the 9-12-13 Penny Press

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THE PENNY PRESS,SEPTEMBER 12, 2013 PAGE 6OPINIONFrom The Publisher...We Were All Edward R. Murrow Saying, "This Is London."It was early in the morning 12 years ago today (if you’re reading thison Wednesday, the 11th) that I got a phone call from an old collegefriend of mine who happened to be a pilot. “Turn on the TV,” she said,knowing she had awakened me from across the country.I did, just in time to see United Airlines 175 crash into World TradeCenter tower number two.The day before, I had agreed to sell my Las Vegas radio station, KRLV,and taken a very large check as the earnest money.But, whatever was three or four months down the road, we were stillin the radio business that morning and, with a live morning show, wehad some serious work to do.The first thing that happened was that I tuned into the station, and Iheard a young lady on a radio network that shall go nameless say thefollowing on MY radio station.“America was brought to its knees this morning by. . .”I called Rodd Stowell, my morning man, and told him to take thenewscast off the air and come back directly to us, at which point Isaid that this nation is far too big to be “brought to its knees” by someterrorists. In fact, I said that the only people who can bring this nationto its knees are us.And then, we proceeded to cover the story.Some things you do without thinking about them. That was one ofthem. Of all the things I did and said that day—and it seemed like aday which would never end—I can look back with the most satisfactionon that.I am as proud of my former staff today—all of them—as I was on thatday because we did what we were supposed to do, which was keepcompany with a large group of listeners while we confronted a newnormal. Radio has become more and more just a business since 2001;but on that day, for just a small point in time, we were all Edward R.Murrow telling our listeners “this, is London.” And we probably hadmore listeners that day than any day since.Twelve years has given us some perspective.I was right then and am still right that a bunch of terrorists cannotbring this nation to its knees. If you don’t believe it, get into your carand drive a lap of America. You’ll believe it when you get back.More importantly, I was right that the only people who can bring thisnation to its knees are the people who, as Clint Eastwood famouslysaid, own it. You and me.This is the oldest experiment in self-government in our world.A true patriot understands that this experiment has been passed, handto hand, from its founders to us since 1776, and our job is to preservethat experiment and the values that came with it.We’re certainly not perfect as a nation. And we’ve had, over the years,some fierce debates as to exactly what those values are. Thosedebates are hardwired into our national DNA.But, even when we disagree, we should always uphold the goal ofremaining free to govern ourselves and make government work for itsowners.When we occasionally forget that, we should remember what the goalof those 19 hijackers was.They wanted then—and their successors still do—to impose upon usan inflexible, one-religion regime that uses words like “infidels” and“nonbelievers” to describe anyone who disagrees with them.Here are some secondary truths from 12 years ago.It is NOT true that if we just leave them alone, they will leave us alone.The only thing they understand is a hard target. But it is also truethat if we make ourselves too hard a target, they will have also wonbecause we will have taken our own freedoms away.The American public is really, really smart.Those yahoos hijacked four planes. By the time they had crashed thefirst three planes, the folks on the fourth plane had discovered theirtrue mission and, at a sacrifice of their own lives, stopped it.The real heroes of 9-11 were the people on United 93, who very calmlysaid to themselves and each other, “not on my watch”. The last wordswe heard from that flight, on a cell phone, were from a young mannamed Todd Beamer asking his fellow passengers if they were readyand saying, “Let’s roll.”We don’t know exactly what happened, except to say that Beamer andhis fellow passenger made the score USA 1, Terrorists 3 in a comefrom-behindgame.There were a lot of heroes on that day and the days the followed, butthe truth is that the biggest of them were just ordinary Americansdoing what they thought was right. It is a fact that most Americans areheroes just waiting for the opportunity to make it official.Radical Islamist terrorists can never defeat America because we havethe Todd Beamers of the world on our side. They have clowns like thesehijackers who swear off alcohol and other vices and then spend someof their last days in Las Vegas indulging themselves.We often need intellectual trauma centers to treat ourselves when weshoot ourselves in the foot. But those wounds are usually inflicted withwhat we thought at the time were good intentions. And 237 yearssince we declared that we no longer had a king, we still do not haveone.If 9-11 taught us anything, it taught us that we need to concentrateon keeping it that way.FRED WEINBERG
