Freedom Line Blog

America’s pharmaceutical innovators lead the world, saving and improving people’s lives on a daily basis.  But relentless efforts to move toward a single-payer system and impose destructive price controls threaten our continuing progress.

Drug maker Biogen recently announced exciting results of a clinical trial for a new drug to treat Alzheimer’s disease. Yet, despite the promise that this could be a breakthrough that gets us closer to a cure, the medical community and families with loved ones suffering from the disease are holding their collective breath.

Why? Because we’ve been down this road before.

Alzheimer’s is one of the most complex and pernicious medical conditions that we face, with no known cure and an immense emotional and economic toll. Worse, the rate of diagnosis is increasing and estimates suggest the cost of the disease has already surpassed $259 billion.  According to one Alzheimer’s Association spokesperson, it will “bankrupt Medicare.” By 2050, the cost of care for Alzheimer’s patients could exceed $1 trillion annually.

That is a crisis medical professionals are rushing to solve, but progress has been slow. An estimated 99.6 percent of Alzheimer’s drug “candidates” (i.e. experimental drugs designed to treat Alzheimer’s) fail.

In 2018 alone, high profile failures in Phase 3 clinical trials from drug makers like Eli Lilly and Merck represent decades of work and hundreds of millions of dollars in research yielding little to no results. Even Biogen’s announcement, as promising as it is, has only a 50 percent chance of gaining FDA approval, according to analysts.

The issue of high drug prices is real, but too often the public doesn’t understand the immense risk – and cost – pharmaceutical companies take on to research and develop new treatments for devastating diseases like Alzheimer’s. While everyone hopes Biogen’s new drug is a success, many drugs – including many recent potential treatments for Alzheimer’s – never make it through the clinical trials to market. What’s worse, the lack of transparency in our health care payment system drives costs up even further.

Drug makers invest hundreds of millions of dollars and more into developing new treatments and cures, with no guarantees their research and development will yield results.  That risk must be protected to ensure the continued motivation to strive for better treatments and new cures.

Efforts to cap prices and leverage government buying power via a single-payer system threaten to curtail research and delay or eliminate future cures. It’s a gamble that the United States cannot make, both for our own health and for future generations.

Join CFIF Corporate Counsel and Senior Vice President Renee Giachino today from 4:00 p.m. CDT to 6:00 p.m. CDT (that’s 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. EDT) on Northwest Florida’s 1330 AM WEBY, as she hosts her radio show, “Your Turn: Meeting Nonsense with Commonsense.” Today’s guest lineup includes:

4:00 CDT/5:00 pm EDT:  Alex Brill, Resident Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute – Unemployment Rate Data:

4:15 CDT/5:15 pm EDT:  John Malcolm, Vice President, Institute for Constitutional Government, Director of the Meese Center for Legal & Judicial Studies and Senior Legal Fellow at The Heritage Foundation – A Look at Potential SCOTUS Nominees;

4:30 CDT/5:30 pm EDT:  Ilya Shapiro, Senior Fellow in Constitutional Studies and Editor-in-Chief, Cato Supreme Court Review – Justice Kennedy’s Legacy and the Harvard Admissions Case;

4:45 CDT/5:45 pm EDT:  Gayle Trotter, Attorney and Spokeswoman for Judicial Crisis Network – #AnotherGreatJustice and the Confirmation Process;

5:00 CDT/6:00 pm EDT:  Timothy Lee, CFIF’s Senior Vice President of Legal and Public Affairs – The Janus Decision; and

5:30 CDT/6:30 pm EDT:  Travis Smith, PhD, Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at Concordia University – Superhero Ethics.

Listen live on the Internet here. Call in to share your comments orStudi ask questions of today’s guests at (850) 623-1330.

Today brought yet another impressive U.S. employment report from the Labor Department, with an unexpectedly high 213,000 new jobs added in the month of June (versus the expected 195,000).

But the report includes a particularly impressive number after nearly a decade of people just giving up on working during the Obama era malaise.  Over 600,000 Americans decided that the market is so hot that they got off the sidelines and entered the game:

The increase in the unemployment rate came due to a rise in the labor force participation rate, which increased 0.2 percentage points to 62.9 percent as 601,000 people came off the sidelines and re-entered the labor force.”

Continuing the sports analogy, The Wall Street Journal notes that what we’re witnessing is a different kind of ballgame under the Trump Administration than the unprecedented economic sluggishness that characterized the Obama “expansion”:

Steady hiring and low unemployment shows the labor market continues to be an area of strength for the economy since the recession ended nine years ago.  What might be different now is that other aspects appear to be picking up steam.  Some economists project economic output rose at better than 4% annually in the second quarter for the first time since 2014.

