The Best Healthcare For Less

The debate over the cost of prescriptions is often complex and emotional. Drug companies are in the business of producing drugs for a profit, and they have done a great job in producing newer medications that work better or safer than older medications. It costs a lot of money, to the tune of over $500 million, to get a product to the market effectively.
The debate has always centered on how much these drugs should cost. Drug companies need to get back the money spent in developing a new drug, but more importantly, they need the profits to be able to have enough resources to fund the research to produce the next generation of drugs. Most of the new drugs used around the world are developed in the United States. This is because the U.S. market is the only market that allows drug companies to price their products using market forces as opposed to the government imposing price controls. This does not mean that drug companies can charge whatever they want. Market forces prevent them from doing so. Competition within the industry, either from other brands or from generics, when available,
helps to ensure that drugs are not priced as much as the manufacturer might like.
Another market force in play is demand for the drug. Newer medications usually are safer or work better than older medications. The drug company might have to spend a huge amount of money educating the public about the drug, in the form of advertisements and consumer brochures, to create a demand for the newer medication. With greater demand, the company can charge a bit more, just as the manufacturer of any product might be inclined to do.