This article is very important. Karl Claxton , a professor who operates on theories in a classroom, not experience in the outside world, who wants to change the pricing of pharmaceutical products. With no proof, he makes the statement, "In most markets consumers are used to the idea of paying a high price for goods that give alot of benefit, and a low price for those that perform less well. The consumer is less concerned about the cost to the company for developing the item."

Is that a fact? In my class of Macroeconomics we were told that supply and demand determined the price. Not the efficiency or value of the product. Remember the children dolls that came with the certificate of adoption? How they ran out of them at Christmas time and parents were paying very high prices for what was essentially a product that was useless but every child had to have? (Cabbage Patch dolls?)

When Sega comes out with a new Play Station, it is priced outrageously high until the market eventually becomes glutted with the product and the price comes down?

How about a newly released popular movie, say, "Pirates of the Carribean." After enough people have seen it, the price for the tickets lower until so many people have seen it that they re-release movie as a DVD to make a second round of profit.

None of the above products are necessary to our survival. These examples prove Mr. Claxton's theory to be true for non-free enterprise companies, but not for the United States. I won't judge Me Claxton as evil. He simply lives in an economy where the government has tight reigns on the the pharmaceutical industry. The reason for his proposal is because the United States government allows our pharmaceutical companies to police themselves and allow them to opporate not as a free enterprise industry, but as a closed industry by permitting no open patents and no competition from other countries through imports. Thus the pharmaceutical companies in strongly policed governments are getting angrier and angrier scratching out a living as the watch the US Drug industry making money hand over fist. They are tired of being accused on not doing their share of research when their first priority is to help the people, not make profit. They have no profit for research.

People this is a wake up call. Professor Claxton is offering an unreasonable solution to a problem, because our government is unwilling to cut the ties of the lobbiests who fund so many of their pet projects, even those having absolutely nothing to do with pharmaceuticals. This announcement is a last plea from outside countries who cannot afford to pay the cost of our exported pharmaceutical products and are desparatly looking for a fair way to meet their citizens needs and not import as many American made drugs.

Vicky