Here's a version of what I've been telling you, but this time from a vice president at Pfizer, one of the largest drug companies in the world::

"I'm a drug company executive who has spent 20 years marketing pharmaceuticals. And I'm troubled.

"I'm most troubled by the fact that we stick it to the people who can afford it the least.

"The American health care system ... is certainly the best system for drug companies, which can charge the highest prices in the world to some U.S. consumers.

"And it is a pretty good system for hospitals, insurance companies and others that deliver healthcare services.

"But it's not a good system for American citizens. The U.S. has shorter life expectancies and higher infant and child mortality rates than Canada, Japan and all of Western Europe except Portugal, according to the WHO." [Big Pharma's Dirty Little Secret, Pfizer VP Peter Rost in the LA Times yesterday, subscription] (Story links open in new windows)

I won't say "I told you so," but instead give you what he said about drug pricing:

"I'm most troubled by the fact that we stick it to the people who can afford it the least.

"For instance, elderly people who use a Medicare discount card and have to pay $1,299 annually for a drug that the Department of Veterans Affairs purchases for $322 ... Or middle-class families that lose health insurance and have to pay $29,500 for an overnight hospital stay, when Medicaid would have paid only $6,000.

"And, not surprisingly, the companies with the biggest profits — those in the drug industry — have been fighting hardest to maintain the status quo.

"Our dirty little secret is that the drug industry already sells its products, right here in the U.S., at the same low prices charged in Canada and Europe. It's done through rebates.

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