Month: October 2004

Reading The Christian Scientist Monitor’s story “The retirement squeeze: How would they fix it?” which discusses Kerry and Bush’s approach to solving the Social Security problem and The Kudzu Files’ article on why he’s opposed to the privatization of Social Security, led me to reflect on my own experiences with Social Security.

Many years ago when I was a caseworker I worked an old-age-assistance caseload. Essentially I helped administer the federally subsidized program for the State of Washington. My caseload consisted of retired people who received very little Social Security because they hadn’t put much into it and whose fixed retirement income had quickly been decimated by a double-digit inflation rate. It was at best an awkward job for many of the clients felt ashamed to have to recieve assistance after fending for themselves their entire lives, and it was awkward for me because I felt sorry that I had to enforce what I considered vindictive rules. Luckily, as far as I can tell, there is no longer an old-age-assistance welfare program because the minimum Social Security is nearly as much as welfare was in the bad-old days.

Of course, unlike the people on my caseload, today’s retirees paid money into the system and, as a result, receive more in Social Security than they would receive from welfare. In other words, Social Security serves as a safety net for those who, either out of necessity or neglect, fail to save enough money to retire once they are unable to work any longer. It is, as I see it, a mandatory retirement plan that insures that society does not have to bear the entire burden of taking care of someone who may not have saved enough for their old age.

My recent work as a taxpreparer also leads me to believe that Social Security may be even more important to a larger part of society if current job trends continue. While preparing taxes through the disastrous Bush economy I found that a large number of unemployed workers cashed in their IRA’s and, worst of all, their 401K’s in order to survive or to try to save their homes form foreclosure. If, as I suspect, workers can no longer count on steady, long-term employment with one company, one can only conjecture that more people will have to dip into their retirement savings in order to bridge the gap between jobs. While this will be a hardship for everyone, it could very likely prove disastrous for those who are at the lower end of the middle class, those who may have purchased homes with little down payment and who carry large credit card debts.

If workers are allowed to divert part of their Social Security into voluntary personal retirement accounts (PRAs) as Bush advocates, will they have access to that income for emergencies. If not, then in what real sense will participants be a part of what Bush calls an “ownership society.” If they are allowed access to the money as they are to IRA’s and 401K’s, what will keep them from using the funds to live on during emergencies? And, yet, these are precisely the same people who may well need a “security net” when they are forced to retire. What will happen if these people end up with a drastic stock period like we’ve gone through the last few years and the value of their stock actually declines rather than grows?

While I don’t think anyone, including Kerry, has offered any real solution to the Social Security crisis, I thinks Kerry’s commitment to finding a way of saving Social Security is the only answer to this fast-approaching crisis.

Unfortunately for many retired Americans Social Security is the only thing that stands beween them and the streets. As the Christian Scientist article points out, “On average, poor Americans rely on Social Security for more than 80 percent of their income, while the wealthy rely on it for less than 20 percent.” While I can’t imagine having to live on only my Social Security, for many of our citizens it is the ultimate safety net. While I’m sure that many high-fliers in our society feel a safety net is for losers, it is a life saver for far too many Americans who have never entered the world of high finances.

A Seattle Times editorial entitled John Kerry’s green political thumb pretty well summarizes the major reasons I’ll be voting for John Kerry and not George Bush in the upcoming election.

This editorial concludes:

Overall, Kerry calls a halt to Bush’s four-year assault on the environment. Kerry offers a renewed sensibility that is a good fit with the environmental ethic of the Pacific Northwest.

Of course, I doubt anyone who’s read this site for any length of time would be surprised by this revelation. I did write 19 in-depth articles exposing the Bush administration’s assault on the environment for Open Source Politics starting last year, many of which are still presented here if you’re interested. Part of the reason I lost interest in writing, besides burnout from starting too early, is that I found myself merely repeating myself.

