Rick Santorum Tells Sick Kid Market Should Set Drug Prices

If the government and health insurance didn’t pay for medicine——-the prices would drop so most people could afford them. (btw, the drug cost on paper isn’t the true cost. Insurance companies and hospitals have contractual agreements to charge insurance far far far far less for the same drug if you paid for yourself would costs several times more. Perhaps these agreements should be outlawed so everyone pays the same thing making health care more affordable for those without insurance.)

I’m grateful Isabella Santorum’s Dad has good health insurance; paid for by the U.S. Taxpayers.

This shows how out of touch these politicians are with the average person. It’s easy for Santorum to say what he says about health care because he and his family get free government health care provided for them which by the way is paid for by us, the average person.

Typical con for Santorum to try to make the argument that the drug companies have to turn a profit to have incentive to make new drugs.
No one is arguing against them making a profit, we are against them making an obscene profit at the expense of ill people who can’t afford it.
But Santorum knows this, he just hopes he can fool a few folks into thinking the drug companies deserve to charge whatever they want to.

One of the reasons that drugs cost less in other countries is because those countries set the price for these drugs. The drug companies are OK with that because they can charge ridiculous amounts of money for it in the US to make up for the loss overseas. Of course if the US would stop putting ridiculous restrictions that only protect the drug companies from smaller competitors, you’d see more competition and much better pricing. And if we were allowed to buy drugs from Canada, the companies would probably raise the prices there and face some major outrage. It’s true that they spend a lot on making these drugs and have to cover their costs, but they cover that cost and much more thanks to the fact that insurance allows them to charge these ridiculous amounts. It goes further than just greedy companies. It’s this marriage of corrupt bureaucracy and crony capitalism that both sides are so eager to keep alive

i’m an MD. my DH is an MD. when we need to buy rx meds (all non-addictive) we go thru online Canadian pharmacies. i’m a big believer in generics but sometimes the meds are not available generically, or the generics are not quite as effective. there are times when we travel to other countries and the same brand-name meds are available at a fraction of the price (and yes, these are reliable pharmacies). this is not to say i recommend or advocate buying meds online or from other countries. this is merely pointing out what other commenters have observed, that these same meds are a fraction of the cost in other countries. santorum *theoretically* has a point about profit and incentive, but he seems as far removed from the reality most people who need healthcare face as someone who’s never had a sick kid. maybe his health insurance is that great. but the drug cos. and insurance cos. pretty much have the system skewed against the poor patient who dares to actually NEED the care for a serious illness. sad.

Our government helps pay R & D with our tax money, and they also get it cheap from colleges. This is the biggest snow job going down in the US right now. It’s bunk. They spend far more on ads and sell the drugs to the rest of the planet for less money. I’d hate to guess how much side effects and bad drugs also cost this country anymore. This is one of the biggest issues we have in healthcare. Shame on Santorum here. Talk about cold. I guess since his daughter’s expensive care is fully covered he could care less about others. There is nothing Christian about his thing here.

This clown actually said spending $900on an ipad is pretty much the same as spending $900 on medication???? Did anyone point out to this idiot that 1) ipads don’t cost $900 2) not everyone has money to buy ipads 3)not everyone wants an ipad and 4) those that do buy ipads only need and buy one whereas people who need lifesaving medicine need to buy it on a regular basis. Most people could not afford to spend $900 per month on medicine. I am sick of Rick Santorum and his self-righteous nonsense and hatred dressed up as christianity. I eagerly wait for the day when he is caught in a gay scandal and slinks off into the sunset and we never have to hear from him again.

I am fortunate to have my in laws living in the Philippines. So whenever someone we know goes back there, we give them about 20-40 bucks and buy a whole box of whatever we need like antibiotics. Which you need a prescription for in the US, but in the Philippines you dont. Its also a fraction of what it costs here. I agree, some of the medicine is incredibly expensive. Do they need to be marked up that high?

Very simple don’t give this man the time of day, date vote for him and most of all when his time is up in government give him the (your Fired) vote, maybe he can get a real job with NO Health Care, Hey Rick, you are an other out of touch, heartless.

This report seems a bit skewed from what I recall – the woman talking about the Abilify was in the middle, on one side of the center, and the boy that asked about drugs was up front on the opposite side – think the report assumes a bit, as I saw the woman and a man her age leave before the end of the speech. If you are going to sensationalize, at least be accurate.

