As you probably know, the United States issues a patent for a new drug. Patent protection allows the drug company to recover their expenses in developing the drug, testing and government approvals.  This is fair.  If we want to have new and better lifesaving drugs, we have to pay for them.  The patent for these drugs is for twenty years from invention, but with long FDA approval times this protection period is reduced.

Now comes where your government is helping keep your drug costs higher. The government issues a patent extension for two to five years if the drug company makes changes to the original drug.  Is this a gimmick to get more money from the consumer without having to develop another new drug?  This may be the reason that an old generic drug used by me went from $0.11 per pill to $1.09 per pill.  If the reason we have a Federal Drug Administration is to protect the public, how was I protected when this drug cost increased?  While my drug cost increase was modest, what happens when a much more expensive drug cost is increased?  If you state that the FDA protects only the public’s health, are not the cost of drugs part of health protection?

Television commercials by the hundreds advertise legal services to compensate the consumer for a drug’s side effects which it is assumed were not detected during the trial testing. If years are spent testing and then dangerous side effects happen, why were not these problems detected during testing?  Are the FDA test methods outmoded?  What corrective procedures if any are being taken?

It appears that maybe the FDA and the drug companies need to start several simultaneous research programs to reduce the time it takes to get drug approval while at the same time finding a better way to detect harmful drug side effects on people.

What about the drug industry’s direct appeal advertisements to the public to use their drug?  Should not any and all new prescription drug use be initiated by a licensed physician?  Medicine’s understanding of the human body is light years better now than it was twenty years ago.  It is really hard to understand why anyone would take a drug with potential fatal side effects to treat a non fatal illness.  We need to find a better way to benefit everyone.

WARNING: If government financial participation is needed to implement the medical research programs, tell the politicians to appropriate the funds and stay the hell out of the way.  Politicians do not know how to solve problems—only how to create them.