You must be upset, Steve. You're not usually this stridently irrational and selective with your facts.
There is a lot that can be better about the pharmaceutical companies but you gloss over the fact that many of the biggest are not even U.S. companies, but multinationals based in Europe or Japan, where a lot of the actual manufacturing is done as well. One can argue that that's one of the problems, but the whole issue is much more complicated than you imply.
Direct-to-consumer advertising is a huge problem in my view and a ban on that could be as easily justified as the controls on tobacco and liquor advertising, etc. That's where they're putting their marketing dollars now, not in "elaborate junkets for romancing physicians" which pretty much doesn't happen anymore, though it did in years past. Consumer advertising is relentlessly driving the demand for the latest/greatest cholesterol drug and the cure for the "gremlin" under your toenail, not to mention the longest & strongest boner of all time.
Health care costs have gone up dramatically over the past 30 years for a lot of interrelated reasons, too numerous & complex to chew on at length here, but one thing seldom, if ever, mentioned in discussions of healthcare costs is how much has been saved through technologic advancements over that same interval, in terms of dollars, pain, suffering & lost productivity. The risks and morbidity of many surgical procedures have diminished dramatically through the development of endoscopic and microsurgical techniques. Our ability to avoid surgery altogether for many conditions has been greatly enhanced by phenomenal leaps in imaging technology, non-invasive treatments and, dare I say, drugs. Hospital stays are dramatically shorter, people are able to return to productive activity much faster after acute illnesses & surgery, and many surgical procedures formerly requiring hospitalization can be done in ambulatory facilities. Placing a dollar value on much of this progress is almost impossible but it is huge without question. The hidden savings in terms of costs avoided, both economic and physical, are almost never talked about because they can't be measured the way expenditures for drugs can be, for example. They just get taken for granted. And don't forget, we're more willing to pay $150 for for a Don Henley concert than we are to part with a $20-30 copayment for a half hour of our doctor's time. We have a very schizophrenic view about "healthcare" - we want it now, we want it painless, we want it the "best," we want no expense spared to make sure "we" are OK, but "Holy Jesus, healthcare is too damn expensive, and I'm gonna sue that sonofabitch who gave me Vioxx."
Healthcare. Sounds simple. Isn't.
Cheers,
Daiwa
