CFN – We live in a time where medicine is becoming more and more reliant on drug therapies. We also are in a time when Drug Companies are sometimes spending more marketing drugs than researching them.
There are thousands of “Orphan” drugs sitting unused. An Orphan drug is one that is still perfectly functionable, but has no profitability for drug companies.
The drug pyramid is new drugs protected and controlled under patent which yield the highest return to “Big Pharma”. Then you have “generic” drugs which are essentially “No-Name” versions of the same drugs.
Drug prices can be boggling. For instance why are some drugs so much cheaper in places like Mexico than they cost in Canada?
Many times it’s distribution. Many times its manipulation of price with multiple levels of revenue added to the cost of the taxpayer and user.
Many times drug companies tinker with a formula so that they can essentially come out with a “new” version of essentially the same drug for the same purpose to maximize the flow of dollars.
None of this makes sense for our society and health care of our population.
Is it time for the government to step in and create an environment where patient care comes first? Canada created Medicare and it is a darn good concept that needs to be properly implemented.
We need to perhaps offer tax credits for companies willing to produce orphan drugs. We need to stop generic drug companies for creating false shortages of critical drugs as a lobby weapon against governments who far too often capitulate to their demands and lobbying.
We all pay for this. Do we really need to? Our healthcare should not be politicized. That’s why we created Medicare. It’s been eroded almost ever since. It’s time Canadians took it back before it’s too late.
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“Is it time for the government to step in and create an environment where patient care comes first? Canada created Medicare and it is a darn good concept that needs to be properly implemented.”
Didn’t the government already stepped with regulations and subsidies and made a real mess of our free enterprising market system. You are proposing a cure for bad government regulations with more government regulations. Maybe the government should regulate media broadcasters with more regulations to promote the need for more regulations to control the media broadcasting system.
If the market wants to supply and demand drugs, let the market decide its faith.