Tom Sowell at Townhall.com

Says this:

Counting the costs: Part II

All the political noises being made about importing pharmaceutical drugs from Canada, or other schemes to reduce drug prices, do not face up to the 800-pound gorilla staring us in the face -- the $800 million it costs to develop a new drug.

You can control the price of drugs all you want, whether by imports from Canada or in numerous other ways, but if that $800 million is not covered, you are not going to keep getting new drugs created at the same pace. That's when sick people will pay the real cost in needless pain and preventable deaths.

But the politicians do not have to count any such costs, especially if those costs materialize only after the next election.