Correction, please!

Abortion Politics

ITEM: Following President Bush's State of the Union address, Tom Shales of the Washington Post commented on January 29th: "Not by nature a gifted public speaker, Bush did well for the most part, warming up himself and the crowd with a semi-ambitious domestic agenda (with, as a sop to the far right, a call for an end to 'partial-birth abortions')...."

CORRECTION: Dismissing resistance to killing nearly born babies as a political gesture is indicative of the Post's prejudices. But opposition is not restricted to the "far right." For example, a mid-January poli conducted by CNN/USA Today--hardly conservative organs--asked whether respondents favored or opposed certain proposals, including: 'A law which would make it illegal to perform a specific abortion procedure conducted in the last six months of pregnancy known as a 'partial-birth abortion,' except in cases necessary to save the life of the mother." Favoring such a law was an overwhelming 70 percent.

Prescribing Bad Medicine

ITEM: Describing a boom in cross-border prescription drug sales, an article in the Baltimore Sun for January 26th insinuates that price controls are helping U.S. consumers. "Canada regulates drug prices as part of its national health care system, while the market dictates pricing in the United States," says a wire-service account. "Many popular medications for chronic conditions such as high blood pressure and high cholesterol can be bought in Canada at less than half the U.S. price."

CORRECTION: Canada is far from a healthcare utopia, and its citizens routinely cross the border to get better treatment in the U.S. Little wonder. The average wait after a general practitioner in Canada makes a referral and when a specialist is consulted is 16.5 weeks, according to the British Columbia-based Fraser Institute. Another 9.2 weeks goes by before actual treatment.

One reason that some drugs are less expensive in Canada is that Canada freeloads on U.S. research. Nevertheless, as noted in the February 3rd issue of Forbes, "21 of 27 top-selling generics cost more in Canada than in the U.S., reports a study of the lowest available prices" by Ottawa-based Palmer D'Angelo Consulting.