Is James Glassman a credible voice for free market economics?
Two nearly identical transcripts of the debate panel, “Border wars,” featuring Milton Friedman, Gil Gutknecht, Sally Pipes and Don McCanne are now available on the Internet. One is available on the website of Pacific Research Institute, which hosted the event. The other is on the website of Tech Central Station, “Where Free Markets Meet Technology,” which is hosted by James K. Glassman who also served as moderator of this panel debate.
An excerpt from the transcript posted at Pacific Research Institute:
Glassman: This is the last question from the floor and I’m going to ask it
to Dr. McCanne first. Then I’d like to hear Congressman Gutknecht’s comments, and we’ll end with Dr. Friedman’s comments. The question is this: Top-down, command and control stifles innovation, writes someone sitting in front of me. I think that’s a pretty good proposition. How does Dr. McCanne expect innovation to occur?
McCanne: Well, just not top-down control, but funding. You know, price controls and budgeting and so forth. And that really is an important issue in innovation. But if we look at the history in technological innovation, probably two of the very greatest advances in the last half century have been MRI scans and CT scans. Each of those appropriately received the Nobel Prize for those developments. Where were they developed? Well, the Nobel Prize was shared with a British scientist. England has amongst the lowest rate of funding of their health care system, but that did not stop the technological innovation that occurred in the CT scanning and MRIs, and some of the other research that has taken place.
Glassman: Let me just refine this question a little bit and hear from the congressman, and then finally from Dr. Friedman. Innovation is something I spend a lot of my time thinking about. And it’s quite clear that our system, which is relatively free in these areas despite problems with the FDA, does promote innovation in drugs. I think that would be very hard to argue against. By disrupting that system in the way that you propose, many people think you would stifle that kind of innovation. Where is this innovation going to come from if it’s not from drug companies wanting to make decent profits on developing new drugs?
McCanne: There’s no way the drug industry is going to walk away from $1.6
trillion, period.
Gutknecht: Well, first of all I want to pierce this myth that they don’t do any research in Europe with the system that they have. If you look at the major pharmaceutical companies, Glaxo is a British company. Bayer is a German company…
The Pacific Research Institute transcript:
http://www.pacificresearch.org/press/rel/2004/ma04-01-27/transcript2.pdf
For the video:
http://www.pacificresearch.org/borderwarsdebate_video.html
For the audio:
http://www.pacificresearch.org/borderwarsdebate_audio.html
And an excerpt from the same portion of the transcript as it was posted at
Tech Central Station (This is essentially the same except for the absence of
my comment about the drug industry not walking away from $1.6 trillion):
Glassman: Let me just add, this is the last question from the floor, I’m
going to ask it to Dr. McCan first. I’d like to hear Congressman Gutknecht’s
comments, and then we’ll end with Dr. Friedman’s comments. The question
is this: Top-down, command and control stifles innovation writes someone
sitting in front of me. I think that’s a pretty good proposition. How
does Dr. McCan expect innovation to occur?
Dr. McCan: Well, just not top-down control, but funding. You know,
price controls and budgeting and so forth. And that really is an important
issue in innovation. But if we look at the history in technological
innovation, probably two of the very greatest advances in the last half century have been MRI scans and CT scans. Each of those appropriately received the Nobel Prize for those developments. Where were they developed? Well, the
Nobel Prize was shared with a British scientist. England has amongst the
lowest rate of funding of their health care system, but that did not stop the
technological innovation that occurred in the CT scanning and MRIs, and
some of the other research that has taken place.
Glassman: Let me just refine this question a little bit and hear from the
congressman, and then finally from Dr. Friedman. Innovation is kind of what
I spend a lot of my time thinking about. And it’s quite clear that our system, which is relatively free in these areas despite problems with the FDA, does promote innovation in drugs. I mean I think that would be very hard to argue against. Disrupting that system in the way that you propose, many people think would stifle that kind of innovation. Where is this innovation going to come from if it’s not from drug companies wanting to make decent profits on developing new drugs?
Rep Gutknecht: Well, first of all I want to pierce this myth that they
don’t do any research in Europe with the system that they have. If you look
at the major pharmaceutical companies, Glaxo is a British company. Bayer, as
you mentioned, we call it Bayer, is a German company…
The Tech Central Station transcript:
http://www.techcentralstation.com/020204D.html
Comment: James Glassman did not allow opening statements, and he controlled
all questions. (But he did allow himself an opening statement, and Sally
Pipes added her own written statement to the beginning of the PRI transcript.)
On the video you will see that Glassman did grant me permission to make the
very brief comment about the $1.6 trillion. We can speculate as to why he
left it out of his version of the transcript. But it does seem to be a powerful argument against his point that not enough funds would be available
to provide the profits that would encourage innovation in new products.
Regardless, this is a time for open and honest discussion of the serious
problems that plague our health care system. We need to lay ideology aside
and forthrightly address the real issues. Suppressing debate and striking
out responses not to one’s liking does not add to this process.