The Big Pill of Health Care - Pharmaceutical companies

By now you are probably getting depressed and bummed out about the cost of health care. Don’t worry, we have a pill for that. And thank goodness, it’s very affordable and may even be covered by your health insurance plan; if you have one of course. The cost of prescription medicine has gotten so bad, that Congress passed a bill a couple of years back that helped the elderly cover the (wait for it) ever increasing costs of medication. Course, Congress did such a good job that they put a doughnut hole in the middle of the plan.

Now why would drugs keep getting more expensive? Well, they are produced by companies that want to make a profit; and when they create a drug they file for a patent and get exclusive rights to manufacture it. And exclusive rights means that they don’t have any competition, so if they can find a good size market then ka-ching! So yes, they get to charge more than the market will bear, because the market can choose between things like buy the medicine or death, pain, debilitating problems, or other unpleasant consequences. As they are operating in a free and capitalistic society, this is legal and they are well within their rights. The public has no reasonable claim to expect pharmaceutical companies to do otherwise.

It’s not like the public gives these companies anything. The money we pay for their pills does not support any corporate activities that benefit the drug companies and adds to the cost of the medicine. Activities like:

• Advertising to promote public awareness of their drugs, and why the public should tell their doctors that they need these drugs
• Political contributions to legislators, particularly those leading health care initiatives
• Doctor and hospital promotions to encourage doctors to prescribe their drug to patients

And the public doesn’t fund any scientific or medical research into drugs which when something promising turns up, turns into a new product for a drug company.
And of course the cost of bring a drug to market requires federal approval processing and reviews. These are conducted by very efficient and money conscious government bureaucrats and/or government paid consulting groups. Without the FDA’s approval, a company cannot sell a drug in the US, which further cements the drug companies monopoly on their drug.

How could these practices possibly case increased costs for drug? Not possible. So we can move on to some other source of irrational increases in health care.