Is anyone actually surprised that a recent survey shows that public trust in the pharmaceutical industry has dropped from a rediculously low 25% in 2006 to only 11% last year (these must be people who are either young and healthy or have 100% coverage from insurance). Probably not. What is surprising, however, is the scam that has been perpetuated on the consumer. We have all been led to believe that the main reason new drug prices have to be so high is because of all of the R&D expense it takes to get a drug to market. However, in actuality, on averge, for every $100 dollars of a prescription drugs price, only 15% can be attributed to R&D. On the other hand, almost 60% can be attributed to marketing expense and profit. Yeah, as a PD patient paying thru the roof for meds, I love all of my money going to big pharma give-aways. Maybe we can get some more pens and shopping bags at next year's Unity Walk.....

http://bit.ly/17MKn5P

unfortunately with most pharma being public companies, as with big oil, their first job is to satisfy shareholders, which if you have a 401k, pension, ira, is likely you and me. not saying pharma are justified in high prices, but when you see biotech companies stock going up 1000% at times, you can see the public has their head in the sand.
a big part of your insurance premium goes to insurance companies hiring pharmacy benefits managers to hold down RX reimbursements. add to that that most doctors don't know the prices of the less common drugs they prescribe and some docs benefit from prescribing brand name drugs, it goes on and on.

Demanding honesty in medicine does not mean we want to bankrupt the pension funds of widows and orphans. Some bio-tech stocks have increased by 1,000%; some high-tech stocks have increased by 14,000%.

Investment money flows to where the profits are. We are not trying to change that. What we are trying to abolish is the moral hazard – when the only way to win is to cheat. You have to hide your negative studies because your competitor is hiding his. You have to pay 25% bribes to doctors to prescribe your drug (Sanofi’s knee pain drug, for example), because your competitor is paying bribes; so it is a race to the bottom of the ethical barrel. He who cheats, wins.

If you want to win, you have to out-cheat the other guy. Honesty leads to bankruptcy, because your competitors are hiding more than you are, and offering bigger kick-backs.

But if your competitor has to register his trial before beginning, and then make the results public for all to see, your competitor will no longer have the option of cheating on his results.

Pharma will not have its profits reduced. But the profits would go to the Pharma companies that produce evidence-based science, instead of marketing-based deception.

bob,
your're preaching to the chorus, but i doubt large investors even care if big pharma does research, they can just buy it which they are doing more and more of. i think this is more of a regulatory issue.

healthcare costs are way too high in the U.S.