Originally Posted by kane

There are a couple of issues with the pharm industry though that allow for them to greatly overcharge on drugs. Sure, creating new drugs can be expensive, there is not doubt about that. However, about 50% of the funding for this research comes from either the government or foundation grants/gifts. Also, many of the medications that are out there are not new inventions they are slight improvements on past creations.

Another thing that sucks is that the way the laws are it allows to drug companies to circumvent then 10 year rule. By this I mean that when a company creates a new drug by law they get a monopoly on selling that drug for 10 years. This allows them to get their money back before lower cost generics hit the market. However, they manipulate this. Let me give you an example. I have asthma. I use an inhaler. The medication is called albuterol . It has been around forever. The brand of inhaler I was first prescribed when I was first diagnosed in 3rd grade was Proventil. That was 1980. Proventil is still on the market and is one of the major brands prescribed today. It costs about $50 per inhaler. For several years there was a generic albuterol inhaler I could buy for about $10 each. Then about 5 years ago the government forced all companies who had any kind of aerosol propellant products to change to a non CFC propellant because it was better for the environment. This including most inhalers. By modifying the propellant the pharm companies were able to renew their 10 year monopoly. They had "changed" the medicine and therefor it was considered new again. This means you can no longer guy a generic inhaler for $10 you have to shell out about $50 for the name brand. That just isn't right. The drug has gone unchanged for 30+ years yet they keep finding ways to keep the generics off the market to the price stays high.