Wanna Fight Superbugs? Stop Overprescribing Government

PHILADELPHIA, PA - JUNE 15: Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel speaks onstage at the Klick Health Ideas Exchange on June 15, 2015 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. (Photo by Neilson Barnard/Getty Images for Klick Health)

Ezekiel Emanuel notices that inflated demand for antibiotics has led to overuse, and that antibiotic-resistant infections may be killing 23,000 Americans per year. He notices the pharmaceutical industry is focusing more on expensive non-cures for cancer that only extend life by months than on new antibiotics. But he hasn’t noticed that government intervention is causing these problems, so he thinks the solution is—you guessed it—even more government.

Government Inflates Demand for Antibiotics

In the Washington Post, Emanuel warns that “high patient demand leads to overprescribing” of antibiotics, which “breeds resistance” and can lead to superbugs against which we humans have no defenses.

Yet the main reason patient demand is so high is that the federal government—through Medicare, Medicaid, the tax code, Emanuel’s beloved ObamaCare, and other measures—have anesthetized patients to the cost of antibiotics and everything else. We would have less antibiotic overuse and resistance if government just let people keep their own money to spend on health care.

Government Distorts Pharmaceutical Research

Emanuel then complains pharmaceutical manufacturers are spending far more money to research and develop cancer treatments that only add a few months to cancer patients’ lives (and cost more than $100,000 a pop) that they spend developing lower-cost antibiotics.

If this state of affairs fails to reflect patients’ preferences, perhaps the reason is that Medicare offers to make drug companies and oncologists fantastically wealthy by paying for cancer treatments regardless of value.

Overprescribing Government

Rather than admit that government can be incompetent to the point of contributing to the problems it is trying to solve—as his fellow Obama-administration alumnus Larry Summers does—Emanuel doubles down on the Big Government ideology. He proposes requiring hospitals to track antibiotic (over)use as a condition of receiving Medicare subsidies.

Does it occur to Emanuel that a Medicare program stupid enough to subsidize five decades of antibiotic overuse might not be competent enough to track, much less solve that problem?

Next, Emanuel illustrates why the passive voice should be unconstitutional: “every antibiotic prescription should be electronically reviewed to be certain it meets national guidelines.” Like many devotees of the passive voice, Emanuel employs it to hide what he means, which is: “The federal government and its agents should review every antibiotic prescription you and your family receive, even when the government isn’t paying for it.”

What could possibly go wrong? I mean, can you imagine any reasons why people might want a little privacy when it comes to their use of antibiotics? Emanuel can’t—or he doesn’t care.

Finally, he proposes to have the federal government award $2 billion prizes to anyone who secures FDA approval for a new antibiotic. A system of prizes might actually do a better job than the federal government’s patent system of encouraging antibiotics R&D. But Emanuel does not address such thorny questions as who gets to define which new antibiotics will qualify; who sets the amount of the prize; what sort of complications financing the prizes would create; how this award would affect the FDA, and lobbying of the FDA; or whether the net effect of this system would be positive or negative.

Ezekiel Emanuel has no time for such trifles. He’s got himself a hammer, and by God he's found a nail.

Conclusion 

Government is like antibiotics. Some amount is necessary. But overprescribing it makes things a lot worse.

A good indication you’ve overdosed on the statist Kool-Aid is when you make dismissive comments like this one Emanuel levels at current antibiotic-tracking programs: “Unfortunately, they are voluntary.”