Drug Companies Scamming Customers

Following the enactment of new Medicare discounts and programs, the price of drugs has risen sharply, 3 times the rate of inflation. Drug prices for elderly patients rose 6.9% last year. The interesting fact is that the prices rose sharply following legislation for patients to receive discounted drugs. Here are some of the excuses by the drug companies...

Source Yahoo News:

Drug companies say higher prices reflect growing research and development costs, which topped $33.2 billion industry-wide in 2003. They also argue spending money on medicine can prevent more expensive hospitalization and other treatments.

The cards are a temporary fix until the full Medicare prescription benefit starts in 2006. The law also prevents the U.S. government from directly negotiating drug prices.

Similar price rises were seen "after other political actions that were intended to extend drug coverage or provide drug discounts," including when Congress initially passed the Medicare bill earlier in 2003, AARP said.

Do you buy this excuse on the part of drug companies? I thought the whole point of these tax cuts was to cut these companies some slack to extend their business ventures. Yet, they are still carrying out these costs on the consumers. Not only that, but prices magically start rising after drug discount programs and extended coverage.

Although the entire added cost is not carried out by the consumer, but some by the wholesale buyers as well, I think the drug companies are charging more because they are essentially greedy and can capitalize off of the price cuts without any complaint on the consumer. After all, the consumer still gets the 15% to 30%, but they aren't saving as much as they would with the price increase that was 3 times inflation. Who pays for this? The immediate consumers, the wholesale buyers, but ultimately, yes, the tax payers will. All because somehow the drug companies are running out of money.

Another thing, I guess drug pandemics are OK as long as their legal. Maybe we should start getting more psychiatrists in the arena rather than send everyone to the drug mill. Yes, yes, mmm, drugs...no reprocussions, except of course for all the fine print you will notice if you dig around in the FDA website...

I beleive that is why Canadian drugs are so cheap, we dont have to pay the "research" premium.

yea, I thought this everyone was raving about Bush's tax cuts so this kind of thing wouldn't happen. But, you can't gaurantee someone will use their tax break for beneficial purposes..