Michigan Votes Forum

 Pharmaceutical companies are under strict supervision by the food and drug administration. Unfortunately, there are occasional problems with medications, vaccines, etc. that have harmed patients. This amendment is important for pharmaceutical companies to be able to defend against accusations of neglect. Without this, pharmaceutical companies are having to settle lawsuits out of court, paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to families, which is raising the cost of healthcare overall.

This bill repeals a state ban on suing pharmaceutical companies if the drugs have been approved by the FDA. Drugs may be approved for a specified use, but prescribed for another. Pharmaceutical companies advertise to consumers, spending millions to convince us to ask our doctor for their drugs. They should be held responsible for any damage their use may cause, if a court determines they are at fault. FDA approval should not be used as a shield to protect them from all responsibilities for their products.

Maybe less advertising and more safety measures would be money better spent by these companies.

 And how many people will die or suffer because drug companies can't introduce drugs until they can prove they are "completely safe".  Regardless of who says a drug is safe, all drugs present risks to their users.  If aspirin were discovered today it likely would not be allowed on the market.  The FDA introduces a false sense of confidence to the consumers who think that if the government says it's safe, it must be safe.  Consumers would be better off without government regulation of the pharmaceutical industry.  We would all certainly learn to choose our drugs wisely.  Perhaps consumers should be allowed to sue the FDA.

That said, I must admit that I am not a fan of limiting lawsuit awards.  I just wish citizens had more sense when they sit on juries and make big awards.  I think a "loser pays" system would solve many of the litigation problems we have.

Spoken like a true anti-regulator. All drugs have side effects. We all know this. Your suggestion that the consumer would be better off  without pharmaceutical regulation borders on the ridiculous. I suppose without regulation, we would eventually all learn to choose our drugs wisely, after millions of innocent victims died. Sort of an evolutionary thing, eh? Survival of the fittest. Seems how the fittest always like that scenario.

Sorry your offended by the size of the awards some juries have seen fit to grant victims of drug company malfesance. Maybe you should consider the suffering of the plantiffs, as the juries do. Of course, if they were more fit, they would have never chosen to use the drugs in question.

gypsy:

Spoken like a true anti-regulator.

Finally something out of you I can agree with. 

Your pathetic commitment to government regulation is thoughtless and close minded.  I really don't expect you to understand how free choice could work better than the decrees from the omniscient Oz, but I'll give it a small amount of my time.  In a free market it is likely some people would suffer from drugs that do more harm than good.  However, many people may be saved from horrible diseases because new drugs are invented and introduced that would not ever become available because of the cost of government red tape.  Are the lives of these people somehow less important than the lives of people who by their own free will chose to take a drug that was unproven?

You can try to make me seem to be the one with no compassion but it is you who wants to put the lives of people in the hands of others and make us all rely on them being compassionate.  The fact is, people are going to suffer and die, we can't stop that.  We can put systems in place that allow the fewest people to suffer and die.  Government regulations are almost always are a reaction to a very visible problem that "somebody needs to do something about".  Typically, the marketplace has already addressed the problem by the time the regulations get passed.  The real shame is that it is very difficult to quantify the problems caused by the regulations, in this case, the number of people who suffer and die because drugs that could save them were not invented due to government intervention.

A good hypothetical example may be regulations on ladders.  Statistics show several people are injured using very inexpensive, $20, inferior ladders instead of better $30 ladders that most people buy.  The government steps in and places regulations on ladders, mandating that they all must meet certain standards, driving the price up to $50 for the minimum standard ladder.  Although ladder sales drop by 20%, the incidence of ladder related injuries goes way down.  However, the incidence of people injured by falling off boxes, chairs, etc. because they couldn't afford a ladder goes way up, but no one tracks that and relates it to the ladder regulation.  That's how regulation really works.

Now gypsy, I went through all of this more for anyone else that may have an open mind and is reading this than for you because I doubt there is any way you are ever going to change your mind about the benefits of government. 

gypsy:

Survival of the fittest.

Certainly we need to strive for survival of as many as possible.  However, knowing that all cannot survive, the real question is, is survival of least fit preferable to survival of the most fit?

Your becoming hard to take serious. Maybe your not serious, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt.

I don't have a commitment, pathetic or otherwise, to government regulation. I do have a commitment to common sense and fairness. I appreciate your opposition to government regulation, but I think it is misplaced in this case.

This bill allows people to sue the drug makers for damages. It is not a regulation of any sort. No one is being regulated by this bills passage. Drug companies are regulated by the FDA. This bill exposes the drug makers to the free market, even if they meet the minimum regulation required by the government. I would think you would favor that.

Your analogy using ladders is also misplaced. A more accurate analogy using ladders is if a government approved ladder broke and caused an injury to the user, who discovered that although the ladder met government regulation in design, inferior material had been substituted to save the manufacturerer money. The user should be able to seek damages and restitution from the ladders maker, even though the ladder had met government approval.

I'm sorry you spent so much time and effort trying to convince people they shouldn't be able to sue drug companies if the FDA approved the drugs that caused them damage by trying to convince them a $30 ladder is better than a $50 ladder.

 I was simply replying to your response about regulations.  Everyone should be able to sue the drug companies, and the involvement of the FDA just complicates the market with non-market forces.  It seems we should be able to include the FDA in any lawsuit that involves FDA approved drugs.