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« Back to Opinion & Analysis
Large Corporations Oppose Free Enterprise
Editorial for the Houston Community Newspaper, Inc.
Steven F. Hotze, M.D.
January 10, 2008
Large American corporations do not really believe in free enterprise. They believe in monopolies or oligarchies, and use governmental entities to advance their business interests.
Consider the pharmaceutical, insurance, chemical, food, financial and oil industries. They spend tens of millions to elect politicians, and then spend billions more on lobbyists who influence legislation in the United States Congress, and the state legislatures. Whose interests do you think these corporations are trying to protect?
These corporations create false issues against smaller competitors in hopes of creating a media outcry. When politicians feel media pressure they introduce legislation to appease the public. When this happens the corporations just lick their lips. It is a great opportunity for them to do their dirty work.
The corrective legislation is usually drafted by the lobbyists of the large corporations. This leads to new rules by some governmental regulatory agency to “protect” the consumer. Invariably these agencies are heavily influenced by corporate lobbyists. New regulations are adopted which tend to protect the large corporations by creating such onerous and expensive regulations that their small business competitors are forced out of business. The large corporations simply pass the regulatory cost on to the consumer.
This activity is not free enterprise capitalism. It is corporate socialism.
Wyeth makes Premarin and Prempro hormones for menopausal women. These hormones were discredited in the Women’s Health Initiative in 2002 because they caused an increase in heart disease, strokes, and blood clots to the lungs. Subsequently, Wyeth’s profits plummeted several billions of dollars as women transitioned to natural, bio-identical hormones. Wyeth then filed a complaint with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) that compounding pharmacies, which are governed by state boards of pharmacy, were preparing these bio-identical hormones for their customers. Wyeth asked the FDA to prevent the compounding pharmacies, their competitors, from making bio-identical hormones.
Wyeth is a customer of the FDA. It pays drug user fees for the approval of its products. The entire drug industry pays 25% of the FDA’s budget in drug user fees which amounts to nearly $350 million annually. Compounding pharmacies pay no drug user fees because they are not under the FDA’s jurisdiction.
At the request of the pharmaceutical companies, the FDA has illegally sought to federalize pharmacies. The FDA lost a federal lawsuit to compounding pharmacies in 2006 in which the judge held that compounding pharmacies were under state rather than federal jurisdiction. That decision was appealed by the FDA and the 5th Circuit Court reviewed it on January 10, 2008.
The day before that review, the FDA announced it was going to restrict doctors from prescribing and pharmacies from preparing bio-identical hormones. Wyeth stated it supported the FDA in this decision. What a coincidence!
Republicans need to understand that supporting corporations does not mean they support free enterprise. The conservative, free enterprise solution is to eliminate agencies which work in collusion with corporations to destroy competition.
We must protect the small business owners and ensure their right to compete against large corporations.
About Conservative Republicans of Texas
Steven F. Hotze, M.D. is president of Conservative Republicans of Texas and founder of Hotze Health & Wellness Center in Houston, Texas.
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