Lately, nearly every conversation that I have had with senior citizens has started with, or soon turned to, the high cost of senior health care. Singled out for the most heated comments have been the high prices of medication.
Almost always overlooked in these complaints has been the point that the expense of those life-sustaining chemical morsels is largely determined by the research effort that went into discovering and determining the utility of those magic little molecules that give these pills their efficacy–and, of course, the extensive safety checking that had to be done before they could go on the market.
The price of the chemical raw materials and the manufacture of the pills are not what makes them cost so much. If that were all that was involved, in most cases they would be dirt cheap.
It takes a lot of money to hire and equip labs, and when one considers those pills from a risk/benefit point of view, it’s the biggest bargain we seniors ever got.
