Health Reform Job One: Stop the Gouging! | Part 2
By BOB HERTZ
We Need Legal Assaults On The Greediest Providers!
When a patient is hospitalized, or diagnosed with a deadly disease, they often have no choice about the cost of their treatment.
They are legally helpless, and vulnerable to price gouging.
We need more legal protection of patients. In some cases we need price controls.
Next in this three-part series, I discuss how we could challenge Big Pharma by lessening regulation of generic drugs, having the government take over production and establishing price review boards.
Assault Phase Three – Challenge Big Pharma
Step One – Less Regulation of Generic Drugs
If an off-patent drug has been approved by other first-world nations, this would
constitute automatic approval by the FDA.
The price gouging around Epipen would have ended quickly,
if new versions of genetic drugs did not require an FDA approval process. We
should let reputable drug companies produce whatever generic drugs they want.
If an office products company like Staples tried to charge
$50 for a box of paper clips, a competitor would have a price of $1 on the
street in a week.
But not in the drug industry! Thanks to the FDA,
Staples paper clips would in effect be protected for years even though no
patent is involved. Competitors would be bogged down for years in litigation,
or in waiting for the FDA to prove that no one could cut their finger on a
non-Staples clip.
It is wasteful for the FDA to take over two ye...
Source: The Health Care Blog - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Christina Liu Tags: Uncategorized Source Type: blogs
More News: Anthrax | Blogging | Cipro | Ciprofloxacin | Contracts | Genetics | Government | Health | Health Management | Hepatitis | Hepatitis C | Hospitals | Insurance | International Medicine & Public Health | Italy Health | Legislation | Medicaid | Medical Billing | Pfizer | Pharmaceuticals | Uninsured | WHO