Posted on 12/12/2003 4:18:00 AM PST by ReleaseTheHounds
Edited on 04/22/2004 12:38:06 AM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
In the original "Planet of the Apes," (search) Charlton Heston plays an astronaut--Taylor--who crashes on an unknown world ruled by intelligent apes.
The film concludes when Taylor, seeing a partially buried Statue of Liberty, is devastated to learn that he's actually landed on Earth. His faster-than-light space voyage had altered the flow of time, leaving him stranded in a hopeless future.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
U.S. Consumers SHOULD be expected to solely foot the bill for pharmaceutical R&D.
</sarcasm>
But like a stopped clock, right on this one.
I don't believe for a nanosecond that drug manufacturers are really losing money on overseas sales. That's just corporate Bravo Sierra they shovel to us through their stable of bought-off politicians. They're as afraid of a free consumer market developing as Chairman Mao once was.
They are probably not losing money on oversea sales. I don't know of anyone who claimed they were. What is happening is a bit more complex. They only make a little bit of money from oversea sales, enough to pay for the cost of the production of the drugs and a little profit, NOT COUNTING THE COST OF RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT.
If the overseas drugs are allowed to come back to the U.S., drug companies won't be able to charge what they need to do the super expensive testing required by the government to put a drug on the market. The solution for the drug companies will be to stop selling the drugs overseas, so that they can make a profit here. Of course, not selling the drugs overseas means that they will forego the small profit they make there, and will lose some economy of scale of production. This will RAISE PRICES here in the U.S., and restrict the availability of drugs to many people in the world.
But what do we care? We get a free ride for a while and get our drugs cheaper for a few years. Something for nothing, the socialist dream.
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