This is, of course, basically a load of horse apples.

...The group’s report, which uses numbers from the annual reports of nine leading drug companies, shows, for instance, that Merck and Co. Inc., which reported $47.7 billion in revenue in 2001, spent $6.22 billion or 13 percent of that on marketing, advertising and administration.

Merck reported a net income, or profit, of $7.28 billion —15 percent of revenue, or triple the $2.46 billion it spent on research and development, Families USA pointed out.



Pfizer, which makes the blockbuster Viagra impotence pill, spent 35 percent of its $32.2 billion in revenue on marketing, advertising and administration and 15 percent on research and development.



A more perceptive person might notice a couple of things, like the fact that "adminstration," i.e. the cost of running the company, is casually thrown in with marketing. The hope is, of course, that less perceptive people might get the idea that the $6.22 billion spent by Merck was spent on magazine ads. The fact that administrative costs are higher than research costs is not in itself a crime. I would like to see any company whose research budget outstrips its cost of doing business.

Also completely overlooked by anyone who might simply take Families USA* word for it and not bother to check the source material, is that the numbers for "costs of materials and production" have been completely left out. This number is about $29 billion for Merck, which dwarfs all the other numbers, including its profits.

Never mind that a vast majority of the useful drugs on this planet come from our private pharmaceutical companies. This isn't important politically.

BTW, I'd love to know what hat you pulled that 85 percent number from. Any sources?

*Another strong advocate of a single-payer health care system. A major step in making socialized medicine a reality in America is the deliberate destruction of all private alternatives, including private medical and pharamaceutical companies, and private health insurance systems. Prescription coverage for the elderly is a big part of the camel under the tent flap, since the skyrocketing prices for the rest of us would insure that all of us would eventually demand the rest of the camel. It is essential that ALL elderly be covered in a prescription program in order to provide the voting bloc necessary to further the goal of socialized medicine. Note that reasonable programs designed to cover only the small minority of needy elderly don't make a lot of progress with the leftists in Washington.