From: Ken Fudge
Columbus
The opiate lawsuit frenzy that has hit Indiana government sounds like a way to get more money to spend rather than anything else. Now not only have the taxpayers become cash cows, but also anything and anyone else that the money machine can take advantage of, such as the drug companies.
If you think the price of your prescriptions is high now, just wait until these government entities and their lawyers drag the drug companies into court and take millions from them to waste. Those awards from court decisions are going to be passed from the drug companies to the consumer as they will and have to be. All your government representatives have done is to create a source of income that will cause an increased cost to the consumer.
We have become a non-accountable society. We blame guns and gun manufacturers for deaths brought on by people who abused the whole purpose of the gun’s intended use of hunting or defense. Now we blame drug companies for the abuse of painkillers. Why can’t we accept responsibility for our own actions as human beings? It wasn’t the gun or its manufacturer that caused the crime or death, it was the person behind that gun who made the conscious decision to point it at another human being and take their life. It wasn’t the Vicodin or fentanyl or hydrocodone that caused the addiction, it was the person who made the decision to take more without consulting their doctor first or who lied to their doctor to get more to abuse to get high.
These drugs were meant for the purpose of managing pain and manufactured by a company to fill that need. If these companies were to stop manufacturing all drugs or increase the price to pay for liability because they might get sued years down the road because people could abuse their product, then we are in big trouble.
People need to quit playing the victim and become responsible for their own actions. Government needs to quit trying to become a business that makes money and profit for those who participate in it and become what it was meant to be and that is to serve the citizen and manage resources.
I urge the government officials of Bartholomew County to avoid becoming a part of this trend. This is not free money, and the effects of going after the drug companies could make it much harder for needed new drugs, which can save lives, to get to the market, and existing drugs will become much more costly for the consumer.