While I’m disgusted by the Bush administration’s philosophy of “what’s good for business has to be good for the environment,” I’m even more disgusted by their attempts to disguise their approach to the environment as some form of environmentalism. Apparently they’re afraid to admit that they think earning money for investors and keeping people employed should always trump any environmental concerns. At least if they’d come out and state that as their position you could admire their honesty for standing up for what they believe in.

Instead, they’ve constantly resorted to what at best must be called “euphemisms” and, at worst, damned lies to cover up their intentions to cash in on the environment. If you believe them “Clear Skies” should contain more pollutants than “Clean Air.” While the pollutants in the air may make for prettier sunsets and sunrises, they sure as hell won’t improve the health of the millions of people who are forced to breath the air, many of whom are too poor to afford health insurance. The Bush administration’s “Healthy Forests” policy seems to consist of cutting trees down so that they won’t accidentally burn down. While that might help to keep smoke out of the sky, it seems to ignore the fact that it will accelerate the Greenhouse Effect.

Oh, that’s right, I forgot. The United States, at least the United States under George Bush’s leadership, is one of the few (corrected) industrial nation in the world that refused to sign The Kyoto Treaty which 126 other countries have already signed despite the fact that
“The US produced 36% of emissions in 1990, making it the world’s biggest polluter.” And why wouldn’t we sign it? According to Bush, it does not demand enough of China and other developing countries. And he feels it imposes unrealistic emissions cutbacks that could hinder economic growth. In the second debate he said, “But I thought it would cost a lot. I think there’s a better way to do it.”

What that “better way” is isn’t too clear, but maybe it’s just standing around watching the price of oil rise so high that Americans will finally have to buy more gas-efficient vehicles while they wait for those hydrogen-fueled cars that are “right around the corner.” And if you believe that perhaps you, too, should be drilling dry oil wells in oil-rich Texas. Meanwhile, the Bush family’s oil friends will continue to get richer and richer while trade deficits continue to skyrocket.

Let me see if I understand this correctly. The Bush administration is arguing that Americans shouldn’t be allowed to buy drugs from Canada because foreign drugs might not be safe. As it turns out, though, American companies produce many of their drugs overseas because it’s cheaper to produce them there than it is to produce them here? And the tendency is to move more and more production offshore, is that correct?

Are we supposed to blindly trust that because it’s American companies, and not American citizens, who are allowed to import drugs that users can trust their safety? If that’s so, how does the Bush administration explain the major screw up over the flu vaccination? If Chiron’s process for producing flu vaccine is so contaminated that British authorities revoke their license and prevent them from shipping anything from their plant, how safe is our drug supply? Does that suggest that drugs produced by American companies in foreign countries may not meet the standard of drugs produced in American plants? What if Chiron had been producing the flu vaccine in a third-world company? Would that have meant that we would have ended up with a contaminated vaccine? If the government is so concerned with the quality of “foreign” drugs, why do they allow drug companies to produce more and more of their drugs overseas?

In the process of trying to understand the recent flu vaccine snafu I found myself reading CNN’s article on Why we pay so much for drugs, a must-read article for anyone concerned with rising medical costs. It’s the article Kerry should have referred listeners to in response to Schieffer’s question: “We are talking about protecting ourselves from the unexpected, but the flu season is suddenly upon us. Flu kills thousands of people every year. Suddenly we find ourselves with a severe shortage of flu vaccine. How did that happen?” While the article was written before the flu vaccine snafu, it does offer insight into the forces that are currently driving the pharmaceutical industry.

Critics point out that the pharmaceutical industry is the most profitable industry in America:

The prices Americans pay for prescription drugs, which are far higher than those paid by citizens of any other developed country, help explain why the pharmaceutical industry is”and has been for years”the most profitable of all businesses in the U.S. In the annual Fortune 500 survey, the pharmaceutical industry topped the list of the most profitable industries, with a return of 17% on revenue.

