Finally a fair argument.

The group made a series of recommendations to reduce the influence of drug companies, most notably calling for "stringent regulation" and possible elimination of the "common practice" of providing physicians with small gifts, pharmaceutical samples, travel to medical conferences, speaking honoraria, and consulting and research contracts.
[ BlueOregon: It's time to rein in Big Pharma ]

My comment:

Opposition to the unfair exertion of monopolistic powers is just good old fashioned pro-capitalist behavior.

I do like to hear that there is a role reversal on the issue of bribes that are not called bribes, as to this issue.

If there is a deduction on the costs (or the true value thereof) by the drug companies for the samples then there should be a matching claim of income by the recipients. Newspapers that take adds call it income. A Dr. should call it income too.

At 20 billion dollars that should mean that Oregon gets about 200 million (I just use a 1 per cent population ratio for ballpark numbers like these). If it was taxed as income then nearly 20 million dollars could be derived just from taxing the bribes.

Billy Dalto and Douglass Riggs are, by the way, responsible for my future claim to call income as not income because I spent it on a good cause of my own choosing, even if it is not just for the purpose of renting space at the convention center to advocate for health care for the poor by giving Billy a pulpit.

Tax free money to buy space for Billy to prance in public is a gift too, a campaign gift, that must be declared, both for Douglass Riggs' income and as a campaign gift to Billy (and the small set of other confused folks from Animal Farm).

I wouldn't let the drug companies set the value of the bribes (for income taxation purposes) or they will price them like stock options, free for now because we are not smart enough to set a value, and instead price the in-kind bribes at what it would cost to obtain them in the open market from those very same Doctors that sell (or push) those drugs to their poor patients.

FURTHER COMMENT:

I cannot find any provisions in the incorporation statutes, including those for non-profits, that allow a doctor in their own name to play the role of a non-profit.

If a doctor wants to also play the role of non-profit they can create some entity other than themselves to take receipt of samples. The entity can exist to give such samples, gifts, to the public. Such non-profit entity can, because it is a non-profit, and because it is a condition of obtaining such non-profit status for tax purposes, agree to keep their books open for inspection by the Attorney General.

"Thank you for your question. My bill, HB2817, would not affect doctors giving out free samples. Almost all of us have benefitted from this practice."

All of us have been harmed by this practice. It is part of a scheme to keep prices higher than they would otherwise be. It is related to effective maintenance of a monopoly. If I had enough private resources or the position of the Attorney General I could either bring a class action on behalf of the poor or charges [of] unfair trade practices against the Doctors, together with big pharmaceutical companies, to remedy the harm to us all from the prices that are carefully kept too high.

I am an economist and I am used to the idea of looking at things from a net-benefit perspective, and in particular things related to prices and the extraction of monopolistic rent.

Kari, on January 16, 2004, I remarked about the particularly thorough and grotesque intrusiveness of the DHS's own rules and questions for determining the poorness of citizens so as to get aid from the government. In large measure this is to get aid to cover high prices, the high prices to which I object to as monopolistic.
My present link to this earlier whine is here.
http://pdxnag.com/drupal/node/312

Go look at DHS's own page here; and particularly click on item 11 on that page entitled "Counting Client Assets." A poor person that needs care, as a condition of getting that care, must fully splay out their entire set of private resources, at the risk of state criminal charges for fraud and always with the risk of a state demand to return the cost of services provided by the state to cover stuff like high priced drugs, all just to prove their poverty.

As a genuine advocate for the poor I would say that a focus price, including the dividing line between free sample and monopolistic price, would provide ample opportunity to achieve a net-benefit, in aggregate, to all. Lower prices would allow more people to be covered and reduce the demand for ever more rigid eligibility requirements for public funds that flow like a raging river to big pharmaceutical companies, in the name of the poor.

Bruce Weber at OSU's Agricultural and Resource Economics department routinely addresses issues of rural poverty in Oregon. I received my undergrad degree in Agricultural and Resource Economics from OSU, though my real curiosity was internationally-related developmental economics. My adviser had said, many years ago, that I could do more good for rural Oregon by going to law school. I would like that to be as true now as then.

So, Kari, your admonition about excusing and avoiding the issue of free samples falls on deaf ears, from an economic perspective.

If what you want is a vigorous presentation of the needs of the poor for medical care I can give it to you. What I won't do, or at least try not to do, is suppress analysis so as to isolate on politically targeted attack left or right. What I will do, or at least try to do, is redirect politically targeted attack left or right, toward genuine analysis. I am as much an opportunist as any other.

The precise wording from HB 2817 of "subsidy or other economic benefit" would squarely include free samples. It would fit conclusively within the statutory construction terminology of "plain meaning," thus avoiding the intricacies noted in the frequently cited case of PGE v. BOLI. The referenced journal article is not inconsistent with the inclusion of free samples too.

Have I made my case?

(Billy got intemperate in a past email to me on the issue above regarding the convention center gig, so I have cover in the event he might take personal offense to my reference in the earlier comment. I could make it personal if I wanted, or if I am sufficiently prodded; in the interest of the poor.)