Prescription Drugs

The rapidly rising cost of prescription medications is a big factor in the overall health care cost crisis.

Pharmaceutical companies have invested millions in high-end, very specific “designer drugs” — the Viagras, the Claritins, the Zantacs and such.

What's more, patent rights provide little incentive for the drug companies to change their current methods of operations. Indeed, drug companies tend to "hang onto" some drug updates or upgrades, waiting to roll them out when the patent on the original formula expires.

For example — and without meaning to point the finger at one drug company over any other — consider Claritin, an allergy medication manufactured by Schering. You saw countless ads of people happily skipping through fields of flowers allergy-free, all thanks to the wonders of Claritin (which very well may be true for millions of users). But then — ironically? coincidentally? — at almost exactly the same time that Schering's patent expired on Claritin (and you began to see generic versions of the drug), all of a sudden here was Clarinex. Now Clarinex is the drug for allergy sufferers, we are told. And of course, the Clarinex formula is a "new" one that has its own patent life.

Can you connect the dots?

Again, you now see prescription medication advertised constantly on network TV or in glossy advertisements in newspapers and magazines. In many cases, you can get free samples via the Internet. You may not know what it is or what it does, but is there anyone out there not familiar with the phrase "The Purple Pill?" (For the record, it's Nexium, a medication to help prevent gastroesophageal reflux disease — "heartburn," in other words.)

And there’s the cost of all those TV, radio and magazine ads. Here is a staggering fact: drug companies now spend millions more on advertising than they do on research and development!

Why? Because the drug companies want you to ask your doctor for their drug by name. Remember when people used to go to the doctor and the doctor told them what they needed? Today, the drug companies have geared their marketing so that patients will go to their doctor and say "I think I need Nexium" or "I think I need Zantac." Not some generic equivalent that's just as good; they've got to have "The Purple Pill."

There are many other factors as well on this broad issue of prescription drugs. We will cover them as best we can on this site.