Now This is Good Policy

The House Ways and Means Committee is considering generating additional $37 billion in additional revenue by removing the deductiblity of direct to consumer advertising for prescription drugs.

The Chairman, Charles Rengel is talking about it favorably, and I think it does good on a number of levels:

• It generates more taxes.
• It reduces the artificial demand for the new under patent prescription drugs that are frequently not much better than their predecessors.
• It redirects sales efforts to the doctors, who are better equipped to weigh the merits.
• It would likely make drug companies more amenable to moving their drugs to over-the-counter, where they could deduct the ads, saving everyone money.