Rising consumer spending, manufacturing output and exports are expected to have contributed to the gain, set to be officially reported later this month.  If sustained, that would be a turn from much of the expansion in which hiring has been consistent, but growth has been sluggish, holding near a 2% annual rate.  One explanation is wages.  Even though Americans were finding jobs, scant raises left them with little room in their budgets to step up spending.”

It’s amazing what an economic agenda of tax cuts and deregulation can do for an economic cycle that was supposedly on weary legs and amid an era of “secular stagnation” when solid growth was a thing of the past.

And the good economic news just keeps on coming.   American manufacturing companies report a new record high positive outlook in the continuing wake of tax reform and deregulation.  Note the immediate uptick beginning at the very end of 2016:

Record Positivity Among U.S. Manufacturing Companies

Not exactly the post-presidency verdict that Barack Obama or leftists would have preferred, from USA Today:

Ouch

Join CFIF Corporate Counsel and Senior Vice President Renee Giachino today from 4:00 p.m. CDT to 6:00 p.m. CDT (that’s 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. EDT) on Northwest Florida’s 1330 AM WEBY, as she hosts her radio show, “Your Turn: Meeting Nonsense with Commonsense.” Today’s guest lineup includes:

4:00 CDT/5:00 pm EDT: Peter Murphy, Vice President for Policy at the Invest in Education Foundation:

4:15 CDT/5:15 pm EDT: Michael Tanner, Cato Institute Senior Fellow: America’s Growing Entitlement Crisis;

4:30 CDT/5:30 pm EDT: Quin Hillyer, Contributing Editor of National Review Magazine, Senior Editor for The American Spectator Magazine, and Nationally Recognized Authority on the American Political Process: Conservatism Just Ain’t What It Used to Be;

5:00 CDT/6:00 pm EDT: Andrew Moylan, Executive Vice President of the National Taxpayers Union Foundation: SCOTUS and Internet Taxation;

5:15 CDT/6:15 pm EDT: Ryan Radi, Research Fellow and Regulatory Counsel: AT&T/Time Warner Merger; and

5:30 CDT/6:30 pm EDT: William J. Conti, Partner at Baker & Hostetler: Immigration and FBI IG Report.

Listen live on the Internet here. Call in to share your comments or ask questions of today’s guests at (850) 623-1330.

CFIF has long championed greater fairness for recording artists and protection of intellectual property (IP) rights in the music industry.   Among other problems, current law generally protects recording artists’ rights for post-1972 songs, but not pre-1972 classics:

Under byzantine laws, artists receive just compensation whenever their post-1972 recordings are played, but in many cases not for their pre-1972 recordings.  That’s an indefensible and arbitrary artifact that has persisted far too long.  Why should Neil Diamond receive payment whenever ‘America’ is played, but not classics like ‘Solitary Man?’

Fortunately, the opportunity to correct that unfairness has arrived.  Even better, legislation to correct the existing flawed system arrives alongside other music legislation that galvanizes the coalition to finally correct the situation.  As a result, a broad coalition of music organizations representing everyone from songwriters, composers, performers, publishers and labels supports three new pieces of legislation…”

Accordingly, CFIF strongly supports the Music Modernization Act, which passed the House of Representatives unanimously earlier this year:

Introduced by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R – Virginia) and Ranking Member Jerrold Nadler (D – New York), the Music Modernization Act combines music licensing reforms outlined in the CLASSICS Act, Songwriters Equity Act of 2015, the rate standard parity provisions of the Fair Play Fair Pay Act, and AMP Act into a single, consensus piece of legislation.  The MMA addresses specific music legacy issues such as establishing federal copyright protection for artists who recorded before 1972, creating a single licensing entity to administer music publishing rights for all digital music and ensuring producers and engineers receive royalties for their contributions to the music they help create.”

Unfortunately, Senator Ron Wyden (D – Oregon) has counterproductively introduced the so-called “ACCESS to Sound Recordings” Act.

