Santorum Compares Lifesaving Drugs to IPads. Is Medicine a Luxury or a Necessity?
Republican presidential hopefulRick Santorum defended drug companies on Wednesday, comparing lifesaving drugs to luxuries like iPads and telling one mom that she should be willing to pay whatever the market price is for an expensive medication for her sick son.
"People have no problem paying $900 for an iPad," Santorum said in Colorodo. "But paying $900 for a drug, they have a problem with - it keeps you alive. Why? Because you've been conditioned to think health care is something you can get without having to pay for it."
The mother, who said her child is on the drug Ablify to treat schizophrenia, explained that on paper it costs more than $1 million a year to treat her son. Santorum said that drug companies need monetary incentives, and that they'd stop developing new medications if they couldn't make a profit.
"He's alive today because drug companies provide care," Santorum told a largely Tea Party crowd. "And if they didn't think they could make money providing that drug, that drug wouldn't be here."
"I sympathize with these compassionate cases," said Santorum, whose 3-year-old daughter, Bella, has a genetic disorder called Trisomy 18, which requires lifelong medical treatment. But, he added, it's a market issue, not a personal one. "I want your son to stay alive on much-needed drugs. Fact is, we need companies to have incentives to make drugs. If they don't have incentives, they won't make those drugs. We either believe in markets or we don't."
What do you think? Is there a difference between buying medicine and buying an iPad? Or, like iPads and other tech gadgets, should a drug's price be set solely by what the market can bear?
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