Hope you invested in pharmaceutical companies...

[Relbeek Einre]

http://www.cnn.com/2005/HEALTH/02/09/me ... index.html

Seems the boondoggle to the pharmaceutical industry was 80% larger than initially claimed.

[Kulaf]

What's the alternative? Tell grandma Alpo is too expensive if she wants to afford her prescription drugs?

[Relbeek Einre]

Don't know much about the plan, do you... and how it doesn't give a very good drug benefit, and how it could have been tailored to be much, much cheaper for the same or better benefit.

[Ddrak]

The alternative is to import cheap drugs from overseas (which are just as safe despite pharma propganda). The side effect of that is it annihilates the profits of the drug companies and their R&D budgets also (I would assume).

Either that or the government just dictates prices to the pharma companies. The medicare account must be worth a decent amount.

Dd

[Relbeek Einre]

Both collective bargaining and drug reimportation, two methods that could save hundreds of billions, are forbidden under the bill. These restrictions serve no purpose other than to line the pockets of the drug companies.

[Ddrak]

Well, reimportation does ensure profits stay in the US - a reasonable aim for the government. Forbidding collective bargaining? Why would you do that?

Dd

[superwalrus]

well, its a double edge sword.. the more money you take away from drug companies, the less R&D they will have which will worsen the situation. However if you make everything too expensive its prohibitive anyway.

My solution is to have government sponsored prizes for cures. Say, we'll give you 50 million for coming up with a treatment that will allow sufferers to live with a disease, 500 million for a vaccine, and 1 billion for a cure. /shrug the situation is so fucked up I don't see how to lower drug prices and keep the incentive there to develop new drugs.

Walrus

[Partha]

I wouldn't mind the R&D costs so much if they weren't spending twice as much on marketing on average in the industry. A nice report from 2000 detailed that of the top 9 companies who sold pharmaceuticals, 8 spent at least twice as much on marketing, and the other one spent a by-comparison measly 1.5 times R&D.

http://www.actupny.org/reports/durban-licensing.html

[Klast Brell]

My solution would be to fund academic rather than private research, and have the resulting medical discoveries be unemcumbered by patent.

And before you get your panties in a twist I will remind you that there is a huge market for generic drugs in this country.

[Aabe]

My solution would be to fund academic rather than private research, and have the resulting medical discoveries be unemcumbered by patent.

And before you get your panties in a twist I will remind you that there is a huge market for generic drugs in this country.

Funding academic is an interesting idea, but like my past chemistry prof. who submitted under heart research to research an enzyme that had nothing to do with heart research, but all to do with his own private research.

Would need some accountability, something most education institutions tend to resist.

Then you get the nut case guys claiming to be researching the cure, like our cold fusion fellows.

Good idea, I hate throwing money at something without some constraints (not unlike what the goverment does anyway), how would you propose to manage it?