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Rick Santorum Tells Sick Kid Market Should Should Set Drug Prices [Santorum is correct]
yahoo.com ^ | February 2, 2012

Posted on 02/02/2012 3:02:35 AM PST by grundle

GOP contender Rick Santorum had a heated exchange with a mother and her sick young son Wednesday, arguing that drug companies were entitled to charge whatever the market demanded for life-saving therapies.

The mother said the boy was on the drug Abilify, used to treat schizophrenia, and that, on paper, its costs would exceed $1 million each year.

Santorum said drugs take years to develop and cost millions of dollars to produce, and manufacturers need to turn a profit or they would stop developing new drugs.

"You have that drug, and maybe you're alive today because people have a profit motive to make that drug," Santorum said. "There are many people sick today who, 10 years from now, are going to be alive because of some drug invented in the next 10 years. If we say: 'You drug companies are greedy and bad, you can't make a return on your money,' then we will freeze innovation."

Santorum told a large Tea Party crowd here that he sympathized with the boy's case, but he also believed in the marketplace.

"He's alive today because drug companies provide care," Santorum said. "And if they didn't think they could make money providing that drug, that drug wouldn't be here. I sympathize with these compassionate cases. … I want your son to stay alive on much-needed drugs. Fact is, we need companies to have incentives to make drugs. If they don't have incentives, they won't make those drugs. We either believe in markets or we don't."

(Excerpt) Read more at gma.yahoo.com ...


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To: grundle

What Santorum is not telling us is that if the market actually did set drug prices, we would be paying a lot less than the artificial prices imposed on us within the US. Pharma companies have had the legal system manipulated to prevent Americans from shopping around on the world market. They will go on donating whatever it takes to Santorum and Romney to keep the scam going.


41 posted on 02/02/2012 6:32:07 AM PST by BlazingArizona
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To: grundle

There was a time not too long ago that people sought help from their parish or church when things like this cost too much, or they didn’t have insurance. Then government stepped in and said they could do it better and actually put a lot of churches out of the charitable business. It’s a travesty, really, and in the meantime, church attendance has plummeted. So, you have whole generations growing up outside the church body and learning to depend on the government. What could possibly go wrong?


42 posted on 02/02/2012 8:07:48 AM PST by Shery (in APO Land)
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