A vibrant and strong pharmaceutical industry, equipped with new knowledge of how disease works and how to thwart it, offers hope of more breakthroughs and cures in the future. As our population ages, the need for new treatments and preventives for the diseases of aging is widely acknowledged. Ironically, the debate on enhancing prescription drug coverage for seniors has engendered proposals that would hinder the ability of the pharmaceutical industry to research and develop medicines to combat the diseases of aging, such as Alzheimer's, arthritis, cancer, diabetes, heart disease, Parkinson's disease, and stroke. Proposals that would extend government price controls to more than 40 percent of the market, for example, would discourage investment in medicines for seniors, as would legislation to allow the government to set the prices paid for prescription medicines for Medicare beneficiaries. As the Medicare debate rages, it's important to reflect on the value of modern medicines to seniors.
Medicines save lives, relieve pain, cure and prevent diseases.
Medicines empower seniors to enjoy life and remain independent. They also help seniors, their families, and the health care system avoid the staggering costs of disability, hospitalization, surgery and nursing home care. And the hundreds of medicines now in the pipeline for diseases of aging promise an even healthier, happier, more rewarding future for seniors. We need to examine every Medicare proposal by asking whether it would nurture or hurt the free-market environment needed to continue this remarkable progress and whether it would encourage or discourage investment in pharmaceutical research. In the past decade, pharmaceutical companies have made available some 200 medicines to treat the diseases of aging.