Sally Pipes of IBD writes an excellent editorial on the negative consequences of President Obama’s health care plan:
In order to fund reform and reduce costs, lawmakers will be leaning heavily on hospitals, doctors, insurers and drug companies. But, while extracting money from drug companies in particular may be politically popular, it will only impede other health reform goals. In fact, by targeting drug firms, lawmakers risk crippling research into future cures and raising long-term health costs.
How is such a double-whammy possible? For starters, drugmaking is expensive and time-consuming. It takes more than $1.3 billion, on average, to research and develop a new medicine. Only about 20% of the compounds that make it from the lab to clinical trials achieve approval from federal regulators.
And with research spending in all sectors already plummeting because of the economic downturn, is it really wise to squeeze this innovative industry even further? If Congress were to attack the drug industry, tens of thousands of the more than 3 million Americans who depend on biopharmaceutical companies for work (either directly or indirectly) would likely find themselves out of work.
Contrary to popular belief, drug spending has little to do with our nation’s exploding health care costs.
A recent report by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that only 10% of U.S. health care spending goes toward prescription drugs. And as Columbia Professor Frank Lichtenberg has pointed out, for every dollar spent on newer pharmaceuticals, there is a savings of $7.17 in hospital costs. Hospital care and physician services account for more than 50%.
Full Article: “Health Care Reform Puts Innovation At Risk”
Bevan Sabo
Ariel Goldring
Guest Blogger
Along those lines, I read an excellent piece today on townhall.com by Dennis Prager entitled “10 Questions for Supporters of Obamacare” in which he states: “According to Dr. David Gratzer, health care specialist at the Manhattan Institute, “While 20 years ago pharmaceuticals were largely developed in Europe, European price controls made drug development an American enterprise. Fifteen of the 20 top-selling drugs worldwide this year were birthed in the United States.” Given how many lives — in America and throughout the world – American pharmaceutical companies save, and given how expensive it is to develop any new drug, will the price controls on drugs envisaged in the Democrats’ bill improve or impair Americans’ health?”
Obamacare will bleed this industry until they relocate off our shores.