one which has surfaced in my community, the shortage of affordable homes. Senator Elizabeth Warren knows of the issue as she has discussed it in one of her talks, “The Two Income Family.”

Moderators have bypassed the issue and not asked the question of a candidate’s plan for Affordable Housing which is a growing problem for many people in the US especially young people. In lieu of their not asking, here is a site 2020 Because Housing is Built with Ballots from which you can read each of the candidate’s plans.

The housing crisis has hit urban, suburban, and rural areas with some states being worst(see chart above) than others with regard to supply. Nationally, there is a shortage of 7 million homes affordable and available to the lowest-income renters. Rents have risen faster than renters’ incomes over the last two decades, more people are renting than ever, and the supply of apartments they can afford has lagged. Fewer than four affordable and available rental homes exist for every 10 of the lowest-income renter households nationwide. People of color are disproportionately impacted. Racial segregation persists and concentrated poverty is growing.

Meanwhile, policy makers have disinvested in the nation’s public housing infrastructure, leaving families living in unsafe, unhealthy, and unacceptable conditions. After almost a decade of decline, homelessness is back on the rise, and is in the news in an adversarial manner. The same as with immigrants, people do not want to provide solutions and they want the homeless to disappear. Where they should go has not been determined.

Jumping on this bandwagon pre – election, the one man who has a history of discrimination as learned from a father who was depicted by in song by Woodie Guthrie, President Donald Trump has signaled his intentions to address California’s homeless crisis in a harmful, unjust, and unlawful manner. Involving criminalization, sweeps of unsheltered people living on the streets, they will (potentially?) be moved to federal homeless camps.

Affordable housing and homelessness has been in the news across the country and debate moderators have yet to ask the question of what can be done or what are your solutions to the crisis.

While providing good and affordable healthcare is important; housing, besides a cardboard box, is one of the prerequisites to having good health. One way or another, we will be paying for it.

The Question the Presidential Candidates Don’t Get Asked, City Lab, Diane Yentel

The GAP, A Shortage of Affordable Homes March 2018

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