Business Diary: Supply and Demand -- Ireland is a conservative Catholic country with a liberal national health system: Among other benefits, approved prescription drugs are dispensed by doctors at no cost to patients.
Inevitably, this raises ticklish questions in Dublin, like what to do about Viagra, Pfizer's anti-impotence pill. Would approval of the drug appear to be encouraging licentiousness? Would rejection be seen as obstructing the biblical imperative to be fruitful and multiply? And on top of that, Pfizer makes ingredients for the drug in Ireland, at a plant in Cork.
Brian Cowan, the health minister, announced a Solomonic solution last week: Irish men in need could get free Viagra, but only four pills a month. The limit was set "to reduce the possibility of inappropriate usage," Cowan told reporters. (No special provisions were announced for months with five Saturday nights.)
The limit did not bother Pfizer, which said some American insurers had similar rules. Though couples with free access in clinical tests tended to use about seven a month, according to Mariann Caprino, a Pfizer spokeswoman, official recognition of erectile dysfunction as a serious medical condition was satisfaction enough.
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