House MD Cares About Patients?

I came across the idea for my blog while watching House MD season one. In the episode the owner of a high profile pharmaceutical drug company gave House a choice; either he could fire a member of his team or give a speech discussing a newly developed drug for heart disease. Instead of talking about the benefits of this new drug, House explained how the drug was essentially the same drug as the company produced before only changed minutely and more expensive. This was done because the patent on the old drug was running out causing it to become generic. He explained during the lecture that this was an excellent business move in order to make the pharmaceutical company millions of dollars at the expense of the sick patients. Having not taken economics, I would not have realized how valid of an argument House made and how pharmaceutical companies are stealing from sick patients. These companies must be making ridiculous amounts of money because every time I turn on the television there is a erectile dysfunction commercial chalked full of sexual innuendos. ED, I'm sure is important to some people but my complaint is how the elderly are forced to pay insane amounts of money for name brand drugs that are said to be an improvement but are really a scam. Don't get me wrong, I believe that new ideas should be rewarded with patent and financial rewards. My complaint is the new drugs that are only changed in order to make money because the original drugs, which work fine, are becoming generic. A lot of the elderly are on a fixed income and cannot afford the new drugs and might not know that a drug, that has essentially the same chemicals, is available as a generic. During the patent the pharmaceutical company has a monopoly and maximizes their profit by producing a quantity of medicine at which the marginal revenue equals marginal cost. The price at which the drug is sold at is way above the marginal cost of manufacturing the drug. Once the drug becomes generic competition causes a competitive market in which the price will eventually equal the marginal cost of manufacturing the medicine. I don't think we should allow the pharmaceutical company's to rip off sick patients by scamming them with supposed "improvements" to the medicine they are currently taking.

-Charles Penvose ECON 200 8:00 am