With much wringing of hands and gnashing of teeth, a Greek chorus of managed care executives is chanting a recurrent refrain: Prescription drug costs are spiraling out of control. Customers are demanding treatments that will raise their quality of life and keep them out of hospitals. What happened to the “good old days,” when there simply were no treatments for conditions that pharmaceuticals can manage today, when patients either died — the cheapest outcome — or bit their lips and did without?

Drug expenditures were decidedly lower in those days — and so were life expectancy and the quality of life. Now medicines enable arthritis patients to go to work and take care of their families, lower blood pressure and prevent heart attacks and strokes, and help millions of people get on with their lives. Doesn’t the incomparably greater value that medicines give today warrant spending more on them?