The letters section of the latest Atlantic includes this contribution from David Work, retired executive director of the N.C. Board of Pharmacy:
Virginia Postrel omits the most important word from her article on cancer treatment: price.
Drug companies claim that it costs them about $900 million to bring a
drug to market, but that figure has never been subject to audit.
Pharmaceutical manufacturers charge and get any price they want for
drugs that probably cost them pennies per dose.I propose that as a condition for FDA approval of any new drug, the
manufacturer must agree to a price calculated by the Government
Accountability Office. This price would consist of the actual cost to
produce the product plus a percent markup, all of which would be public
record.
Click the link for Virginia Postrel‘s full response. The key point is this:
The cost of a successful drug includes the costs of the many, many promising ideas that never make it.
Work?s specific prescription would corrupt the FDA?s approval
process, which should be focused on scientific questions of safety and
efficacy, not economic considerations.
Note that Postrel is not making the “if it saves one life, it’s worth it” argument. Instead she’s saying that the federal drug-safety bureaucrats are not the ones who should be making decisions involving economic considerations.
Under a system in which consumers drive health-care costs (as supported by folks such as Regina Herzlinger and Sally Pipes), economic decisions rest in the hands of those who should make those decisions.
