Uwe E. Reinhardt
Professor of Political Economy,   Princeton University,   Princeton, NJ

As a shareholder of Pfizer Inc., I would be deeply concerned if Mr. Jenkin's assertion were true. As a teacher of economics, I would flunk a student proffering it. As stewards of capitalist enterprises, drug company executives are mandated by their shareholders to price the firm's products so as to maximize these shareholders' wealth. Under that mandate, they should set prices with reference to what the market can bear and to incremental manufacturing costs, and certainly not with reference to already fixed costs such as R&D. It is the executives' responsibility to maximize profits, not merely to recover costs.

Like so many champions of the drug industry, Mr. Jenkins prefers to style drug manufacturers as non-profit enterprises just seeking to break even. Why be so bashful about good old-fashioned profit maximization in our capitalist society?"

(WebEditor: Why, indeed? In this era of "Health Economics", such economists, businessmen, and politicians are destroying the basis of their own model, and putting the health of the nation at risk.)