I didnt side step it at all. Your moms cancer drugs would still be just as expensive no matter how much is spent on lobbying. The drug manufacturers will charge what they can get reimbursed for and insurance companies play a large roll in that. Same way with college tuition skyrocketing since student loans have become common place. Just because I dont agree with you whole heartily does not mean I dont have a valid point.

Again, I must stress, marijuana is not going to help your mothers cancer but the medications they have developed will. Without the drug companies your mother would likely already be dead. There are many problems with the system, not just the drug companies. Big pharm has plenty of problems but to act as if their meds would be dirt cheap if they didnt spend money on lobbying is naive. I could go on all day about this topic but there is no point in continuing. If you really want to address the problem start with insurance companies. If we had a single payer health care system in America it would go a long way to solve the problem but it would likely slow new drug development. There is a reason drug companies reside in the US and develop here and not countries that have nationalized healthcare and it comes down to money.

I am sorry about your mother but cancer drugs cost tons of money to develop and not many people buy them so of course they are expensive. Like I said before many drug companies will give the medications free of cost with just a few forms filled out for low income citizens. If you are not low income then you likely have insurance companies to blame just as much as big pharm. No company could develop cancer meds for nothing and without big pharma your mother would have no hope of survival at all so keep all of that in mind when you blast them.

Allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices would go a long way toward reducing the cost. This is something that people should be calling or writing (snail mail works best) their Congress person about. Start a call brigade.

Actually it's due to the fact that patents only last 20 years and it takes 10-15 years from filing a patent to get a drug to market. It isn't necessarily that development costs are astronomically high, it's that they only have 5 years to turn a profit before generic companies can make the drug as well.

I actually know a lot about this topic personally and while it would be naive to say that big pharma is full of sweet little angels I do know that it doesnt all just come down to them gouging people or running on monopolies. One big problem in the industry is insurance both public and private. You can also get most drugs for free if you are low income by filling out a few forms and sending them in to the drugs manufacturer. Again, I am not saying that big pharma doesnt have problems and they do make giant profits and some shady business practices but this article does leave some facts out. Good post though and a topic people dont see discussed much so I was glad to see it up front, upvoat from me my friend and keep up the quality contributions.