She is right about that. The drug companies, when they have a new vaccine, have to push states to put them on the mandatory lists. Otherwise the insurance companies don’t cover it, people don’t know about it and can’t afford it, and they don’t make money on it.
I don’t blame the drug companies. They make a good product, that is helpful to a large number of women. The problem is the laws that decide which vaccines are paid for and which are not.
Palin should be attacking the idea of having the state government determine what drugs are covered by insurance companies, so that the drug companies are forced to lobby the state government to get their drugs added to the list.
Someone else noted that Alaska does have Gardisil on the list, but not on a mandatory vaccine list, but still putting it where insurance companies have to cover it. I’m guessing that made the drug companies happy enough.
But it’s not “crony capitalism” for people, or corporations, to lobby the government to minimize it’s impact on them. The problem isn’t even that politicians need money to get elected, and people give money to politicians who do what they want (we all send money to candidates who will do what we want them to do, so they are being bribed to listen to us).
The problem is a state (or federal) government so powerful that it makes laws that effect us so greatly that we have to lobby the state to defend our interests. You think the drug companies WANT to have to kiss up to politicians to get their products put on lists to get insurance companies to cover them? Well, probably they do, because since the state offers that “service”, it is the only real way to get an advantage.
And it certainly isn’t that somebody got a $5000 donation from a drug company, and somehow that made them put a vaccine on the list.
You definitely made some good points! Thanks.