Yes, these are bunk campaign promises. As you point out the advertising idea is ridiculous. The re-importation issue is a strange one for me. The recent prescription drug bill specifically had a clause forbidding Medicare from bargaining for price. This seems very un-capitalist, Medicare will be after all the largest buyer in the market and deserves to get the best price it can. Other countries, such as Canada simply limit what they will pay for a drug. Drug companies can either accept this or not sell in that market. While I don't want to see drugs off our market, it starts to look like we in the US are subsidizing foreign drug sales.

Health care is just a horrendous problem for which I don't really see a good solution, I hope a complicated set of tax breaks is not the way we are headed. Drugs are expensive to research and develop and the companies deserve a profit for their efforts. Health insurers also deserve a profit. I as a consumer however feel I am getting hit from both sides. If I take a known effective drug to decrease a risk factor should I not get a break on my premiums for doing so? It should actually save my insurer money in the long run if the drug keeps me from needing much more expensive medical intervention. This is not the case however, the drug will cost me money twice, once for its purchase and again in premiums as the fact that I take it indicates a risk factor and raises my rates.

And how about the battle against generics? There is a huge marketing battle being waged here where drug company reps engage in what could almost be called bribery with perks to health care providers.

I'm with you JK that Sen. Edwards ideas are not the right ones, but I just don't hear and ideas from any quarter that seem like they will make a bit of difference.

I just wished Senators took a Hippocratic oath: "First, do no harm..."

The health care system is broken because it is a hybrid of private and public funding that doesn't work well together. Senator Edwards and Kerry want to fix it by increasing the public portion of the funding and I want to increase the private part.

Scoping the problem to p h a r m a c e u t i c a l s, it is not necessarily broken. Drug companies produce amazing miracles with funding from equities markets. Most Americans are insured or willing or capable of paying for these life saving, life enhancing drugs. People want more, scientists want to make more, investors would like to fund more.

Yet for all of Edwards's invective against these evil corporations and their obscene profits, they trade at a multiple well under comparable companies because the fear of government intervention exacts a risk premium.

Your points:
-- Medicare negotiating a price is a de facto price control. You cannot force a company to sell to the government at a dictated price and consider it free market.
-- Should we stop subsidizing all the socialist health care systems of the world? I won't argue, but it will seem harsh to many. We pay for R&D here because we're the only ones who will. If we stop -- I fear the R&D stops. And I NEED some of that!
-- Generics will prosper when people have some skin in the game. Dr Sowell calls Economics "a system to allocate scarce resources for different purposes." Since buying a generic really doesn't directly save the consumer, bribery and collusion will be the norm. If it's ever the customer’s money you can expect better choices.

The market works. Apply market forces and, where people are at risk, have government subsidize their costs.

How is Medicare negotiating a price price control? First, there is no requirement that the company sell its product to Medicare. Second, if a corporation dictates to its suppliers the maximum price it will pay for a product(which they do)is that price control? Why should Medicare not be able to play by the same rules as private health insurers?

Private insurers do not approve drugs or regulate their distribution.

The Government has huge coercive power. It can offer a low price and bring pressure on a firm to prevent it from withdrawing the product.

You mean that Medicare would collude with the FDA? Damn, how do we get these guys to teach the FBI and CIA how to play together!