ShareThisWednesday, November 15, 2006
Given the costs of brand-name drugs and our increasing reliance on pharmaceuticals for health, Congress should pass the Preserve Access to Affordable Generics Act.
This measure would stop big drug companies from essentially bribing generic-drug makers to refrain from selling medications whose patent protections have run out.
Patent law permits pharmaceutical companies to make mountainous piles of money from developing and selling new drugs. Good. But after the drugs' 20-year patents run out, the public deserves to get these medications at the much lower price of generics. Discouraging generics from coming to market is exactly what we should not be doing in a time of soaring health-care costs.
