The US wants to export our drug prices and our TV drug ads to the UK

[Robbien]

Also the UK has a rule which says no new pricey drug unless it has an added benefit over cheaper older drug. US says nonsence, pricey is a good thing in and of itself.

US Deputy Health Secretary, Alex Azar, is lobbying the Britain's Health Secretary, Patricia Hewitt, to ease restrictions on the drug industry. In particular, the U.S. drug companies want the ban on direct-to-consumer advertising dropped and to increase the prices the government pays for drugs. Sarah Bosely reports that both Azar and the drug industry object to procedures used the National Institute for Clinical Excellence, which evaluates the effectiveness of a new drug and whether it represents value for money compared to drugs that are already available.

http://society.guardian.co.uk/health/story/0,,1947280,00.html

So now our Deputy HHS Secretary is a lobbyist for BigPharma, forget that silly working for US citizens business.

[sui generis]

1. time to nationalize big pharma

(I love saying that. The moonbat haters on freeper upchuck think that's all we think about)

But seriously. Time to re-regulate the bastards, and hard. On the plus I'd give them longer patents to make up for lower prices, but the pigs need to exit the trough now before they get turned into bacon.

[GreenPartyVoter]

2. You bet

[SmokingJacket]

3. Well, that's dumb because it's the UK government who PAYS for the drugs.

You can gouge the masses, but the UK govt would be nuts to agree to that.

[Robbien]

4. That IS the problem.

BigPharma wants to go in there and run ads telling the UK citizens to petition their government to get them to buy those pricey BigPharma drugs. Right now there are rules against such propaganda programs in the UK. To change that, we the taxpayers of the US are paying our HHS Secretary to whore for BigPharma in the UK.