False Diagnosis (And the Passing of Arlen Specter)

REASON MAGAZINE ^ | June 1, 1996 | Virginia Postrel

[rlmorel]

It is the collective government bureaucratization of industry that has done more to destroy industry in this country than any other single thing besides unions.

I work in health care, and there is currently a medical-grade barium shortage. Many hospitals have run out of barium to perform tests like Barium Enemas, swallowing studies, etc. My hospital, which kept a good stock on hand but will run out by the end of the week. We had other hospitals calling us to ask if we could loan them barium.

This shortage was caused because we killed the industry that supplied the barium. Due to the hostile climate for industry in this country due to hyper-regulation, overtaxation and government intrusion, the plants in this country gradually boarded up over the years and no new plants were built.

Today, there are two medical-grade barium plants in North America, one in Mexico run by Tycho International, and one up in Montreal. From being a diverse industrial base, our industrial policies have gradually destroyed that competition by making it impossible for companies to compete, resulting in just two plants in North America.

Then, the plant in Mexico (big surprise here) was shut down because of bacterial contamination of the product. Guess what? That leaves only ONE plant in North America (Montreal) running 24x7 to try to keep up with demand, and they simply can’t. And there aren’t a huge amount of options for doing alternate types of studies without barium contrast because the alternatives are generally a lot more expensive and won’t be reimbursed. Patient care is suffering as a result.

Does this sound familiar? It should, it is the same kind of thing we see going on in the energy sector, particularly with refineries. Due to the environmental, regulatory and other barriers placed in the way, no new refineries have been built in this country since 1976. We have therefore been running our refineries at higher and higher capacity, squeezing more and more out of the same infrastructure by operating them longer and deferring maintenance and improvements.

So with petroleum refineries, we are operating on the edge. One fire, one storm, one strike, one unexpected (or even expected and planned) shutdown means immediate shortages and increased prices for the consumer.

Unless we get a grip on dealing with environmentalists and dialing back government hyper-regulation of industry of everything from environmental to worker relations, industry in this country is doomed. It isn’t dead yet. But it will be.

[zeugma]

Your mention of Packard and HP immediately brought to mind Carly Fiorina, a destroyer and wannabe public servant, also a Republican. I use the term "destroyer" in its naval sense since she left the hulks of HP and Lucent in her wake.

Yup. She took a company that was innovative and made some really great products (that most people don't even know about) and ran it into the ground, then stepped off thinking she'd done something good. I had an HP "Test and Measurement" catalog years ago. It was a hardbound book, with some really neat devices. I always wanted my very own atomic clock.

One testament to HP's products is that people still use 20+ year old HP calculators.

[dennisw]

I agree 100%. These stifling, job killing, business killing regulations come at you from all levels of Gov’t. Federale, state, county etc
But just to zero in on the EPA, this is the Federale agency I despise the most. 50% of the Federal Gov’t is a jobs program for useless liberals and affirmative action babies. So the EPA will mess with the producers of America.... much of this is simply to justify their paychecks and their miserable job’s existence. IOW if the EPA don’t hassle our producers they could be out of a job down the road. Unless they have one of those useless eater Federale jobs where you can shut the door, pull down the blinds and surf for porn all day. Obviously America would be a lot better off if each “worker” at EPA did exactly this

Take the EEOC and Department of Education. Those are huge affirmative action hiring halls and their main purpose is to provide paychecks to AA babies. A little secret is how heavily gay and lesbian the Federal workforce in DC area is. This heavy gay hiring is not duplicated in say, Montana’s Federale workforce