Just as the Music Modernization Act claims nearly unanimous support among all stakeholders in the music industry, Sen. Wyden’s proposed legislation rightfully garners similarly consensus opposition:

Seven leading unions, membership organizations, and advocacy groups representing recording artists, performers, vocalists, musicians, producers, and songwriters today sent a letter to the U.S. Senate detailing the flaws in Sen. Ron Wyden’s so-called ‘ACCESS to Sound Recordings Act.’  The groups, which include American Federation of Musicians, Content Creators Coalition, Future of Music Coalition, The Living Legends Foundation, the Recording Academy (GRAMMYs Organization), The Rhythm & Blues Foundation, and SAG-AFTRA detailed how Wyden’s bill would undermine the retirement security of elderly artists before reiterating their support for the CLASSICS Act.”

The group’s letter, which is worth reading in its entirety of detail, highlights the flaws of Sen. Wyden’s proposal:

We are disappointed that the introduction of the ‘ACCESS Act’ was done without consulting any artist group, organization, or union who would have made it clear that the bill’s eleventh-hour introduction is not a viable solution.  The ‘ACCESS Act’ would undercut the goals of the MMA by cutting compensation for the older artists that it is expressly designed to benefit.  It would unfairly shorten the period in which pre-1972 recordings produce royalties for the artists and copyright owners, effectively shutting down a lifeline of payments to artists who need it most.”

There is simply no justification for Sen. Wyden’s proposed legislation.  The MMA received unanimous House support, which is incredible in this hyperpartisan era, and the Senate should pass it for President Trump’s signature at long last.

Hopefully this will serve as a deterrent lesson to the U.S. Department of Justice, and the federal government more generally.

Yesterday, Federal Judge Richard Leon delivered his decision rejecting the Justice Department’s misguided lawsuit to prevent AT&T and Time Warner from merging.  The government had no business even bringing the suit, as the merger poses no threat of consumer harm.  To the contrary, as noted in today’s Wall Street Journal by Michael D. Smith and Rahul Telang, it promises more choices and greater market competition for American consumers.  Because the merger was “vertical” in nature, rather than a “horizontal” merger of direct market competitors, federal bureaucrats would only inflict harm by delaying or denying its fruition:

[T]he unique characteristics of digital markets have allowed a small number of internet giants – among them Amazon, Google, Netflix and Facebook – to dominate their industries and forestall entry by competitors.  These companies have put serious money into customer connections, data analytics and back-end systems, and these investments scale very well.  Netflix has penetrated more than half of U.S households.  Google and Facebook control almost three-quarters of online advertising.  Amazon does nearly half of all online retail sales.  These are astonishing numbers.

Now that these tech giants have established their downstream power in the distribution business, they are beginning to amass upstream power by getting into the content-creation business…  Given the dominance of Silicon Valley’s internet giants, it makes no sense to prevent AT&T and Time Warner from merging.  These companies aren’t trying to join forces because they want to take control of a dying industry;  they want to be allowed to compete in a new one.”

The American economy has accelerated since President Trump’s election as a consequence of his deregulatory and tax-cutting agenda, and that same logic should apply to the realm of market mergers between mutually bargaining parties.

As one example, Comcast recently announced a bid for certain assets of 21st Century Fox.  In the same way as described above regarding the AT&T/Time Warner merger, Comcast’s acquisition would greatly benefit consumers.  The film and television businesses have never been more competitive, dynamic or creatively rich, and consumers possess more entertainment choices than ever before.  Free markets work, and federal bureaucrats have zero business interfering in this matter.

As Judge Leon noted in his decision, federal government decisions to interfere come at great cost:

The government has had this merger on hold now since October of 2016 when it launched its investigation.  In that 18-plus month period, the companies have twice extended the break-up date to accommodate the government’s litigation of this case.  During that same period, the video programming and distribution industry has continued to evolve at a breakneck pace.  The cost to the defendants and the government to investigate, litigate and try this case has undoubtedly been staggering – easily in the tens of millions of dollars.”

That same logic applies to Comcast’s proposed acquisition.  Let’s not be forced to repeat yesterday’s harsh lesson to the Justice Department, after needless waste of time and taxpayer resources in meritless litigation that only serves to harm American consumers and competitive marketplaces.

In a decision that came as no surprise but nevertheless merits celebration, a federal judge yesterday rejected the Justice Department’s needless lawsuit attempting to block AT&T’s acquisition of Time Warner.

Whenever federal bureaucracies seek to disrupt functioning markets by prohibiting mutual agreements between two willing parties, they carry a heavy burden of proof to establish impending consumer harm.  In this case, the opposite was true – the federal government’s needless interference, not the proposed acquisition, would result in consumer harm.  Accordingly, Judge Richard Leon ruled that Justice’s allegations “do not come close to answering the question before the Court.”