This is a guy who spends all of his time talking about what a good Christian he is? Do you think that telling a woman with a sick child that it’s her fault she cannot afford to buy medicine for her child is what Jesus would do. I mean, I sure am confused, I am Jewish, but I thought the definition of Christian was to be Christ like and didn’t Jesus say that if you had two coats to give one to the poor. Isn’t Jesus the guy who helped the lepers? Somehow I think Jesus would not spend millions on tv ads and not spend a dime to help a person in need. If this is what real Christianity stands for it sure makes me happy that I am not one.

Obama should be down on his kneeds thanking God for such a poor crop of GOP candidates. Romney tells the poor to drop dead; Santorium wants us dependent on the drug companies and for them to charge whatever they want; Gingrich has all of the baggage such as former collegues that do not want to work for him, his affairs while married; dropping wives when they get sick. The best one of the bunch is Paul who stands no real chance at the nomination. These guys are so poor in character and judgment and it is unbelievable at Obama’s luck

Many countries set the price that can be charged by the companies. That is why the drugs are cheaper there. The companies then charge the US citizens and taxpayers through the roof to make up the lost profits. Santorum seems to believe the fairy tale that the companies will only charge what they need to make a reasonable profit and will not rip people off. I also read that the #1 reason people file personal bankruptcy is the high cost of a catastrophic illness. Not because they bought an iPad.

Is he $#@% serious?!?!? A couple of years ago I was prescribed pain killers for back pain and unfortunately I became addicted, the funny thing was I never paid a dime for any of the pills because it was from a car accident. I evently got help and started taking suboxone which is an alternative to methadone for opiod dependence however suboxone is very expensive and almost unaffordable for some. These drug companies are playing god and costing people’s lives and well being for the sake a profit.

My tax money pays for Rick Santorum’s family to have the best insurance money can buy for life just because he was a Senator once. Must be nice.

The huge hole in Santorum’s argument is that drug prices are not set by any sort of market. The developer of a drug applies for patent protection, whereby the government intervenes in the market and grants the developer a (temporary) exclusive monopoly on selling the drug. You only get something more approaching a market for drug prices when the drug goes generic, and one typically finds the prices drop dramatically at that stage.

Now, the government grants patent protections for a reason — to increase incentives for innovations — and at the same time the government makes huge public investments in drug development, which then get converted to private profits — so it’s not obvious what’s the best way to deal with this situation. However it’s silly to talk about “the market” in this context.

Video games and movies also cost millions of dollars to make, but they don’t cost $900.

Yes, because we all know “Rick Santorum Tells Sick Kid Washington Bureaucrat Should Set Drug Pricers” is so much more humane.

Real impressive Mr. Goldman. Real impressive.

Well, it seems that Mr. “Right to Life” feels that it is only a “right” reserved solely for those who can AFFORD it.

Again, the problem with those who insist that healthcare is not a “basic human right” (but rather a “commodity”) is that they tend to treat health in the abstract…. but not it’s “care”.

They “factor” monetary costs.. but never in genuinely human terms.

They claim that “health” (in and of itself) is not a commodity… but to BE healthy “IS”.

Sorry.. but that’s pretzel logic at its most twisted.

True enough that it might very well be a commodity here in the United States at the current moment… but it shouldn’t be… not anywhere.. and certainly not in a nation so rich as America… nor should it be in any enlightened, self-governing society that values life over wealth.

“For-Profit” entities should never be allowed to make life and death decisions based on the “bottom line”.. and that is all that health insurance companies ever base any of their decisions upon, which is precisely why this battle for single payer universal healthcare needs to be fought tooth and claw, and why it will continue to be waged until the dreams of our Founders are finally realized… until ALL of the people enjoy the provisions of our Constitution…. our values and responsibilities to EACH OTHER.

There is no place for health insurance companies to exist in any acculturated society, period. They must be excised from our midst as the cancer that they are… and now.

There truly are such things as “moral imperatives”, and this is the “motherload”.

Not just “life” but “quality life”.

It’s called “civilization”… and unless it’s nurtured, it dies.

