>I'd like to see a system of health care, organized by the community at any level, even if it's through its government, as a non-profit, running at cost price, and not as a retail outlet for the pharmaceuticals. There's something deeply wrong when they make money from one's illness, and have a financial incentive to grow.
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>Why would any company invest million of dollars in research to develop life savings drugs if they are not going to reap a profit from it? Part of the cause of the high cost of drugs is the limited amount of time that the governement allows them to be patented before the makers of generics (who have invested nothing in the R&D) come along and make a profit on the work of others.
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>If the length of time that a patent stayed in force was longer, the drugs could be cheaper because the manufacturers would have a longer period of time in which to recover their investment.

My heart is bleeding for their troubles. How can they then sell the same drugs so much cheaper in Canada - are they losing there? Why do they calculate the cost of money theoretically lost (because they didn't play with it on the stock market) as actual tax exempt cost, and then add their margin on top of it? Why do they spend so much research money on endless advertising?

Besides, how much of that research was actually done by tax money and then just given to corporations? We know it happens over and over in many areas, so I infer pharmacy wouldn't be an exception. Specially when it comes to basic research, done on gov't funded/run/owned institutes or universities. Do the corporations ever reimburse you, the people, for the cost of that research?