So why is yesterday’s ruling important going forward?  Hopefully, it provides federal bureaucrats an abject lesson against future destructive campaigns of a similar sort.

As one immediate example, consider the proposed merger between T-Mobile and Sprint announced recently.  Although the T-Mobile/Sprint proposal involves characteristics unique to it, it offers the consumer market similar sorts of benefits.

Namely, T-Mobile/Sprint prospectively offers an enhanced array of consumer services in comparison to what is available today.  For example, the two current companies’ differing but complementary assets would create a new network with enhanced capacity, wider coverage and more effective wireless performance for customers than currently exists.  It also promises network upgrades, lower prices and job creation.  In particular, the proposed merger offers significant potential benefits through deployment of the first 5G wireless network in the U.S.

Through that $40 billion investment in 5G, consumers will enjoy data delivery at a lower cost, and the incentive for competitors to similarly lower prices to consumers.  That will also prompt market competition to expand spectrum in rural areas in addition to urban centers, as well as capacity improvements for consumers.

That’s how market competition works.  A T-Mobile/Sprint merger and its 5G deployment would also mean billions in new private infrastructure investment and countless new jobs.  In contrast, the absence of a T-Mobile/Sprint merger would mean slower deployment of a 5G nationwide network, and the absence of a market competitor of greater scale.  Ultimately, that means consumers would lose.

The Trump Administration has demonstrated to date how deregulation can turbocharge the economy and benefit American consumers.  That logic applies with added potency to the ever-evolving telecommunications market, and the Justice Department should learn its lesson and refrain from future needless interference that will only cost consumers and trigger embarrassing legal defeats.

Join CFIF Corporate Counsel and Senior Vice President Renee Giachino today from 4:00 p.m. CDT to 6:00 p.m. CDT (that’s 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. EDT) on Northwest Florida’s 1330 AM WEBY, as she hosts her radio show, “Your Turn: Meeting Nonsense with Commonsense.” Today’s guest lineup includes:

4:00 CDT/5:00 pm EDT:  Karen Kerrigan, President and CEO of the Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council – Sugar Subsidies;

4:15 CDT/5:15 pm EDT:  Ilya Shapiro, Senior Fellow in Constitutional Studies and Editor-in-Chief, Cato Supreme Court Review – SCOTUS Update;

4:30 CDT/5:30 pm EDT:  Marc Scribner, Senior Fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute – Driverless Vehicles;

4:45 CDT/5:45 pm EDT:  Richard Sander, UCLA Professor and Economist – Moving Toward Integration;

5:00 CDT/6:00 pm EDT:  Bruce Herschensohn, American Political Commentator, Author and Senior Fellow at the Pepperdine University School of Public Policy – Singapore Summit;

5:30 CDT/6:30 pm EDT:  Andrew M. Grossman, Partner at Baker & Hostetler – Unappointed Judges; and

5:45 CDT/6:45 pm EDT:   Timothy Lee, CFIF’s Senior Vice President of Legal and Public Affairs – U.S. Competitiveness Ranking and Arbitration.

Listen live on the Internet here. Call in to share your comments or ask questions of today’s guests at (850) 623-1330.

In our latest Liberty Update, we note how the U.S. has quickly reclaimed its position as the world’s most competitive economy under President Trump after slipping under Barack Obama.  This image vividly illustrates one point we highlight – that for the first time ever, the number of job openings exceeds the number of unemployed Americans in the workforce to fill them:

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Jobs, Jobs, Jobs

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Donald Trump’s presidency continues to destroy America, as the political left warned:

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Consumer Confidence Soars

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Paul Krugman, the political left’s favorite economist, claims quite a record for faceplant predictions.  Readers will recall his prediction on election night in November 2016 that markets would “never” recover from the ensuing crash that Donald Trump’s upset victory would trigger.

Here’s another timeless Krugman gem from 1998:

The Left's Favorite Economist

Join CFIF Corporate Counsel and Senior Vice President Renee Giachino today from 4:00 p.m. CDT to 6:00 p.m. CDT (that’s 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. EDT) on Northwest Florida’s 1330 AM WEBY, as she hosts her radio show, “Your Turn: Meeting Nonsense with Commonsense.”  Today’s guest lineup includes:

4:00 CDT/5:00 pm EDT:  Steve Bucci, Visiting Fellow, Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign and National Security Policy at The Heritage Foundation – Better School Security;

4:15 CDT/5:15 pm EDT:  Nicholas Eberstadt, Henry Wendt Chair in Political Economy at the American Enterprise Institute – North Korea;

4:30 CDT/5:30 pm EDT:  Michelle Minton, Senior Fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute – Sports Gambling;

4:45 CDT/5:45 pm EDT:  Michael Cannon, Cato Institute’s Director of Health Policy Studies – The Fate of ObamaCare;

5:00 CDT/6:00 pm EDT:  Commissioners Brecht Heuchan and Fred Karlinsky, Florida Constitution Revision Commission – Proposed Constitutional Provisions; and

5:30 CDT/6:30 pm EDT:  William J. Conti, Partner at Baker & Hostetler – NFL Anthem Policy, John McCain, Recent Primaries and more.

