Investor validates role of prescription medicines to improved healthcare

by Daniel Hines
Publisher, TodaysSeniorsNetwork.com

The potential benefit of continued access to safe, affordable prescription medicines for U.S. citizens as a part of any signficant gains to be made in the American healthcare system has been identified by contrarian investor Robert Kleinschmidt in the August issue of Kiplinger's.
Kleinschmidt has made his fortune by identifying opportunities to invest in unpopular groups of stocks. In the Kiplinger's article, Kleinschmidt identifies pharmceutical stocks as such an opportunity.

His rationale: "The consensus will change when there's widespread recognition that drugs are part of the solution for healthcare as opposed to bieng part of the problem...if you think medical costs are a high percentage of the economy now, imagine what they would be if you couldn't solve a lot medical problems with a pill and had to solve them some other way..."

He continues that using pills is a "cost-effective way" of keeping people out of hospitals and by keeping them healthy, deters the need for more expensive operations and use of medical devices.

The conclusion is obvious: Access to safe, affordabale prescription medicines--including those from licensed, safe sources outside the U.S.--can, as noted in an earlier blog entry (Prescription Meds from outside U.S. offer lifeline to Part D and Medicare), addressing the healthcare needs of the U.S. in their totality is crucial to improved health for all Americans. To segment various issues--reimportation, making Part D a part of regular Medicare Administration, SCHIP, fighting privatization of Medicare, restoring fiscal integrity to Medicare and Medicaid, or prescription medicine safety--and identify them as 'the issue' of a particular group is both short-sighted and self-defeating.

That's why it is encouraging to see some new trends beginning to take place. Kleinschmidt's observation a succinct appraisal of the very real and important benefit to be attained--and not just for investors--but for all Americans.

Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) has introduced legislation that would incorporate a broad base of issues into policies, including but not limited to reimportation, that could improve the administration of Medicare, provide tremendous cost-savings and ease the strain upon the Budget, and improve the health of untold numbers of Americans.

Hopefully, the pharmaceutical industry will realize that as this occurs and Americans through the reduced costs made possible by such an approach, it will sell more prescription medicines, increasing their sales volume and profitability. And, in so doing, it will help validate Kleinschmidt's contrarian philosophy.