Pharmaceutical companies most foreign owned are milking the NHS and taking British patients to the cleaners.

Like foreign cars, most medicines sold in the UK are overpriced when compared to the cost you can buy them in Canada or the rest of the other continental European countries.

Why should the British tax payer and the British patients fund their research and development costs?

I think Parliament ought to set up a Commission to investigate possible profiteering by Pharmaceutical companies!

I wish them the best of luck.

Trouble is that the Americans have been trying to tackle "Big Pharma" for decades now without much success.

Why do you think we'll succeed when they haven't?

I have a feeling the rip offs as you say are more than likely cock-ups on the purchasing front. Government departments are not renown for being on the ball so to speak!

There is a simple solution to this and the even bigger one about the bias the drug companies have, albeit it's the kind of thing you die mysteriously in the woods for.

Set up an EU-wide law forcing all drug companies selling drugs here to publish all the research they usually bury. Make breaches of this law punishable by enormous fines and jail sentences.

This will mean that alternate treatments can compete on almost equal terms and the drug companies will lose at least 60% of the market.

I would also make sure that all placebo studies test the placebo (ie ask the patients what they think they took).

Dave - I take it you'er a herbalist or complementary medicine..ist? (or whatever the term is)

I've studied about 20 different therapies and what I do is quite unique although it includes NLP, EFT & hypnotherapy.

It's a bit beside the point in relation to my argument.

Traditional medicine more often than not fails to outperform placebo all things equal. Placebo, having no side effects, should therefore be prescribed instead.

Drug companies go to extreme lengths to hide this, refusing to test the double blind, running studies 10+ times until they find a freak one where the drug actually appears to outperform placebo and burying the rest.

Several "complimentary medicines" outperform placebo. Of course, they rarely have the resources to prove it, but that's another issue.

One problem is that most drugs are overpriced. We only notice it because we pay for them. As I understand it the Welsh don't have to pay for presciptions any more. Maybe England should follow suit.

I don't know a lot about it, but the NHS uses its bulk purchasing power to negotiate lower prices for drugs.

I read somewhere that the NHS pays ridiculous prices for everything not only their drugs because they can't get their heads round bulk purchasing!!?? Who knows – anyway I have difficulty believing anything so massively bureaucratic like the NHS can manage its purchasing efficiently.

I would propose an enquiry into the NHS purchasing department(s) before starting to whallop the drugs companies.