THE PENNY PRESS,SEPTEMBER 12, 2013 PAGE 7Commentary: Doug FrenchSweet Crony CapitalismSugar prices continue to get hammered as the sweet stuff piles up in silos.The sugar price has been cut in half over the past two years. This wouldn’tbe a big deal except sugar processors borrow from the U.S. Department ofAgriculture. As we pointed out back in March, quoting the Wall Street Journal,The USDA makes loans to sugar processors annually as part of a programthat is rooted in the 1934 Sugar Act. The loans are secured with some 4.1 billionpounds, or 2.05 million tons, of sugar that companies expect to produce fromthe current harvest. That comes to almost a quarter of total U.S. output that theUSDA forecasts for this year.The latest news is the USDA just loaned American Crystal Sugar Co. $71.2million. It’s very late in the season for a company to be taking out a loan. Thecrop year ends October 1st. Until this loan was made, the government had lent$1.1 billion to sugar processors, secured with 2.6 million tons of the sweetener.As of a couple weeks ago, 27% of those loans remained outstanding.The USDA is doing all it can to raise prices. Alexandra Wexler reported forthe WSJ last week, “The U.S. Department of Agriculture bought sugar from adomestic processor and sold it to an ethanol producer at a loss of $2.7 million,the latest move by the agency to boost prices and stave off defaults on federalloans.”While Bernanke’s buying bonds to elevate financial asset prices, the USDAis buying sugar to prop up the price of sweetener. Here’s the plan: “By buyingthe sugar, the USDA aims to boost prices to a level where sugar processors willbe able to repay $298 million in outstanding federal loans that come due at theend of August and September.”The USDA needs a price of 20.90 cents a pound to prevent defaults. Thegovernment has already spent $53.4 million buying sugar and will likely becoming up with more. The sugar program guarantees processors a minimum pricebecause lord knows the American people can’t live without….domestic beet andcane farmers. That must be it, there’s plenty of sugar produced worldwide.Sugar futures are up since June because speculators know the USDA mustbuy. “Sugar brokers and refiners say the government needs to remove another300,000 to 500,000 tons of sugar from the market before October to prevent anyloan defaults.”As far as American Crystal, who can blame them? As the WSJ points out,the company has nothing to lose. They posted 300 million pounds of sugar at23.93 cents a pound. If the price settles above that, the company sells the sugarand repays the loan. If the price falls, it defaults and sticks Uncle Sam with thesugar at a price they couldn’t sell it for in the market.Sweet crony capitalism down on the farm.DOUG FRENCHCommentary: Sally PipesAbuse of Drug Discount Program:Corrosive Crony CapitalismFederal lawmakers are constantly tinkering with the healthcare market.Often, these invasions have perverse consequences.Indeed, one federal initiative designed to provide poor Americans withdiscounted drugs has morphed into an ungainly operation fattening the bottomlines of pharmacies and hospitals.Enacted in 1992, the “340B” program requires drug companies to providesteep discounts on drugs to qualifying hospitals and clinics. The program wasmeant to help institutions that serve large numbers of low-income or uninsuredAmericans.From the outset, however, 340B has been plagued with problems. And now,it often fails to actually help vulnerable patients.The first major flaw is the program’s eligibility requirements for healthcareproviders. The existing eligibility formula does not measure obviously relevantmetrics such as the percentage of uninsured patients a hospital serves or theamount of uncompensated care it provides.A Government Accountability Office report confirmed that even somehospitals that just “provide a small amount of care to low-income individuals...could claim 340B discounts.” And a study by Avalere Health found that stateswith fewer uninsured residents actually had higher shares of hospitals takingadvantage of 340B.Second, the program doesn’t require that discounted medications bedispensed only to people who actually need them. As a result, many hospitalsare selling drugs they purchased on discount at full price to patients with privateinsurance coverage.Finally, the hospitals and pharmacies dispensing these drugs aren’t requiredto pass the savings onto patients.As a result of these gaping flaws, a drug program meant to help the uninsuredhas turned into an arbitrage operation that lets hospitals and retail pharmacies buybillions of dollars’ worth of steeply discounted drugs, bill insurance companiesand patients the full retail price, and then pocket the difference.When Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) looked into the program, he foundthat the Duke University Hospital — where only 5 percent of patients wereuninsured — was able to leverage the discount program to boost its net incomeby almost $50 million last year.“Hospitals are reaping sizable 340B discounts on drugs and then turningaround and up-selling them to fully insured patients,” Grassley wrote in a letterto the agency overseeing the 340B program.340B now represents an unholy alliance between moneyed interests andpublic regulators. The free market has been undermined. Many low-incomepatients genuinely in need of help are being left out in the cold. Drug companiesare being forced to sell a growing volume of products at severe discount —leaving many with little choice but to make up for those lost revenues by raisingprices on other consumers.Congress and regulators have compounded the problem over the yearsby repeatedly expanding 340B. Almost one-third of hospitals nationally nowparticipate.The largest and most troubling expansion came in 2010, when regulatorsauthorized hospitals to contract with an unlimited number of outside pharmaciesanywhere in the country to dispense 340B discounted drugs. Previously,hospitals could only use in-house pharmacies or contract with a single pharmacy.This particular change has led to a dramatic increase in the number ofcontract pharmacies benefiting from 340B. In 2010, there were just under 4,000.Today, that number has jumped to 30,000 — a 700 percent increase.Accordingly, the total value of 340B discounts has also exploded and isprojected to grow significantly in the coming years.These expansions are making a bad problem even worse. 340B is toooften being abused to bolster hospital profits. Healthcare providers shouldbe competing in a free and open market — not exploiting a well-intentionedprogram meant to help low-income Americans.The abuse of 340B represents corrosive cronycapitalism at its worst. Lawmakers need to fix this program.SALLY PIPESSally C. Pipes is President, CEO, and Taube Fellow in Health Care Studies at the PacificResearch Institute. Her latest book is The Cure for Obamacare (Encounter 2013).
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