Evil Drug Companies?

I received an email the other day from my father which seemed to suggest that people in this country are being gouged (price-wise), by big pharmaceutical companies and big pharmacies. Well I chewed on the subject for a while, in between doing research for school and actually writing papers for grad purposes. The subject of drugs made me pause because the story is never that easy, and I know emotions run high.
So I did some digging. To be very clear I was looking for drug prices of medication to treat primarily genetically determined diseases. To be precise, I was looking into price information about diseases that are not believed to have a behavioral component. The diseases, for example, I was looking at were leukemia, breast cancer, and schizophrenia. If someone knows of a particular behavioral component of any of these diseases then let me know.
I looked at Costco and I looked at CVS. I picked CVS because there is one no more than .5 miles from my house, much like a lot of houses in this country. I picked drugs I found on the FDA website, and the Oncology Tools, (a related FDA website). Being a Psych. grad student I already knew the drugs for schizophrenia. No surprise many of the cancer medications were not listed, neither were their generic counterparts. The number one treatment for breast cancer was Tamoxifen. This drug has been around since the 1970's. It was the first drug approved by the FDA to treat breast cancer (1998). The price of the drug was 4 times more at CVS then Costco. So, I tried another drug, a progesterone type drug, one that helps infertile women. And to my surprise CVS was lower, signifcantly. Now I was not checking all the drugs listed. To see them all check out the respective websites. I simply state that I looked at a handful of prescription prices. I found some that were more at CVS, some that were equal, and some that were more at Costco. Neither website had the generic equivalent of Risperdol, which is an anti-psychotic medication with less of the tardive dyskinetic side-effects.
Bottom line: do your own research. I found through, fifteen minutes of looking, cheaper drugs on both websites. I was not looking very hard. If you comparatively shop for a new car and a new flat-screen T.V., why not for medication that your doctor has prescribed. Pharmaceuticals are not by and large cheap, and neither should they be.
Each year drug companies test at least 5,000 to 10,000 new substances. Out of those amounts, only about 250 go before the FDA for approval. Of those 250 vying for approval one, that's right ONE, gets approved. So that one drug has to pay for the research and development of all those experimental 5,000 to 10,000 other substances. At Tufts University, research has shown that drug companies spend nearly $900 million over a ten to fifteen year period to develop each drug. Now one can see the reason for patents, and why it takes so long for generic versions to hit the market. If you do not believe me, and like to read all the pap spat out by anti-capitalists here's the link: Tufts
One should also remember something about the companies at which they are consumers. Costco may have some cheaper prices on some of the drugs they carry, but they are also a big company being praised by Buy blue, the so-called progressive website that encourages people to support companies that support liberal causes and Democrat campaigns. But hey, maybe that's your thing. If you clicked on the link to the website for those “blue” people you will see that Costco gets a rating of %99.10, purely on their political contributions for fiscal year '04. In every other category they are not rated. Hmmm?
Excuse me for a moment, but what a bunch of crap! The website has all these sub-categories like ethics, workers rights, and animal testing, but none are rated. If you enjoy my website, take a look at Amerada Hess, and maybe think twice about those toy trucks this Christmas. Buy Blue is commiserable.