The latest Kaiser Family Foundation survey on attitudes towards pharmaceutical companies returned some fairly interesting results, namely, that Americans are pretty clear on their desire for more government regulation of Pharma, and fairly unconcerned with the effect that could have on innovation. 
I tend to think that you don't even need to make that tradeoff between innovation and access, and that pumping the savings from government bargaining into research grants and a parallel, prize-based system of pharmaceutical research would actually do more to encourage innovation than the current system. As a general point, it's very hard to oppose government regulation of pharmaceutical companies on the grounds that it would reduce innovation but also oppose creating a prize-based system to reward different kinds of innovation. Lots of Republicans in Congress do it, but what they're doing is protecting Pharma's profits and their campaign contributions, not pursuing pharmaceutical innovation.
I tend to think that you don't even need to make that tradeoff between innovation and access, and that pumping the savings from government bargaining into research grants and a parallel, prize-based system of pharmaceutical research would actually do more to encourage innovation than the current system. As a general point, it's very hard to oppose government regulation of pharmaceutical companies on the grounds that it would reduce innovation but also oppose creating a prize-based system to reward different kinds of innovation. Lots of Republicans in Congress do it, but what they're doing is protecting Pharma's profits and their campaign contributions, not pursuing pharmaceutical innovation. 
