How have rising prescription drug costs impacted bargaining?
In the last decade prescription drugs have assumed an increasingly important role in the treatment and prevention of disease. As a result, prescription drugs are consuming a greater portion of the health care dollar. Many of the critical issues relating to prescription drugs are public policy matters that cannot be resolved at the bargaining table: patent and price manipulation by the pharmaceutical industry; the misallocation of significant research dollars to me too drugs rather than drugs that would produce genuine clinical breakthroughs; and the industrys use of taxpayer-financed research in the early stages of drug development without a commensurate return to the public in the form of reasonable pricing. Pharmaceutical firms are able to win policies favorable to their industry with the help of more than 625 lobbyists, a brigade that outnumbers the elected members of the Senate and House of Representatives. While the nine largest pharmaceutical firms took in more than $30 billion i