Does he really think people with sick children are going out buying iPads come on.Rich pay your child’s hospital bill without insurance then see what it is like.Talking about family then telling people who can’t afford meds to for their child to deal with it.Well guess what Rich if the family can’t afford the meds they die because they don’t have them .Stop being idioit

Okay, now we know who is finanacing his campaign..Big Pharma… And we know where he stands that health care should be market drivien – profits vs life, profits win! In college when I took economics, the first law of supply and demand is that there will always be those who cannot buy a product or service even though they want it because they have no money in which to buy it. And that as a price goes up, lesser and lesser people are able or willing to purchase. Oh yea, and I don’t know anyone who has a $900 I pad. and if they did, its generally a one time purchase, where drugs are genrally taken over a period time are involve multiple purchases. I know that cancer treametns – a single chemo session can be $5,000 to $15,000 – so if you need 6 or 15 or 24, who can afford that? No one unless they have insurance or lots of money. There are 308 million people in the US today – 52 million have no insurance. And 43 million people are below the poverty line and god only knows how many a theething just above poverty and are one problem from joining the 43 million. Basically we have had market based health care, for most of the population – look where its got us. Those who have and those who don’t with a good luck from Rick Santorum.

I don’t understand Santorum’s point here.
What good is a social structure that doesn’t support the basic health and welfare of its people?
For somebody pro-life, he’s not making a very convincing show of it.

What an unbelievably callous, selfish, small minded, and petty man.

That’s the dumbest analogy I’ve heard lately. Yes, drug companies do spend millions developing drugs, and yes, they are entitled to make a profit, but you have a choice as to whether or not you buy an iPad. You do not have a choice if you need medicine to save your life. That is the big difference. I spend a few thousand dollars every year for medications even with the insurance most Texas teachers have. I DO NOT have an iPad, even though I want one really badly because I cannot afford one. I drive a very old car because I cannot afford anything better. If I didn’t have to take medication, I would have a few hundred dollars a month to throw around for things like that. Medicine is like food. It’s required. An iPod is not. There needs to be a way that everyone can afford medication if they really need it. I don’t know how to make that happen, but I’m sure someone smarter than me could figure it out.

Santorum is absolutely correct. All you free loaders wanting something for nothing are despicable. How much money went into developing that drug? Do scientists work for free? Do they earn $8 an hour? I’m glad Santorum said what he said. Sure he is sympathetic to the kids plight, but that doesn’t mean the medicine should be given out for free.

OK, I was at this event and witnessed this. The woman was passionate, but not heated. Santorum kept his cool and was very respectful and thorough and honest as it relates to his opinion. (In other words, he didn’t try to pander to the kid or change his opinion to look good. This, I respect.)

Santorum’s big point was this: once we start meddling, the whole thing crumbles and then no one gets any medicine because you’ve taken away the incentive for the drug companies to put in the $1 billion it takes to do research, run tests, take the drug to market, etc. This incentive is profit. Profit is not an evil thing.

So while the free market system might put out a medicine with a cost that’s a burden to some consumers, it cost the drug companies a ton to get there, and they don’t work for free! Besides, Santorum listed a few options consumers can come up with to overcome those costs, summarizing it with the main idea that we’re better off coming up with free-market solutions to the cost issue rather than imposing limits and regulations that will stifle the drug production and distribution.

In other words, ****it’s better to have an expensive drug you have to find a way to pay than no drug at all available to save your lfie.*****

I agree.

People, LIFE ISN’T FAIR. It’s not fair this kid is sick. But at least his parents have a drug available to them to help him. A bigger problem for them would be to have a sick son but no way to help him. THAT would be bad.

Santorum is no longer an elected official. He has private insurance right?

Santorum pretends as though medicine only progresses when Americans get priced out. He knows that medical innovations can and do happen in publicly funded research and have been handed over to big pharma for the price to get jacked up on the very taxpayers that footed the bill on the R&D.

So what, someone else should HAVE to pay for the medical bills of this child because it is morally wrong to let him die? If everyone was forced to pay for everyone else’s bills, we would have absolutely no money for anything else. No, that is not the issue at all; it is a healthy mixture of monopolized rates by insurance companies and big pharm with the help of the federal government. Look I’m sure plenty of people sick or not would love to have the system Canada has in place….but frankly our population is too large and we cannot afford it. You want better healthcare? Find a way to get the doctor-patient relationship back to a much friendlier level. Get the harsh restrictions on what medicine we can and cannot take lifted so alternative options can open up. Get less restriction on these pant ants for drugs, so that competition can be created to lower the costs of the drugs themselves (ending the monopoly for the only kind of drug to treat so and so form of Acid Reflux disease). Finally, get some kind of Tort reform in place, so that the medical malpractice suits don’t keep jacking up insurance premiums, and Doctors won’t have to use as much wasteful testing to avoid lawsuits.

