‘Private market dynamics should be excised from healthcare’

Regarding the May 20 editorial (“People die while the FDA dithers on generic insulin,” p. 38), reading such articles saddens and angers me. It’s time to more forcefully confront these drug companies. Their behavior is the best example of why private market dynamics should be excised from healthcare. Such a market breakdown—and that is what this is when viewed from a consumer perspective (and that should be the ruling perspective)—requires a countervailing governmental force to make a market correction.

How best to do that? Directly override the patents that allow these companies to string out their monopolies. Of course, their heads will explode, but that is better than the ongoing financial bleed out that consumers now experience. Another governmental alternative: Create a “public option” by licensing a willing company to produce a generic basic insulin—yes, a version of the one that worked so well, so cheaply, for so long—and put it into the marketplace at a reasonable price.

It’s really past time to continue working at the margins here.

In the face of what can only be called systematic and ongoing price-gouging, we need a more confrontational and effective approach to break this cycle.

Naturally, such a commonsense approach will never get through Congress, as currently apportioned. Organizations and citizens must team up to fight for needed change.

Les DelPizzo

Baltimore