Killing Cancer Patients to Make a Killing
A Cancer Drug's Big Price Rise Disturbs Doctors and Patients
By ALEX BERENSON
The price of cancer medicines is soaring, but the increases
tend to have little relation to the cost of developing or
making the drugs.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/12/business/12price.html?th&emc=th
...................................
It is now an increasingly well known fact that our drug manufacturers are making outrageous profits on phony grounds. They will claim, for instance, that they must introduce new drugs at high prices because of the costs for research -- such research in fact largely being the result of federally funded programs for same.
This present report even outdoes, however, the recent Medicare rip-offs in process in which the Bush administration introduced a muddled melange of private medicine funding programs which are now barring many elderly from being able to purchase their necessary medications because no limits were placed on the pricing of drugs by their manufacturers or reduced prices allowed for bulk buying such as those that control prices in Canada and other nations serious about their health programs.
It is unimaginable to discover that cancer drug producing companies are now being allowed to make such outrageous profits on long established drugs to the point of barring many who need them to live from being unable to purchase them. This is murder under the cover of 'free enterprise'.
As I recall, Robert Nozick, recently deceased Harvard philosopher, proposed some such originator's right to charge whatever for cancer drugs in his notorious libertarian screed, Anarchy, State, and Utopia. Now fact seems to have caught up with outrageous fantasy! This move, however, goes far beyond Nozick's defense of an inventor's rights to unrestrained profits. It suggests that one can buy a drug developed a half century ago and then multiply its price 10 fold or more? Needless to say this is a prime example of the failure of our corporation dominated government to protect the public from the most elementary and and horrifying of hazards -- cancer and those who would exploit those faced with dying from it!
--
"A war is just if there is no alternative, and the resort
to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope." (Livy)
--
Ed Kent 718-951-5324 (voice mail only) [blind copies]
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EndingPoverty
http://BlogByEdKent.blogspot.com/
http://www.bloggernews.net
By ALEX BERENSON
The price of cancer medicines is soaring, but the increases
tend to have little relation to the cost of developing or
making the drugs.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/12/business/12price.html?th&emc=th
...................................
It is now an increasingly well known fact that our drug manufacturers are making outrageous profits on phony grounds. They will claim, for instance, that they must introduce new drugs at high prices because of the costs for research -- such research in fact largely being the result of federally funded programs for same.
This present report even outdoes, however, the recent Medicare rip-offs in process in which the Bush administration introduced a muddled melange of private medicine funding programs which are now barring many elderly from being able to purchase their necessary medications because no limits were placed on the pricing of drugs by their manufacturers or reduced prices allowed for bulk buying such as those that control prices in Canada and other nations serious about their health programs.
It is unimaginable to discover that cancer drug producing companies are now being allowed to make such outrageous profits on long established drugs to the point of barring many who need them to live from being unable to purchase them. This is murder under the cover of 'free enterprise'.
As I recall, Robert Nozick, recently deceased Harvard philosopher, proposed some such originator's right to charge whatever for cancer drugs in his notorious libertarian screed, Anarchy, State, and Utopia. Now fact seems to have caught up with outrageous fantasy! This move, however, goes far beyond Nozick's defense of an inventor's rights to unrestrained profits. It suggests that one can buy a drug developed a half century ago and then multiply its price 10 fold or more? Needless to say this is a prime example of the failure of our corporation dominated government to protect the public from the most elementary and and horrifying of hazards -- cancer and those who would exploit those faced with dying from it!
--
"A war is just if there is no alternative, and the resort
to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope." (Livy)
--
Ed Kent 718-951-5324 (voice mail only) [blind copies]
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EndingPoverty
http://BlogByEdKent.blogspot.com/
http://www.bloggernews.net
posted by Ed Kent at 6:23 AM
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