D'jever wonder why we have Mevacor, Lipitor, Pravachol, Lescol, Crestor, Zocor, Zetia, Vytorin, Simvastatin, etc., etc., for treating elevated cholesterol? This may help explain that:

Prescription Drug Scams
By Dean Baker
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Thursday 29 June 2006
The New York Times had an excellent story this week about how drug and medical supply companies make large contributions to charitable foundations run by physicians. To the casual observer, these contributions look like kickbacks, given in exchange for doctors writing prescriptions for their products and also publishing favorable research findings. -------------
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The basic economics of drug patents are striking. The country spends $220 billion a year on drugs. Without government patent monopolies, it would be paying around $70 billion for the same drugs, a saving of $150 billion a year. According to data from the industry, this excess spending supports $40 billion a year in drug research, meaning that the public pays almost 4 dollars in higher drug prices for every dollar in drug research.
But the picture gets worse. According to the Food and Drug Administration, two thirds of the industry's new drugs are copycat drugs that are not qualitatively better than existing drugs. This means that the public spends more than $10 in higher drug prices for every dollar that the industry spends researching breakthrough drugs.

Wait, it gets even worse. According to data from the industry, it costs drug companies almost 7 times as much to perform a clinical trial as the NIH. This makes sense, if one purpose of the industry trials is to provide kickbacks to the doctors performing the trial. Because of patent monopolies, drug companies have little reason to minimize the cost of their research. They use research expenditures as a way to promote drug sales, just like any other spending. This means that their $40 billion in research spending may be substantially inflated due to patent-induced corruption.---------