>It seems counter-intuitive to me that the cost of prescription drugs would drop if it were harder to get generics. The low cost of generics is the only thing making them affordable at all in some cases. Let's say I consider the pharmas among the great gougers of our times. But I have been mistaken before ;-)
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>When you consider the high cost of R&D - the drug companies invest a lot of money to bring a drug to market. Their patents begin when the R&D begins. If the life of the patent were longer (I think it is 20 years right now, but I could be wrong - somethimes it takes over 10 years of R&D and the associated expenses to bring the drug to market), the drug companies could charge less and still recover these costs. As it is, it is the generic drug manufactures who did not contribute one thin dime to develop these life-saving drugs that make money on the work done by the drug companies. Yes, this is a good thing for consumers, but there has to be some happy medium where the people who invested in making the drug possible are allowed to recover the cost of their investment without hurting the consumer. I think the solution is to extend the suration of the patent.

FWIW, somewhere recently (might even have been here), I saw a comment from someone who'd worked for a pharma company saying that in house, whenever they weren't sure where to charge something, they'd charge it to R&D. IOW, R&D is the great catch-all in those companies. The writer was suggesting that real R&D costs aren't anywhere near as high as the pharmas want us to believe.

Tamar