Responding to my report that Ms. Molly Mills e-mailed me to claim that (original emphasis)
[a]ll sick people should have access to drugs at affordable prices!!!!!
the great University of Virginia economics teacher – and antitrust scholar (and economics-mystery writer) – Ken Elzinga asks via e-mail to me:
One wonders if people like these own a home – and would ever think that “everyone deserves a home at affordable prices” and would therefore part with their home on terms way below the market value.
Of course you can safely bet your pension that the answer is no.
Similarly, I wonder if people with Ms. Mills’s sentiments believe that employees of pharmaceutical companies – not only the top-level executives, but also the researchers, the accountants, the secretaries, the security guards, and the janitors – should be forced to work at below-market wages in order to help reduce the final selling prices of drugs. And should pharmacists and cashiers at Walgreen’s, CVS, and other drug stores also be forced to work at below-market wages to further reduce drug prices?
I wonder also if such people as Ms. Mills, when investing, would – in order to help keep drug prices down – voluntarily and knowingly and regularly buy corporate stocks Ph that promise a real risk-adjusted rate of return lower than the real risk-adjusted rate of return that these investors could earn by buying stocks Ap and Wm.
