When I was a young fellow a long time ago our medicine cabinet had 5 things in it. Aspirin, magnesia tablets, plasters, detol and a roll of cotton wool. My parents both died in their eighties with a few ailments, so were taking some medication but were not hospitalized at the time of death.

It is becoming more common for people in their final years to be in and out of hospital many times. One example In the US, Medicare will pay $55,000 for patients with advanced breast cancer to receive the chemotherapy drug Avastin, even though it extends life only an average six weeks.

Private hospitals have become cash cows, operated more for the benefit of the share holders than the public at large.

Everybody wants to live as long as possible, but there comes a time when a drugs cost to the rest of society should be considered against a few more weeks of life for one.
Chris

Lefty, I have always been of the opinion that this is what insurances are for.

Now if one CHOOSES to go without insurance for other lifestyle choices, then that is their choice. Of cause there are the exceptions to every rule.

The fact is we are going backwards and if we don't stop the downward spiral who knows where we will be in twenty years, remembers where we were just ten years ago in comparison to where we are now.

Another side are the multitude of Charities for causes like find a cure for cancer, diabetes and many more things.

The Charity collects the money a lot goes in management fees etc, the problem is the Charity does no research it supposedly gives the money to the pharmaceutical companies to do the work, which leads to another problem because if a cure is found that they can't patent it will never see the light of day.
They will only produce something they can patent and make lots of money on.
Also they like it because someone else is paying them to do research on something they get to make money from.

In the above the taxpayer are partly paying because the donated money is tax deductible.

Philip and Rehctub
I agree with your posts completly
Chris

I suspect that the tunes of some here might change if their imminent demise was at hand and could be postponed by the liberal application of someone else's time and money...

Yes, the issue of how we shall apportion society's wealth is a difficult one, but the question asked here is, with the greatest of respect, the wrong one. It is based on some unsustainable assumptions:

1. That the cost of the drug is justified. This is true in very few cases. For example early batches of interferon were horrendously difficult to manufacture and cost a motza. That has now changed with new technology.
2. That the value of the added life is somehow able to be equated with a financial cost. The implication is that the money might be "better spent" elsewhere, but that is fallacious, because money is merely a medium of exchange. If it changes hands, it still exists: nothing is used up.
3. That there is an equivalence between something that is urgent and requires immediate action and something that can be put off. Next time you're eating a burnt meal you might think about that.
4. That the "common good" overrides a need to justify poor outcomes for individuals (except oneself, of course - see my first paragraph). This is a common fallacy committed by those who claim Marx as their inspiration. It's certainly not what Marx and Engels thought.

I'll leave that there, but it's not an exhaustive list.

A better question would be "why do we tolerate drug companies profiteering"? Perhaps an answer might be found in some of the responses here.