Once again, someone is trying to rein in US health care costs, this time by somehow forcing Big Pharmaceutical to lower its prices for drugs in the US.
This is not a new issue. In 1970, when I entered medical school, all the first year students were given black leather bags with our names (followed by “M.D., which we wouldn’t deserve for at least 4 years) embossed in gold. Inside were a stethoscope, reflex hammer, and a few other medical toys. The generous donor was a drug company (name lost in the mists of time). A number of my classmates refused the gift on the grounds that drug companies were rapacious profiteers, getting rich off of the illness of others, spending more on advertising to physicians (like the bags) than on actual research.
Our country has repeatedly failed to come to grips with the effects of market-driven health care since at least 1947 when Truman proposed “nationalizing” the medical system, as was happening in the UK. Johnson with Medicare, Nixon with HMOs, Clinton with failed reform, and the bastardized Affordable Care Act all foundered against the shoals of an obstinate belief in the value of the free-market in our health care system. Until the voting public gets over its fear of “socialized medicine”, we are doomed to pay ever-rising costs without a concomitant rise in the health of our nation.