New Drugs Pay Off
A study by Columbia University professor Frank Lichtenberg estimates that without the availability of the newest drugs, the disability rate would have been 30 percent higher than it was. The rise in disability was lowest in the states that most quickly adopted the newest, innovative drug therapies.
This is bad news for the anti-drug industry crowd. The people who claim most new drugs are just copycat drugs and we pay too much and the drug companies make too much profit, yada, yada, yada, yada.
I think I have seen other studies by Lichtenberg, showing that we get our greatest return from spending on drug therapies, as opposed, say, to doctor or hospital therapies.
If so, we should be encouraging more pharmaceutical R & D, not less of it.
Strangely, both Obama and McCain came out for importation of drugs at the price controlled cost imposed in other countries. This is a move in the wrong direction.