So people are in a rage over how drug companies in the U.S. are able to charge such astronomical prices for life-saving pharmaceuticals, They are right to be angry. However, most people are disastrously wrong about the solution they are proposing, which is to socialize the entire healthcare industry so the government can set prices.
For many patients, that move would have lethal consequences. Give the current cost of bringing new drugs to the market in the U.S., socialism and price fixing will result in the utter stagnation of medical progress. While we already suffer from this problem fro a devastating degree, things can get worse. Therefore, instead of resorting to socialism, we need to look at how past government blunders have contributed to our problems.
The truth is that the sole reason drug companies are able to charge such high prices for their products is the abomination that is FDA regulation. By erecting almost insurmountable barriers to entry into the market (the average time to market for a novel product is 15 years and the cost $1-1.5 billion), the FDA grants a small number of companies exclusive rights to market their products for a given condition, in effect giving them government-granted, coercive monopolies in their niches. With no price competition, the few companies who get FDA approval can easily raise their prices a hundredfold over what they could charge if they weren't able to use the government as a club against their competitors. In order to have an environment conducive to low prices and rapidly advancing medical technology, we desperately need to abolish the FDA.
On the rare occasion when anyone suggests doing this, the response is always to say "thalidomide!!" and insist that deregulation would result in widespread death when the evil drug companies tried to make a quick buck by poisoning their customers. This notion is utterly arbitrary, baseless, and outright stupid.
First, any company seeking to commercialize a new drug even in a free market has to invest huge amounts in R&D, manufacturing facilities, distribution, and marketing, and would stand to lose it all in the event that their product turned out to be unsaleable because patients preferred a competitor's safer product. From the outset, thave every incentive to make sure their drugs are safe for their intended purpose before releasing them.
Second, just because there was no FDA does not mean there would be no credible mechanisms to establish the safety and effictiveness of drugs. Private agencies, which could be either for-profit or non-profit, would surely step in to conduct studies on drugs, publish their opinions, and possibly certify products they approved of. These companies could be independently audited for conflicts of interest and would compete with each other on the basis of reputation. But what's most important is that, by having the freedom to choose their own testing protocols and standards of evidence, they would be able to *improve* the drug testing process, finding cheaper, faster ways to get more meaningful results. In contrast, the FDA's standard of evidence--its rigid, 3-stage clinical trial process that hasn't changed in decades--is arbitrary and irrational and makes little sense from a medical or safety standpoint in many cases, yet is extraordinary expensive and time consuming and plagued by conflicts of interest. Free minds can do better.
Third, for the reasons explained above, it is simple false to assert that the FDA protects patients at all. Celebrex, Vioxx, Plavix, Zyprexia, Paxil, Heparin. This is a very short list of instances where the public was absolutely not protected by the FDA process. What the FDA's approval creates is a dangerous illusion of security as doctors and patients alike go through life with their guards down, conent to assume that the government has done all the thinking for them.
In summary, the Food and Drug mafia is destroying the lives of untold millions of Americans by giving monopolies to favored companies, crippling medical progress and forcing us to pay utterly outrageous prices for archaic therapies, many of which turn out to be dangerous years after the FDA assures us of their safety. Time to abolish this monstrosity and force American drug companies to face the unforgiving disciple of the free market.