WITH MOST of us at the acme of our healthy lives, the price of prescription drugs is hardly anything for young voters to get worked up about. But the debate is about so much more than just pharmaceuticals; it concerns our core values. From behind a veil of Washington doublespeak, Democrats and Republicans alike are cowardly conspiring to cover up a scheme to undermine our country's economic foundations.
At the heart of the matter is the skyrocketing costs of the prescription drugs our parents and grandparents now depend on. While a generation or two ago, many might otherwise be -- to put it quite bluntly -- dead, today commonly prescribed drugs lower dangerous cholesterol and blood pressure levels, preventing fatal heart attacks and strokes. Such life-saving pills have come at a cost. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation health care think tank, prescription costs have more than tripled since 1990, and there is no end in sight for annual, double-digit percentage increases.
As everyone knows, ours is a market economy, and prices are set by supply and demand. While the supply of prescription drugs has increased, the demand has obviously outpaced it. Populists are quick to place the blame on "greedy, price-gouging" pharmaceutical companies. But Kaiser, one of the few think tanks without an ideological axe to grind, attributes only 26 percent of the price hike to manufacturers; 47 percent comes from consumers.
Proving that politicians will say and do just about anything to get re-elected, Congress has devised a devious scheme called "drug importation"
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