David Goldhill’s op-ed says U.S. pharmaceutical industry and health-care system are innovative. He didn’t mention that pharmaceutical companies spend more on sales and marketing than on research. Why, for instance, do we allow advertising of prescription drugs, when its only function is to pressure doctors? How would “hospitals compete on price for patients”? None of this is possible without insurance, he says.
Our problem is a for-profit insurance industry that is spectacularly complex and inefficient. Unless we get away from the fantasy that health care is just a consumer product, he writes.
