High cost of medication due to greed

The high cost of medication is due to the greed within the pharmaceutical industry and promoted by our legislators and the FDA.

The FDA is funded by the pharmaceutical industry, has allowed monopoly rights to this industry, thus allowing uncontrolled price gouging at the expense of the consumers and the taxpayers.

This has been done over many years but has recently spun out of control due to lack of oversight by our legislators and by laws that have been passed to protect the pharmaceutical industry from competition by promoting unrealistic patent laws and allowing some generic drugs to be controlled by one manufacturer to produce a medication and control the price of its product.

The lack of control by our government has allowed the taxpayer and the consumers to pay billions of dollars to this industry in return for whatever perks they receive in financial support to their campaigns brought on by Citizens United.

Much of the research and development by the pharmaceutical industry has been financed by the taxpayer's however the profits have gone to the companies. Pharmaceutical lobbyists have been able to manipulate the FDA and legislators to a point where there is no market competition to reduce prices and are able to charge whatever they want without any oversight.

This is not happen in any other county in the world. If the TPP is approved it will only support and encourage this egregious behavior. It is now time for all of us to overturn Citizens United.

This story was originally published September 28, 2016 at 11:31 AM with the headline "High cost of medication due to greed."