[HM2Viking]

March 2007, Dean Baker
The rate of new drug development has stagnated, in spite of large increases in both private and public sector spending on biomedical research. The flip side of slower progress is higher drug costs. The cost of developing new drugs has been rising at an average real rate of more than 7 percent since 1987. This report considers the ways in which government patent monopolies distort incentives so that pharmaceutical companies may not opt to minimize research costs. It documents some of the perverse incentives created by patent monopolies in drugs.

http://www.cepr.net/documents/public...on_2007_03.pdf

[nursin09]

I don't know about innovation-- but definitly healthcare/drug access. Americans aren't innovative anyway, we like to retest the drugs that other countries develop and then re-name them.

[ksilty]

Originally Posted by nursin09

I don't know about innovation-- but definitly healthcare/drug access. Americans aren't innovative anyway, we like to retest the drugs that other countries develop and then re-name them.

That could be because most of the big Pharmaceuts are either partnered with or owned by foreign companies.