What does the National Health Service do in that circumstance?
Well, I fully accept that developing a new drug can be very expensive, but there’s more to it than that. Historically, many pharmaceutical companies have spent twice as much on marketing as they have on the research and development. Pharmaceutical companies’ investors have expected double-digit growth and pharmaceutical companies had to spend a lot of money, in part, because of the drug regulatory authorities and the demands that they have made. And if we’re going to have affordable drugs in the future, we’re going to have to look at all of those areas. We’re going to look at the cost of development. We’re going to have to look at the cost of marketing and we’re going to have to accept that investors can’t necessarily expect double-digit growth in the future. Unless we address all three of those issues, we’re not going to be able to afford – any of us, either in the United States or in Europe – the new drugs that the pharmaceutical industry wants to bring onto the market. When you talk