Fact is this is why our world works, and having government take care of the medical business exclusively is a very bad idea. If you do not like what you have now, you can thank your government for its involvement thus far!

“So what, someone else should HAVE to pay for the medical bills of this child because it is morally wrong to let him die?”

Do you pay for insurance?

guess what.

you’re not paying those premiums to pay just for your own protection, but for everyone else who participates in that insurance plan.

shocker, huh.

Christian fundamentalist ideology does not include empathy, charity or compassion. Self-righteousness certainty allows him to scold this mother in public – oblivious to the hypocrisy that his sick child enjoys health insurance – and that people don’t buy a new iPad every month.

Every time the government hands out its freebies and goodies, prices skyrocket. Why are LIBs incapable of grasping that fact? Yes, the biggest reason that medical costs are astronomical is because the US Government ALREADY (Before Obamacare) makes up nearly 50% of the entire health-care market! They pay through the nose and the medical industry is only too happy to oblige with higher and higher prices and more and more claims. The government has TRLLIONs to dole out!

LIBs have been misled, then repeat the lie that costs go down or that medical care becomes more efficient when the government gets involved in “providing” care on a widespread basis. Thank the feel-good policies of providing cradle to grave health-care to anyone who reaches our shores for the ridiculous costs we have today. NO ONE is ever turned down for medical care… a la a “free market”. So we already have socialized health-care, to a large degree. Obama took the next step. And, predictably, costs have gone UP. Yet, the drones still think it’s all Bush’s fault or something. LOL Too funny. Heads suspended in the fog of the unknown.

He professes to be a Christian, yet I have not seen him show any type of Christian values. He is against contraception and abortion, even in the case of r-pe, he believes that the women should just make the best of a bad situation. So if a woman has say ten kids because she can’t get contraception under this man’s tyranny, if one or more of her kids gets sick and she can’t afford the medication she should just watch the child get sicker and die because she’s making the best out of a bad situation? Maybe Mr. Santorum should have his cushy job and tax payer subsidized insurance taken away and see how long it is before he is bemoaning the highly insane cost of medication. That is in fact set by the Pharmaceutical companies as they become richer, pay lobbyists millions of dollars to get laws passed that give them the right to pillage and plunder this country, and post record profits while paying their executives hundreds of millions of dollars to continue their plundering of the American middle class.

Drug companies spend 2 times as much on advertising as they do on reserach and development, make it illegal to advertise the latest and greatest drugs that we cannot live without. Also, if the price is set by the market, then make it legal to buy drugs from Canada, Mexico and India, they offer the same drugs at a fraction of the cost of what we sell it for.

Santorum is such a prig. WE pay for the astronomical costs for little Bella – IF she were a child of the ghetto – unemployed (cobra unaffordable) – or one of Nancy Pelosi’s numerous non union, min wage employees (vineyards and restaurants) she would be DEAD. How dare he go off on some rampage about 900 for an Ipad / when it had ZERO to do with this woman’s plight. I bet he has one being a lobbyist (oops consultant) for MINING, Health, Big Pharma. I DO NOT have an IPAD and would never buy one RICKIE because slave labor in China makes them while APPLE makes billions in profits. Hey Rick how about you ripping off Pa. taxpayers to the tune of $100,000 for your home school children (cyber school) when you live on a 2 mill estate in Virginia.

I am deeply shocked and saddened by Mr. Santorum’s positoin on pre-existing health care issues. I expected that with his daughter, Bella, he would support others with PEC. Perhaps he and is family are the recipients of the Federal employee health care benefits,

As for my family, I have a daughter with Type 1 diabetes, an auto-immune disease with no know cause or cure. While “Obama care” prevents insurance companies from denying her coverage, it does not limit how much they can charge.

Due to the ecomony, my husband was laid off after 37 years of steady employment (no pension). Our California Cobra payments are $2,100 a month. To put our family on the state plan for pre-existing conditions, the premiums would be $3,800 a month. Clearly we can’t afford it. We are about to go uninsured (like 52% of Americans between the ages of 19 and 64), and in 6 months sign up for PCIP, the Obama care funded health plan for people with pre-existing conditions. This goes against everything I believe in, but what else are we to do?

Mr. Santorum better get in touch with Americans and the lack of health insurance coverage, or he will lose the election to the very issue he states he is running on.

We are hard working, tax paying, conservative Americans. We can’t find work, and can’t afford health coverage. We are looking at a choice between paying our mortgage, and buying health insurance.

Good bye, genial friend :)