Time to Stop Taxpayer Subsidies to Pharmaceutical Companies

Yahoo News asked readers and contributors to briefly respond to passages from Barack Obama's State of the Union address. Here's one reaction.

Obama on health care: "I'm prepared to enact reforms that will achieve the same amount of health care savings by the beginning of the next decade as the reforms proposed by the bipartisan Simpson-Bowles commission. ? The reforms I'm proposing go even further. We'll reduce taxpayer subsidies to prescription drug companies and ask more from the wealthiest seniors."

My response: When I heard President Obama's speech, the issue that struck home was regarding taxpayer subsidies to pharmaceutical companies, with the promise that wealthier seniors will pay more.

After my father died, my mother had to continue working full-time, into her 70s, because she had to spend more than $600 a month on medications and supplemental health care. Yet, when she was diagnosed with breast cancer, her new medications cost thousands more. Meanwhile, a friend in Europe was taking the same medications, for only a fraction of the cost. It is time that the costs of medications are fairer. My mother worked very hard all of her life, and it seems wrong that the drug companies only think of their own profits.

Georgia Makitalo is from Bloomington, Minn.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/time-stop-taxpayer-subsidies-pharmaceutical-companies-175800955.html