Reasonable Rx: Solving the Drug Price Crisis

Chapter Four. Are Drug Companies Risky?

	You’ll always miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.
	--Wayne Gretzky

Whether it’s directly through congressional testimony or subtly in a television advertisement touting America’s drug companies, the pharmaceutical industry offers the same reply to the question of why drug prices are so high: Its payback for the risk firms take to create these wonderful, innovative drugs. Knowing what we now do about how the pharmaceuticals business has changed over a century and how the marketplace has shifted, what can we say about this issue of risk?

It is true that the process of discovering and developing new drugs is fraught with risk. But does the fact that success with a new molecular entity is risky necessarily ...