Good points. One of the things that changes with disabilities and people who truly need medicaid is drug prices. Bringing drug prices down will help alleviate the high costs of supporting medicaid patients as well as those on medicare. This means that the way medicines are researched, developed and marketed needs to change. Unfortunately I have no knowledge of the subject and how that could get done.
Medication pricing is not a one sided affair.
Pharmaceutical firms pay out massive sums to develop products that can be used.
They may research 200 items before they find one that seems to work. Trials start and the item may or may not fly. Then it’s on to hundreds more.
While I defend the pharmaceutical companies on the one hand, it’s also hard for me to understand why they charge far less for the same medications outside our nation. Don’t the sales figures in those other nations also contribute to R&D?
What some folks don’t think about, is that some of the newer tablets are priced to compare to the surgical procedure or other factors that no longer have to be utilized. An expensive surgery that used to cost $10k, is now replaced by a tablet that costs $8.00 each.
Sound terrible until you realize it saves a lot of money, even thought it seems to cost a lot for the tablet.
As for bringing drugs to market faster, that really is a two edged sword.
I can think of three different medications that came to market after having passed testing.
One was years ago and caused birth defects in children. Two of the other had serious side effects that didn’t surface until after the product had been on the market for a while. It had also been on the market in Europe for some time. Even after it came to the U.S. later, at first they didn’t know of the problem. Then it had to be withdrawn from the market.
Another medication caused heart problems, even after testing.
Lessen the time for testing and you’ll have more of these. That’s the trade off.
Where I think there is the most clear cut case to test medications on humans, is when the prognosis is a terminal outcome in short order.
If a possible helpful medication for cancer is being considered, and there are people in danger of dying in less than a year without it, then it would seem to be a good idea to let them choose to try it if they want.
I appreciate your suggestions. I do wish we could bring things to market faster, but it isn’t a real easy thing to do IMO.
In each of these instances, there are competing interests that go beyond simple price or availability.