Free Republic

Without the profit on drugs, there is no research and development. There is no innovation. There are no new drugs.It's happened before, exactly as described above, in America: After anthrax-laced letters killed five Americans in the wake of the 2001 World Trade Center attacks, Secretary of Health Tommy Thompson threatened to suspend Bayer's patent on its antibiotic Cipro unless the company agreed to his "preferred" price. Bayer, faced with the prospect of generic companies getting the right to break its U.S. patent, caved and slashed its price from $1.83 to less than $1 per pill. In 2004, Congress passed legislation,...

Americans have eyed low drug prices just over the border in Canada, where strict price controls prevail. Some blame Bush for putting pressure on the Canadian government.... Others claim that it is a matter of public safety. But the explanation is straightforward: Canadian drug sales to the United States threaten the free ride that Canadians and other countries have received. The reason Canadians and Europeans...... pay so little for drugs is they enforce price controls. U.S. drug companies spend vast sums to develop new drugs, and Americans pay market prices for them. Once developed, drugs are inexpensive to produce and...

On Monday, December 8, 2003, President Bush signed into law a Medicare prescription drug benefits package designed to help American seniors pay for their medications. This month, the Kerry campaign released a TV ad attacking President Bush’s Medicare record stating, “The very next day George Bush imposes the biggest Medicare premium increase in history while prescription drug costs still skyrocket.” There are several problems with this ad, namely that fact that 1) Kerry skipped the December 8 vote and 2) Kerry voted to support the increase in Medicare premiums that he now criticizes. The Kerry campaign offers no specifics on...

WASHINGTON - Support for legalizing lower-cost prescription drugs from Canada is growing in Congress amid an election-year clamor from states, lawmakers and the elderly. The White House and Republican congressional leaders remain opposed, saying there is no way to ensure safety. Nonetheless, proponents contend that public frustration with rising drug prices and growing defiance of a federal ban on prescription imports will force action before the November elections. The latest legislation to allow Americans to fill their prescriptions in Canada was introduced Wednesday by a diverse group of Republican and Democratic senators. It would eventually allow drugs to be imported...

<p>In the original "Planet of the Apes," (search) Charlton Heston plays an astronaut--Taylor--who crashes on an unknown world ruled by intelligent apes.</p> <p>The film concludes when Taylor, seeing a partially buried Statue of Liberty, is devastated to learn that he's actually landed on Earth. His faster-than-light space voyage had altered the flow of time, leaving him stranded in a hopeless future.</p>

Drug Reimportation is Bad Policy Medicine In a clear example of the “cure being worse than the disease,” the House of Representatives recently passed legislation that gives the impression members believe that cheap prescription drugs are more important than safe drugs and that cheap drugs today are more important than new drugs tomorrow. Just before leaving for the August recess, the House approved by a vote of 243 to 186 the Pharmaceutical Market Access Act of 2003--a bill that allows consumers to import prescription drugs from 26 countries, including Canada and Europe. The lawmakers rejected a more sweeping proposal that...