Considering this profit margin, one might well ask why Congress has been so supportive of the industry. One doesn’t have to look far:

One reason the industry does so well in the capital is its potent lobby. It maintains more than 600 lobbyists”more than one for every member of Congress. It spent $435 million to influence Washington from 1996 to 2003 and handed out $57.9 million in contributions from 1991 to 2002, according to Common Cause.

Although there seems to be even larger questions involved, the CNN points out that the current debate over the price of drugs focuses on the importation of drugs:

… the U.S. forbids the import of prescription drugs by anyone other than the original U.S. manufacturer, and even then only when the drugs meet all the approval requirements of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

Although the FDA argues that it is just trying to protect the American consumer, the real effect is to protect the drug companies, not the consumer or even American jobs:

During the early 1990s, according to the U.S. International Trade Commission, imports and exports of pharmaceuticals were “almost equal at just under $10 billion each.” Since then the U.S. trade deficit has spiraled from nearly $600 million in 1995 to more than $20 billion in 2002, the last year for which complete data are available.

The trend is continuing. Singapore is on track to be a potential Ireland. Lured by tax breaks and other incentives, American drug giants like Merck are investing heavily in the Southeast Asian country. According to the Singapore Economic Development Board, Merck has invested more than $500 million to build two plants, which will produce the cholesterol drugs Ezetrol and Zocor.

For its part, the FDA maintains that all these facilities are perfectly safe, that they have undergone inspections and that their manufacturing processes have been certified as meeting the agency’s standards. But while the FDA does indeed inspect plants before opening, after that the oversight trails off.

Is the FDA going to continue to argue that Chiron’s contaminated flu vaccine took place under the careful “oversight” of the FDA? How can the agency argue that it bears no responsibility for the contamination problem while at the same time arguing that its oversight ensures the safety of drugs overseas?

One would hope that legislators would be aware that more and more “American” drugs are actually being produced overseas, but many continue to defend their efforts to block importing cheaper drugs from Canada and other countries:

Influential lawmakers have given unqualified support to the FDA’s anti-Canadian stance, among them Orrin Hatch, a Republican Senator from Utah. Says Hatch: “Many of my constituents have written, asking why they cannot use the lower-cost medications from Canada.

The answer is easy: it is just irresponsible for Congress to jeopardize public safety by allowing the unchecked reimportation of drugs … If we truly care about our seniors and other patients who depend upon prescription drugs, we should not expose them to what amounts to pharmaceutical Russian roulette.”

I suppose it’s irrelevant that there is no evidence to indicate that Canadian drugs are any less safe than American drugs:

At a June 2003 hearing, members of Congress quizzed William Hubbard, the FDA’s associate commissioner, on the issue:

“As far as adverse events, where people have been harmed by Canadian drugs coming across the border, did you bring any of those examples for us?” asked Representative Burton of Indiana.

Hubbard: “We have very little evidence.”

Later, Representative Gutknecht, the Minnesota Republican, pressed Hubbard along the same line:

“But the bottom line is, there’s no evidence of anyone who has died from taking a legal drug from Canada. Isn’t that a fact?”

Hubbard: “I have no evidence. That’s correct.”

One might want to ask Senator Hatch how much money the pharmaceutical industry donated to his campaign funds. Although there is some bipartisan support to allow the importation of drugs from other nations, only 40 per cent of Republicans voted to allow them to be imported. It’s clear where the Bush adminstration stands on the issue.

As I said before, the CNN article is a must-read article. Of course, it’s probably not accidental that when I checked it today there was a Kerry campaign ad running next to. Unfortunately, this is not a 2-minute campaign issue. In my opinion it’s not even a good “blog” issue because it requires investigative reporting and considerable space to explore the issue. All I’ve done here is highlight some of the issues and leave it up to the reader to pursue them further.

Tuesday October 19 UPDATE

Here’s
an interesting perspective on this problem from The American Voice 2004: A Pocket Guide to Issues and Allegations