Wednesday's post-election trading on Wall Street was mostly positive, but there was at least one exception, drug companies. Economist Greg Mankiw predicts, "The Dems will likely give us lower drug prices and less research into new drugs. Good news if you plan to be sick soon. Bad news if you plan to be sick in the more distant future."
Hi Dave.
Though every person in Congress has family that face the same medical calculus about the development of new life-saving products that you reference from Professor Mankiw... still they are so preoccupied with their million and one foolish political urgencies and various special interest groups.... that they ignore an issue with such immense importance to their own parents and children!
Randy says the big drug stocks have seen enormous drops... and whether you want a new improved Viagra... or just a cure for various cancers.... that is really tragic news.
O, well.... that's what happens when you put politics in charge. To see the numbers that suggest we've been loosing about 60% of our new pharmaceuticals to the political process...ever since 1964.... see Peltzman's work at: http://www.fdareview.org/harm.shtml
To see what the world's smartest economist says about how drastically we already underfund drug research, without this new crop of democrats.....
Kevin Murphy and friend suggest the benefits of most medical research are terribly hard to capture. And so we get way, way, way to little of it....
http://www.milkeninstitute.org/publications/review/2000_3/mir5_22_medresearch.pdf