Let the least able pay...

A TV commercial by Glaxo-Smith-Kline ends with a saying, "Today's medicines finance tomorrow's miracles". Is this really the best way to pay for pharmaceutical research and development? That is, should the high cost of medicines be justified by the fact that part of that cost, after profits, operations, etc., pays for product development? Are the users of medicines necessarily the most able to pay for R&D costs of new medicines? Would users of medicines be better able to afford the R&D costs than say people who don't use medicines? One would think that the elderly, the sick, and the infirm, who are more than likely the greater users of therapeutic drugs would be lesser productive members of society and, in a capitalist economy, they would have fewer financial resources to pay a "hidden" tax for medical advancements through presecription drugs. Perhaps, the financing of pharmaceutical research needs re-thinking. Perthaps, research should be conducted independently from the manufacture and distribution of prescription drugs. Perhaps then, a more logical connection between the beneficiaries of new drugs and the source of funds for their development could be found. I could certainly see a role for greater funding of university pharmaceutical research with the revenues from commercialization of new discoveries being returned to the funding source rather than the university. The goal should be a reduction in the cost of medicines by spreading the cost of pharmaceutical research to society-at-large whose members are the potential beneficiaries of new drugs rather than the ones who suffer from ailments for which existing drugs provide relief.