U.S. citizens pay dearly for prescription drugs. We pay more, for the same drugs, to the same giant multinational pharmaceutical companies, than Canadians, Europeans, and citizens from most other regions of the world. The U.S. is the sugar daddy to the pharmaceutical industry. And how about this startling fact: the 2002 combined profits for the ten drug companies in the Fortune 500 ($35.9 billion) were more than the profits for all the other 490 businesses put together ($33.7 billion). Read that last sentence again and let it sink in. That fact is lifted from this must-read article: The Truth About the Drug Companies, featured in the New York Review of Books. Of course, the U.S. government is complicit in this situation more than anyone else, but this excellent article (adapted from a book due out in August by Marcia Angell, physician, senior lecturer at Harvard, and former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine) also debunks some of the myths the pharmaceutical apologists regurgitate as “fact” in nearly every argument — such as “since we’re a richer country, we pay more to fund the research and development.” Hogwash. Big pharma makes more in profits than it spends in research and development. Big pharma spends much more in marketing and administration than it spends in research and development. In fact, most significant research is still being done by universities and teaching hospitals. In big pharma, it’s the lobbyists, patent lawyers, advertising and PR folks that have much bigger budgets to sell yet another version of an erectile dysfunction pill.
Ron Yeany
a motorcade up Benign Street shows the people that you care
Oh, my. Somebody mark this down. I AGREE with you!
Health care in general and drug costs in particular are one big clusterF*&K. We have the best healthcare providers and medicines in the world and the worst mechanism for distributing these services and products. My chuches pay $1200 a month for our health insurance and perscription drug plan. It went up $200 over last year. It’s almost to the point where you want to stash that money in a savings account to use for medical stuff and roll the dice that you don’t have anything major take place in the next year. It shouldn’t be a gamble. We shouldn’t have people you cannot get medication because of cost. We should not have to pay more than the rest of the world for medication that can save lives and improve the quality of life.
Now, how do we fix it? It’s a bit of a catch 22. I think one of the reasons we have the best care is because of the competition and innovation that comes out of it being connected with a capitalistic system. But the only way to manage the costs is to take it out of that system somehow. You should be able to make these products affordable and still make a profit. Greed is one of those deadly sin thingys isn’t it? Maybe we should take a day out at Key West, and over some doggie treats, work out a solution to all this crap.
Have a wonderful holiday weekend. I need to go check out my email. I saw something about discount erectile dysfunction pills! Not for me, of course, for a friend of mine.
God, medicine is a rip-off the States. I am American, but I would be a fool to give up my Taiwanese permanent residency and let go of those national health care benefits that even extends to working foreigners. In fact, last time I went to see a doctor, I had forgotten to bring my insurance card. My bill? About US$15, incl. medicine.