Market failure for vaccines
To the Editor:
I am writing in reply to Michelle Dubert's column on tort reform and the flu vaccine shortage ("Progress is necessary on tort reform," The Daily Pennsylvanian, 11/04/04). I would like to offer a few additional facts, as well as another reason for why there is a shortage. This reason has less to due with suits and more to do with price. Simply put, as a society, we do not pay enough for the flu shot.
The real problem is that there is a market failure in the flu vaccine supply-demand system. Governments are supposed to correct such market failures. It is estimated that the lack of enough flu vaccine this year could cost the nation $20 billion in lost productivity. Leaving aside medical costs, divided over the population, the societal economic value of the flu shot should be at least $100 per shot (and probably several times that). Yet, the government and private payers pay less than $10 per shot. In same cases, only $3.
It takes complex and delicate manufacturing using tens of millions of eggs to make a flu vaccine batch. And a new version must be made each year, limiting efficiency and mass-production savings. I believe it is the simple cost of production and relative lack of reimbursement that drives manufacturers out of the supply side.
On the demand side, a lack of recognition or willingness to provide the true value for the shot means supply will run short. Just as government pays for the Air Force because no one individual or business can afford such an investment, the flu shot must be considered in the same light. It is another form of national defense with enormous positive externalities.
The path to enough flu shots, then, requires government to fulfill one its moral and economic purposes: to provide for the common defense (in this case from influenza) and to correct market failures. Were the government to pay $50 per shot instead of $3 to $10, for instance, we would simultaneously guarantee a surplus each year and save society tens of billions of dollars in direct and indirect costs -- not to mention lives.
Evan Fieldston
WHG '03
The writer is an instructor at the School of Medicine and a resident at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.
Demoralizing suppression
To the Editor:
While television news stations reported excitedly on record voter turnout and the appearance of democracy in action, my colleagues and I worked tirelessly behind the scenes to preserve every citizen's right to vote in the face of suppressive tactics. My unique position as one of the several poll watcher coordinators for the Kerry campaign brought me face-to-face with something the television cameras seemed to have missed: scores of shameless tactics employed by some Republican activists at the polls, intent on keeping voter turnout as minimal, and white, as possible. While handling hundreds, literally hundreds, of complaints on Election Day, I knew that, irrespective of outcome, democracy as a viable practice was being tested.
In a polling station located in a private home on Walnut Street, residents informed voters that they were required to vote Republican. Republicans traveling to Pennsylvania from other states descended on polling places in white vans, distributing misinformation ("Vote in this district and lose your student aid!") and intentionally creating chaos and confusion in the already interminably long queues. Most offensive of all were those stationed at almost every polling location in the city, armed with lists of voters, ready to challenge any registrant who did not have a long and documented history of voting in that district.
While the numbers suggest that it is unlikely that any suppression affected the results of the election, the mere existence of these tactics is demeaning and demoralizing to us all.
Bryan Tallevi
Law '05
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