July 25, 2002
From the desk of Jane Galt:Meanwhile, MedPundit and MedRants have
Meanwhile, MedPundit and MedRants have come back at me to say that pharma marketing is excessive.
But I think that we're arguing two different things. MedPundit and MedRants would like to see marketing dollars spent on other things. In the case of much of it, so would I. But I accept that the money spent on marketing is the cost of attaining something I think is more valuable than the money lost: a pretty good market, and pretty efficient research system, for pharmaceuticals. I think that practically, the only way to eliminate the marketing would be to nationalize research, and I think that the cure would be much, much, much, much, much, much, oh, very much worse than the disease. And just as MedPundit and MedRants can undoubtedly explain to you the many unattractive ways in which health care would suffer if medical care were nationalized and physician salaries were to top out at around 100K (the top rank of the federal civil service) for a doctor with 20+ years in, they can probably understand my belief that we could expect the same fine results from nationalizing the pharmas.
So I agree with them that there's a problem; I just don't think that there's a good solution. And when it comes to sweeping market interventions, I've got a memorable motto:
First, do no harm.
Posted by Jane Galt at July 25, 2002 7:55 PM | TrackBack | Technorati inbound links