"Dave" wrote in message
...
On Thu, 21 Oct 2004 10:16:29 -0400, "Vito" said:

Nor did I say drugs should be free or even cheap. I said that prices
should
be set by the FREE MARKET unencumbered by government sponsored monopoly.

So patents should be abolished?

(patiently) No David. Patents are guaranteed in the Constitution. Currently,
the term of a patent is IIRC 20 years from application, 17 from patent
grant, or in case of medicines, at least 14 years after FDA approval. That's
fine. The problem comes from laws that require consumers to buy from only
one of many suppliers licensed by the patent holder and from laws requiring
one to obtain an MDs approval to buy a given drug. This creates a situation
in which we are not allowed to choose which of several similar medicines to
buy to treat a given illness - our MD makes that choice based on
advertisements in his trade journals AND commissions paid him for
prescribing certain brands. Thus, where you and I might price shop, the MD
is likely to prescribe the brand that pays the greater commission.
Compounding this are laws preventing us from buying even these prescribed
medicines overseas.

I've been taking x grams of Amaryl/day for years, monitoring my blood sugar
to assure the efficacy of that dose. I do the same with Glucophage, but use
a generic. Quarterly, I miss an afternoon of work to spend an hour in an
MDs office of which I see the MD for less than 5 minutes while he does a
cursory exam, all to get a prescription for two drug nobody abuses. Then I
carry the prescriptions to a pharmacy where I pay more "copay" than I could
buy the same drugs for in Canada or Mexico and my HMO pays even more. It
doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that I could save myself and
my HMO mucho money by simply looking at the spam I get every day, picking
the cheapest prices, and buying these drugs myself. But No! The law prevents
that.