Drug LegislationIS THE CHOICE GIVE THEM MONEY OR LET THEM DIE?

Price controls on prescription drugs will destroy research and development for new drugs. Would that be a bad thing?

If there was NO government subsidy of any drug purchase, no insurance to reduce cost, and only the consumer to pay for prescriptions, how many "new" drugs would be produced?

If you ran a shoe store in a working class neighborhood would you stock a hundred or so shoes that sold for $500 a pair? Would you choose to become the only Rolls Royce dealer in Arm Pit South Dakota? So why would anyone choose to sell a product to an entire population that would cost $1,000 a month til death? $5,000 per month? $10,000 per month? No normal business catering to the entire population would consider it because only the upper income people could afford it.

The prescription drug business is not "normal" business. We have a prescription drug business that produces ever new and ever "better" drugs that cost more and more. These "drugs" will keep people alive, reduce or eliminate pain, and in some cases actually "cure" disease. They are truly "miracles". Part of the "profits" from drug sales go to research and development for more new drugs that will cure more disease and will be even more expensive and thus affordable to fewer and fewer people, at least at first.

If there was NO government subsidy of any drug purchase, no insurance to reduce cost, and only the consumer to pay for prescriptions, how many "new" drugs would be produced? Thomas Edison, the inventor of inventing, would only "invent" things he thought he could sell. Our drug companies, due to the economic climate, don't think about "selling" a "miracle" as much as they think about getting either government or insurance to pay for them. Government will now pay for my erections, my depressions, even my sexually transmitted diseases. Who cares how much they cost? My iron erections are important to me; I can't live without them. Once assured that government or insurance will foot the bill, the drug companies invent.

The only Rolls Royce dealer in Arm Pit sells $200,000 cars to people who's purchases are paid for by somebody else. His Rolls Royce business is booming.

It's time to ask ourselves if we need more and more new drugs. Because the end result of the drive to "reduce costs" will be the end of research and development. The real question should be: is this bad? Then, if we decide we want new drugs in the pipeline all the time, what will be the cost and how will we pay. Another farm "program" where the favorite disease of each Congressional rep will be funded? (Barbara Boxer will demand abortion pills; Nancy Pelosi a face lift drug, and so on) Pressure group diseases? We already have AIDS research driven by a small pressure group of homosexuals who just "have" to have their sex lives subsidized by the rest of us. Alcoholics who "won't" go to AA for free are now "cured" by government programs and drugs that cost thousands and thousands of dollars per "cure".

There is no clear answer here, but it's time we asked the real question: Do we want more and more new miracles invented or not?