The case for an antibiotics tax • Hacker News Board

Re: The case for an antibiotics tax

#11

Post by aqme28 » Tue, Jan 14, 2014, 4:28 PM UTC

ronaldx wrote: post #3

The primary use-case of antibiotics remains: curing bacterial illnesses. We should not seek to increase the price of this for the least well-off in society. This would potentially have a net negative effect as it allows bacterial infection to spread, requiring increased antibiotic use. Besides, a tax on use wouldn't impact upon doctor's behaviour in the desired way (reduce non-essential use): since the doctor is stil…

Unfortunately the primary use-case of antibiotics is actually in livestock. In the US, 80% of antibiotics produced in 2011 went to livestock[1].

[1]: http://www.motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2011/07/what-usda-do...

Re: The case for an antibiotics tax

#12

Post by esteb_li » Tue, Jan 14, 2014, 4:28 PM UTC

I feel that the problems we face with antibiotics is similar to those we face with oil. It's common knowledge that the two will disappear and there's people out there fighting to try to protect us and we have a silent majority going about their business and ignoring all the warning signs. So yeah, tax 'em

Re: The case for an antibiotics tax

#13

Post by JoeAltmaier » Tue, Jan 14, 2014, 4:34 PM UTC

Too little, too late. There was a CDC report that the 'age of antibiotics' is over and there is little point in limiting their use now. Lets move the conversation on to something productive: what next?

Re: The case for an antibiotics tax

#14

Post by squozzer » Tue, Jan 14, 2014, 4:39 PM UTC

You would think we'd learn by now that when someone proposes a tax to control behavior, it's not about the behavior, it's about finding a justification to grab money. For example, the soda tax.

Why not treat them as controlled substances? All you need is a propaganda campaign a la Barry Bonds, et al.

Re: The case for an antibiotics tax

#15

Post by potatolicious » Tue, Jan 14, 2014, 4:59 PM UTC

ericcumbee wrote: post #9

ImprovedSilence wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

RTFA. It's a tax for use of antibiotics on livestock, not humans.

Which the cost will be passed along to the consumer.

And rightly so. There's no good reason why we should have cheap meat if the cost is hugely increasing our susceptibility to global pandemic.

OP was talking about taxing human-use antibiotics - i.e., we shouldn't do things that will increase the price of drugs that people literally need to avoid dying.

Re: The case for an antibiotics tax

#16

Post by spacehome » Tue, Jan 14, 2014, 5:13 PM UTC

drjesusphd wrote: post #2

This is a great idea. The point of a tax is to impose penalties that exist in real life, but are not part of the original transaction: externalities. Widespread use of antibiotics has a cost associated with it that must be paid by someone, and it should be part of the price of antibiotics. Much like there's a cost associated with income inequality, so we tax the rich more to supposedly cover that cost. Costs associat…

> Much like there's a cost associated with income inequality, so we tax the rich more to supposedly cover that cost.

That's a fairly disturbing way to frame progressive taxation. In the other examples of taxing externalities, we intentionally discourage the behavior by taxing it. Do you intend to discourage people from becoming rich by taxing it? Also, it takes both rich and poor to have inequality. Why not tax poor people more to discourage poverty?

Re: The case for an antibiotics tax

#17

Post by maerF0x0 » Tue, Jan 14, 2014, 5:26 PM UTC

jswinghammer wrote: post #10

The basic problem is that one intervention is seeking to fix another. Crop subsidies are the reason why these antibiotics are so widely used. Farmers are encouraged to feed animals food they aren't meant to eat which makes them so sick they need antibiotics to stay alive long enough to be slaughtered. Just end those crop subsidies and let things take care of themselves. A few agribusinesses will be pissed but the res…

Or ban feeding an animal something that is not part of its "natural" diet. Then we have the fun of debating if cows naturally eat corn and soy. Chickens will be particularly fun because they historically ate the scraps from the humans (what we now call "compost" :P), they were the old form of food recycling.

Re: The case for an antibiotics tax

#18

Post by sp332 » Tue, Jan 14, 2014, 5:33 PM UTC

jswinghammer wrote: post #10

The basic problem is that one intervention is seeking to fix another. Crop subsidies are the reason why these antibiotics are so widely used. Farmers are encouraged to feed animals food they aren't meant to eat which makes them so sick they need antibiotics to stay alive long enough to be slaughtered. Just end those crop subsidies and let things take care of themselves. A few agribusinesses will be pissed but the res…

The animals aren't generally sick. They are fed antibiotics at a very low dose because one of the side-effects is faster weight gain.

Re: The case for an antibiotics tax

#19

Post by gutnor » Tue, Jan 14, 2014, 5:33 PM UTC

jswinghammer wrote: post #10

The basic problem is that one intervention is seeking to fix another. Crop subsidies are the reason why these antibiotics are so widely used. Farmers are encouraged to feed animals food they aren't meant to eat which makes them so sick they need antibiotics to stay alive long enough to be slaughtered. Just end those crop subsidies and let things take care of themselves. A few agribusinesses will be pissed but the res…

Strangely, here in the UK, corn fed meat (i.e. with antibiotics) is a premium product over grass fed one. So, the problem is a bit deeper than that.

There are other problems that are solved by antibiotics: overcrowding and mass production. Nothing to do either with crop subsidies.

And similarly that's not an easy problem to solve. Very few organizations defend quality meat. Small, local farmer are easy target for various animal rights group. Big groups on the other hand are generally ignored.

Re: The case for an antibiotics tax

#20

Post by Fomite » Tue, Jan 14, 2014, 5:36 PM UTC

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #13

Too little, too late. There was a CDC report that the 'age of antibiotics' is over and there is little point in limiting their use now. Lets move the conversation on to something productive: what next?

A last ditch effort to preserve the ones that still work, and limit the amount of resistance that develops buys a considerable amount of with for "what next".

Drug pipelines are not hackathons. They need time.