Massachusetts sets up monopoly; acts stunned when price shoots up

It's the same old story: when there's only one supplier for a certain commodity and no competition to drive down prices, it's the consumer who always suffers. This is true even when the commodity is blood and the supplier is the Red Cross:

Massachusetts is the only state that does not allow any private groups other than the Red Cross to collect or distribute blood. Although the Red Cross cannot charge for the blood itself, the not-for-profit can charge hospitals a fee to cover the costs of collecting, testing and distributing blood.

The state's hospitals say the law gives the Red Cross a virtual monopoly and drives up prices. The hospitals are pushing a bill to allow other groups to compete for the blood business.

Hospitals in Massachusetts are spending up to 25 percent more per unit of blood than hospitals in other states, a cost that forces up the price of health care when the state is trying to rein in the cost of health insurance, he said.

"There's no competition," he said. "That means contracts for blood are basically a take-it-or-leave-it proposition."

And since we're talking about monopolies, this letter writer to the WashPost has precisely pinpointed the national boondoggle that is ethanol. Everybody wants clean-burning fuels, but national policy is set up to protect the corn growers first:

Feb. 1 letter writer Jon C. McKenzie correctly suggested that sugar cane is a far more efficient source for ethanol than corn. But we can't use sugar for ethanol in the United States because Congress maintains a massive sugar subsidy program that keeps the price of sugar here roughly double the world price, too expensive for ethanol production. And similar political favoritism prevents us from importing ethanol (or sugar to make it) from Brazil. We impose a 54-cents-per-gallon tariff on sugar ethanol and strictly limit sugar imports. Consumers and taxpayers pick up the tab, and multimillion-dollar agribusinesses reap the benefits.

Exactly right. If we're serious about ethanol, Congress should eliminate the corn monopoly and allow for free competition to benefit everybody (except for politicians who have to travel to the Iowa caucuses.)