Monopoly and Distribution

03-28

Washington Times

Yijun Liu

On October 16, 2017, the first formal session of the senate finance committee ends. The process of this session was mainly divided into free speech and lobby. Several senators of the Republican Party impressed the reporter, for they make a great contribution to the progress of the conference.

Today, conference discussed a bill, which was proposed by Sen. Orrin Hatch and Sen. Bill Cassidy. The bill mainly focused on the overpricing of drugs. Sen. Orrin Hatch, as the presenter, demonstrated a program that was aiming at reformation the previous policies and help Americans striving for their rights to choose an affordable Medicare. The first and foremost strategy he had given was distributing the money to each states, in order to ensure every state and every American have equal rights.

Sen. Susan Collins from committee on HELP questioned republicans that whether this policy will make the United States face the problem of independent states.

「Sen. Cassidy thinks this is a small probability conjecture, and the top priority for the republicans right now is to implement Medicare.」 Sen. Cassidy explained.

Another central figure in the Republican Party is Sen. Pat Tommey, during his opening speech, he expressed his ideas for the bill of are abolishing Obamacare and establishing online purchase of healthcare. Reporter was fond of his idea in creating national healthcare

network. The reason why he came up with the strategy was the reducing of monopoly, providing Americans with individual options and making a competition within whole country in order to overcome the issue of overpricing.

「Each state has their own insurance company; according to my research, those insurance companies monopolize 60%~70% of the market that plays an important role in constituting the overpricing problem,」 Sen. Tommey remarked, 「Thus, building a network is significant. We can refer to the success of Ali-pay in China. Citizens will be free to choose

what they can afford to, or what they actually need.」

Coincidentally, democrats have also been focused on monopoly issue.

「We certainly do not support the emergence of monopoly.」 Sen. Kristen Gellibrand from democrats said while showing the reporter their syllabus, which was created by Sen. Bob Casey. On the syllabus, they wrote: 「government, regulate, monopolies.」

Reporter interviewed Sen. Bob Casey, asking for a further explanation. He analyzed: 「Monopoly will destroy market equilibrium, thus the U.S. government should stop the increasing of prize, and control the price surge.」

In the lobby, the reporter found that republicans have come up with a new policy: importing drugs from other countries which brings more competitors into the market, which was aiming to reduce monopoly and the prize. Although it was just a rough idea, it had yet

attracted republicans』 attention. Hopefully, it would play a vital role in overcoming monopoly and overpricing issue.

Reporter was surprised by the manifestations of senators, their intelligences and talents are worth to be highlighted in USCC.