Cup of Java

Rising prescription drug prices- corporate greed "Drug companies spent nearly $2.5 billion in 2000 on television ads, compared with $791 million in 1996, according to a study published February in the New England Journal of Medicine."..."In 2000, Pharmacia Corporation spent $79 million on consumer advertising of the arthritis drug Celebrex, the first drug to make $1 billion during its first 12 months on the market. The first pill may cost $30 million to produce and the second pill 22 cents, said Mike McMahan, physician assistant of Zion Canyon Medical Clinic in Springdale. As HMOs are slow to add new medicine to their formularies, the high drug cost has kept many low-income patients away. Massive jury awards to users of such drugs as Fen-Phen, he said, have only added fuel to the fire. " Makes me sick it does.