Categories:
Liberty
Regulation
In February 2012, I wrote on EconLog:
Nevertheless, there is a way that the federal government now cuts access to contraceptives in a way that substantially raises the cost. Were the government to get rid of the regulation that does this, women’s access to contraceptives would rise and the cost would fall.
What is the regulation? It’s the one that requires contraceptive pills to be prescription drugs. If, instead, drug companies were allowed to sell contraceptives over the counter, access would rise and cost would fall.
It took the feds only 12 years. People can now buy oral contraceptives on Amazon.
READER COMMENTS
Peter
Mar 18 2024 at 5:49pm
My only complaint with claiming this was a victory is that implies deregulation to lower cost and increase access or increase liberty was the intent. The goal was purely to stick it to social conservatives post Dobbs. The ADRs on BC are vastly higher than most prescription drugs yet unsurprisingly I still have to get a prescription for fish oil, pain killers, ultrasounds, etc.
johnson85
Mar 18 2024 at 7:11pm
Yea, I’ve got no problem with birth control being over the counter (I’d be fine with most drugs being over the counter), but I almost think birth control is a bad candidate because patients already don’t seem to be warned about the potential impacts. I don’t know how unrepresentative this is, but we have a significant percentage of women in our social circle that had bad reactions to birth control. Ranging from just being generally moody and unpleasant to being complete basket cases. And basically none of them were warned by their provider to tell their partners to be on the look out. The lucky ones had a bad enough reaction that it was obvious that something was going on and it was pretty easy to figure out what had recently changed. The unlucky ones got worse gradually and went years before having essentially a miracle transformation when they got off the pill for unrelated reasons.
David Henderson
Mar 18 2024 at 7:32pm
Good points. That’s why it’s often a good idea to talk to a pharmacist. I’ve found them quite willing to discuss side effects. They’re often willing to do so even if you don’t buy the drug at their drug store because many of these highly trained people are just itching to share their expertise.
The way I put it in a few speeches on medical care over the years is:
Imagine how frustrating it must be to be a pharmacist who doesn’t work in a compounding pharmacy. They have trained for years to understand the complicated ins and outs of drugs. And after they graduate and get a job, what do they get to do? Count.
David Henderson
Mar 18 2024 at 7:28pm
You write:
No, it doesn’t.
You write:
That could be, although I doubt it. In complicated political decisions there’s almost never “the goal.” There are a few goals, even if the one you identify is the dominant one.
Victories for freedom of choice often come about due to considerations that have little or nothing to do with freedom of choice.
You write:
Good point. Let’s work on getting freedom of choice on those items too. Although I hadn’t heard of the need for a prescription for fish oil.
Jon Murphy
Mar 18 2024 at 9:30pm
To build off David’s point above, one thing studying economics has taught me is an appreciation for emergent order. Much of what happens is due to human action, but not human design. Yes, perhaps the only intended goal was to score some petty political points. But freedom advanced nonetheless. Just like the intended goal of the grocer was to make profit, but the people of my small town in rural America still get fed.
The invisible hand is an amazing thing.
steve
Mar 18 2024 at 11:40pm
I think Oregon was the first place to let pharmacists order BC pills, in 2016. It’s now active in 29 states and DC and has been growing. BC pills, especially progestin only ones are pretty safe so makes sense, but this has clearly been a growing trend preceding the current abortion issues.
My only 2 concerns with pharmacists ordering pills, and to be sure they could do a lot fo them, is that there is a coordination issue. It’s actually nice now that most of our pts have med histories in the EMR so we know what they take. We lose that if they have stuff ordered by pharmacist and not clear how they would monitor for bad effects especially if they required testing. Second, for pharmacists this would largely be an abstract exercise as they wont have actually seen, most of them, the bad effects of the drugs, only read about them. Also not clear who would handle issues when pharmacy is closed or even on days when you have a pharmacist who isn’t thrilled about do prescriptions. Number of pharmacy spouses in my group and they have mixed feelings.
Steve
Mactoul
Mar 18 2024 at 8:39pm
Why is it that the 19c — golden age of economic freedom and freedom to immigrate– did not correspond to a socially liberal period?
And while at present we are on the road to serfdom but freedom in social liberal sense is reaching unthought of heights?
Jon Murphy
Mar 18 2024 at 9:26pm
I don’t know. I think it did. The 19th Century saw great liberalization of traditionally oppressed people: the end of slavery in much of the world (such as the British Empire, the US, the French Empire, etc), huge advances in human rights, the collapse of traditional oppressive social organizations like aristocracy, caste systems, and the like.
Furthermore, we saw those advances generally advance in the 20th century as well (the first half of the century notwithstanding). Indeed, once the threat of nationalism was dealt with following the collapse of the Axis powers, we saw increased huge advances in human freedom & economic freedom. The socally distructive anti-immigration and anti-liberal tendencies of the late 1800s/early 1900s were generally reversed.
These past few years have been a monumentous step backward, true. But I take heart in the stories of the 19th and 20th centuries. Liberalism is a hearty weed, not a delicate flower. If the rising tide of nationalism, economic isolationism, CRT/marxism, etc., can once again be swept aside, I truly believe we will be in a new golden age for humanity.
Jon Murphy
Mar 18 2024 at 9:40pm
To make explicit what is implicit in my earlier post:
Human advancement is a process, not an end. It takes time. Certain events are precursors. In the 19th Century, the ideas formed in the 18th Century were taking hold. The 19th Century saw many great advances. Advances which were continued (with some setbacks) into the 20th Century. Where liberal ideas were abandoned (socialist Europe, Asia, India etc), the advances stopped or retreated while they continued in the liberal world.
To imply, as you try to do, that social liberalism (by which I think you mean things like equal rights) is disconnected from economic and political liberalism because things were less free in the 19th century than now doesn’t hold. It’s like saying “If education is so important then why are the no high schoolers with PhDs?”
Social change takes a long time (as it should. Places where they have tried to force social change have become violent and unpleasant). And the evidence you cite strengthens the case for liberalism, not weakens it
Jose Pablo
Mar 23 2024 at 12:41am
If you consider the late 1780’s as 19c (and admissible poetic license), this was the most “socially liberal” (whatever that means) period that the world has ever seen.
Of the two relevant “experiments” one was fully reversed by 1814 and the other more or less survived (although severely damaged) until the restoration of Trump the Second.
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