Flu Shot Mania

3:29 am, 12/26/04

Flu Shot Mania
Well, here's another silly misadventure that cost us money.

Illinois and a handful of other state and municipal partners could be on the hook for nearly $7 million worth of European flu vaccine they can't import or use, potentially turning what Gov. Rod Blagojevich hoped would be a political coup into a financial embarrassment.

Federal regulators have been slow to act on Blagojevich's request to ship the vaccine to this country. The delay, coupled with lower-than-expected demand and a short vaccine shelf life, threatens to render the purchase useless even if officials in Washington ultimately relent.

Specifically, federal regulators are angry with Blagojevich and won't play with him anymore.

State officials are mulling whether to try to resell the drugs abroad if the Bush administration continues to withhold importation approval. Illinois' share of the vaccine purchase cost about $2.5 million, and if the drugs can't be brought in or peddled elsewhere they could go to waste.

"Continues to withhold"? Blagojevich bought drugs he didn't have the rights to import, demanded the rights, isn't getting them, and now is stuck with them. The Chicago Tribune frames this stupifying bout of bad judgement as being Bush's fault?

Already locked in a battle with the White House over its refusal to allow prescription drug imports, Blagojevich was quick to turn the fight to a new front in October after contamination problems led to the shutdown of one of the two major flu-vaccine suppliers to the U.S. market.

Then there's Blagojevich, fighting for the people, flying in the face of the evil Bushitler, the only thing standing between America and an infinite supply of prescription drugs, practically free!

While federal health officials scrambled to find new vaccine sources, Blagojevich sought to one-up them by declaring he had leveraged contacts made in his drug import fight and secured rights to excess vaccine made in Europe for people there.

At the time, Blagojevich aides said he would be able to buy the European vaccine for $7 a dose, a 30 percent discount from the going rate in the U.S. Administration officials acknowledged this week that the average price per shot came to $10.

On top of that, it may have been a big election publicity stunt:

In unveiling his vaccine import plan just a week before the Nov. 2 election, Blagojevich said he would share the supplies with other needy states--with priority going to Wisconsin, where Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle had joined Illinois in a prescription drug import program.

At the time, Wisconsin was considered a key battleground state in the race between President Bush and Democratic challenger John Kerry, and Kerry had sought to make the sudden flu-vaccine shortage a campaign issue.

Two days after the election, Blagojevich said Wisconsin officials had decided they didn't need the extra vaccine.

Even without Wisconsin, the purchase commitments arranged by Blagojevich grew to nearly 700,000 doses, with the governor enlisting New Mexico, Cleveland and New York City to share the vaccine and the costs.

Earlier this month, the Food and Drug Administration announced that the federal government would itself be importing 4 million doses of extra flu vaccine made for the European market. It was manufactured at the same German plant that produced some of the vaccine Blagojevich had bought.

So, we're going to pay $2.5 million in taxes for a partisan publicity stunt that didn't even work, in a state that already has a billion dollar budget deficit, because Blagojevich wanted vaccinations that really wouldn't make all that big of a difference anyway, for a vaccination season that has now ended, to deal with a flu season that has been unusually mild and could just as well have already peaked.


I swear to God. If you hit him on the head with a stick, he'll turn into 40 gold coins.