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..::: NEWS RELEASE
..::: SEPTEMBER 19, 2003
Medicare Expansion Through Prescription Drugs Serious Blow to Pharmaceutical Research
NEWPORT BEACH, CALIFORNIA—Expansion of Medicare through prescription drug subsidies,
currently in a Congressional conference committee, will deal a serious
blow to pharmaceutical research. That's the claim of Americans for Free
Choice in Medicine (AFCM), a non-profit organization which favors
capitalism in medicine.
"In addition to discovering and testing drugs,
pharmaceutical companies also face enormous administrative costs to
obtain FDA approval to put drugs on the market," Richard E. Ralston,
AFCM's executive director, explained in an op-ed. "If drug firms know
that a drug's price is established by the state—not by patients—there
is no interest in discovering, testing and creating new drugs."
While Ralston said he welcomes the latest effort by
some Congressional Republicans, led by Pennsylvania Rep. Patrick Toomey,
to block the worst ideas in the recently approved Medicare drug bills,
Ralston insisted that preserving the world's highest quality drugs means
total opposition to any expansion of Medicare.
"A free market in pharmaceuticals is the only way to
insure the flow of new, breakthrough drugs and competitive pricing,"
Ralston contended. "Controls on drugs, doctors, and cost will distort
the drug market from the science stage to the pricing stage."
Ralston urged seniors who treasure their
independence, including those covered for prescription drugs through
employer-based plans, to tell Congress: "Leave my drugs—which means
those who produce them—alone!"
Americans for Free Choice in Medicine, (AFCM),
founded in 1993, is the nation's only educational organization based on
individual rights, personal responsibility and free market ideas in
medicine.
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Copyright © 2003 Americans for Free Choice in Medicine. All rights reserved.
For reprint permission, contact AFCM.
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