I'd tell you exactly how political oversight has lengthened waiting lists Terribulus, but educating pork isn't on my list of priorities this week.

We have an interesting international dichotomy. The USA, through the money sloshing around the pharma industry leads the way in developing cutting edge treatments. The research and development costs, corporate returns and investor confidence in the industry means the retail costs are based on US market value. To me, The USA represents both the best and the worst in healthcare.

This is interesting for other countries, UK included. It does mean some very cutting edge drugs enter our market slightly later when the manufacturers can drop the cost slightly as it isn't "this month's cure." As our publicly available healthcare (NHS) does have a finite budget, such drugs are considered on both cost and health benefit terms, and our organisation for assessing treatments (NICE) have their opinions used by many healthcare providers in many countries where insurance based systems consider effectiveness of drugs. (In The USA, Kaiser Permanante and Evercare are two that spring to mind.)

It also means of course that as well as developing drugs for symptoms, pharma companies increasingly develop symptoms for drugs. The term "over doctoring" is one we in The UK are getting used to as patients point out snake oil to their GPs that they "read about on the Internet."