This study presents the case for Missouri promoting more rapid economic growth by developing a Saint Louis–Kansas City urban corridor as a component and model for a subsequent, larger Kansas City–Columbus, Ohio, urban corridor.

The city of Saint Louis, with a population of approximately 350,000 people, provides water to its residents and firms via the common municipal water utility. The surrounding and politically separate Saint Louis County, with a population of slightly less than 1 million, has long used private utilities to provide water to almost all of its residents and businesses. Unless the city can demonstrate that private operation of the water supply would result in both lower overall water quality and higher real costs (after adjusting for the current subsidies that are common with municipal utilities), the city should strongly consider the financial opportunities of selling its water treatment and distribution systems.

This study examines the privatization of pharmacy services in Saint Louis County. The author, Show-Me Institute policy analyst David Stokes, reviews trends in both the budget and actual expenses of county pharmacy operation, which show that before 2003, costs were rapidly rising — consistently outstripping budgeted figures. When the county opened a competitive bidding process for provision of pharmacy services in early 2003, costs began to drop dramatically. Since then, the county has spent less than it budgeted on the pharmacy every year, even as those budgeted amounts continue to decrease each year, in response to the significant cost savings. While this privatization was saving taxpayer dollars, it was also — more importantly — providing better pharmacy services to the people of Saint Louis County who used the health department clinics.