Listen live on the Internet here. Call in to share your comments or ask questions of today’s guests at (850) 623-1330.

CFIF recently highlighted the importance of strengthening intellectual property rights as part of ongoing trade negotiations in a piece entitled “Intellectual Property:  NAFTA Renegotiation Priority #1.” Days later, Senator Pat Toomey (R – Pennsylvania) echoed that call in his Wall Street Journal commentary.

This week, celebrated economist Stephen Moore added his voice in a brilliant commentary entitled “Trade Deals Must Protect Intellectual Property Rights”:

American investments, ingenuity and entrepreneurship have made intellectual property one of our nation’s most important assets.  IP-intensive industries, including software, biotechnology and entertainment, now support nearly one-third of all U.S. jobs.  But too often, our foreign trading partners take unfair advantage of our IP innovations to enrich themselves at our expense.”

Moore proceeds to highlight the pharmaceutical sector as one particularly abused by foreign governments, and notes the enormous cost of IP theft to the U.S. economy by nations like China, then stresses the ominous danger if we fail to act:

Intellectual property is every bit as vital to our economy – if not more so – than steel or aluminum.    America leads the world in computer software;  drugs;  artificial intelligence;  patents;  trademarks;  and music, entertainment and other creative industries.  But how long can that last when competitor nations are ripping off our entrepreneurial companies to the tune of half a trillion dollars a year?”

It’s an excellent piece worth the read, and a welcome call from someone to whom the White House listens.

Inexplicably, the U.S. Senate this week narrowly moved to restore 2015 Obama Administration Federal Communications Commission (FCC) crony capitalist internet regulations.  Here’s the effect that Obama FCC regulation immediately had on mobile broadband investment.  It’s now the duty of the House of Representatives and the Trump Administration to kill this mindless Obama-era attempt to regulate the internet, and we encourage everyone to contact their Representatives and the White House to demand that action.

Neutering the Net

The Center for Individual Freedom applauds Senator Mike Lee on the introduction of the SMARTER Act of 2018.  Among other improvements, this bill includes key reforms to the flawed Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC’s) merger review process, including:  1) establishing a reasonable time limit for agency review to ensure fairer, more transparent and timely decisions, and 2) ending the ability to effectively kill transactions by designating them for hearing before Administrative Law Judges, instead requiring such cases to be litigated in federal court just as the Justice Department must when contesting proposed transactions.

CFIF urges quick Senate passage of the commonsense legislation.

Join CFIF Corporate Counsel and Senior Vice President Renee Giachino today from 4:00 p.m. CDT to 6:00 p.m. CDT (that’s 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. EDT) on Northwest Florida’s 1330 AM WEBY, as she hosts her radio show, “Your Turn: Meeting Nonsense with Commonsense.” Today’s guest lineup includes:

4:00 CDT/5:00 pm EDT:  Jonathan Williams, Chief Economist and Vice President, Center for State Fiscal Reform at the American Legislative Exchange Council – Rich States, Poor States;

4:15 CDT/5:15 pm EDT:  Pete Sepp, President of National Taxpayers Union – Unemployment Report;

4:30 CDT/5:30 pm EDT:  Phil Kerpen, President of American Commitment – New NAFTA;

4:45 CDT/5:45 pm EDT:  Karen Kerrigan, President and CEO of the Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council – Sugar Subsidies;

5:00 CDT/6:00 pm EDT:   Fred Lucas, White House Correspondent at the Daily Signal at The Heritage Foundation – Judicial Nominees and Schneiderman;

5:15 CDT/6:15 pm EDT:  Richard Samp, Chief Counsel, Washington Legal Foundation – Drug Innovators and Liability; and

5:30 CDT/6:30 pm EDT:  Timothy Lee, CFIF’s Senior Vice President of Legal and Public Affairs – Intellectual Property and More.

Listen live on the Internet here. Call in to share your comments or ask questions of today’s guests at (850) 623-1330.