A Washington Post editorial tackles the topic of health care costs in an irrational market. It recalls cancer drug Taxol costing $4,000 a year -- "a sum considered exorbitant" in 1992. But in 1998, cancer drug Herceptin was billed at $20,000 a year. And in 2002 cancer drug Erbitux cost $100,000. The editorial states: "Drug companies charge this much mostly because our broken non-market system allows them to get away with it. "
It concludes, "The Bush administration and Congress are passing up opportunities to create a more rational health market. Some effort has been made to address the fact that doctors earn profits by selling the exorbitant cancer treatments that they prescribe, but doctors increasingly invest in high-tech equipment that they profitably recommend to patients. Meanwhile managed care companies, which were once regarded as the best hope for containing unjustified spending, have been more or less defeated; but faced with this failure of the private market, federal policy is to move Medicare toward a private model. Oh, for a political leader with the courage to take on this mess."