Tell me. Why should your hard earned money fund a wealthy old person's drugs?
You're right, it doesn't make sense to fork over taxpayer dollars to pharmas to charge whatever they want, although the pharmas would love that.
For the already taxpayer-paid drug costs borne by government health programs it makes more sense to negotiate prices for life-saving drugs like any other essential national security item, through competitive bids and monitored sole-source contracts.
Otherwise the current process of $100 - $500 million per released drug will continue, only a fraction of which goes to research, the majority going for promoting and monopolizing. When you spend more in advertizing than developing a drug that is already known to save lives, something is wrong. Doctors can get and should get medical knowledge from better sources than self-interested advertisements.
Your hard-earned money pays for $23+ billion in government drug research that drug companies get for free, then package and sell it for 40x that amount, supported with by constant lobbying by the pharmas.
The pharmas now have more lobbyists in Washington than there are members of Congress. At the usual 500:1 ratio between lobbyist payoffs and economic benefit, those millions buy billions in monopoly rights.
In other countries drugs are cheaper. Here, there is an artificial price support gained by bribing Congress and the administration. |
