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Originally posted by hermit22
I'm a college student, working 60 hours a week to pay the bills so that one day, when I work my way up through the State Dept., I can make sure these things don't happen. Which, in the long-run is more noble than giving up all my posessions to help a few people out for a little bit.
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So how do you know what the long-term goals of the pharmaceutical companies are? If they gave away their product to hundreds of thousands of people, they may not be able to fund development of the next new drug.
It's easy to look at a company's balance sheet and offer criticisms and comments about how they could be more moral with their money. I bet it's a bit harder when you're actually the CEO.
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And that would be fine if you're in the toaster business. But when you engage in a money-making venture that plays with people's lives and well-being, you have a certain responsibility to fill.
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How is developing drugs "playing with people's lives"? If those companies didn't exist, many many people would die. You make it sound like these companies are directly responsible for people's deaths. No, it's disease that's responsible. Those companies try to turn a profit by developing remedies for those diseases.
If some company develops a revolutionary new way to produce microprocessors, it can charge a high premium for that technology. It took risks to develop it, and it paid off. If a toaster company develops a revolutionary new way to toast bread evenly, it can charge a high premuim for that technology. Again, it took risks and now gets the reward of those risks.
But because a company happens to develop drugs instead of toasters, it should be required to give up whatever profits some liberal free-healthcare advocate considers "more than enough"?
Why is it that liberals are always so quick to spend other people's money? So you're putting yourself through college, that's great. Do you mean to tell me that you have no luxury or entertainment items whatsoever? No color TV, no video games, no refreigerator, no name-brand cereal? That extra fifty cents you spend on Cheerios instead of Oati-o's could have bought some poor African kid cough syrup for a day.