First, dump Obama Care, and have ready a bill which recaptures some of the good stuff from within this plan. They can debate what the "good stuff" is, but there are a couple things I want: Medical Insurance by private companies, group policies for small business offered by the private insurance companies, a policy that captures those that get left behind due to financial ability, age, or pre-existing conditions, and major medicial/catastropic insurance for those "in between jobs or employers". Perscription reform which I don't really know what that means, but I do know it costs way too much for perscriptions and they are a lot less expensive in other countries. I assume that Americans are subsidizing the cost without even knowing it.
How do you propose that the pharmaceutical industry pay for R&D of new drugs?
I don't work for big pharma, and my only dog in the fight is either the tax hike that will follow if prices of prescriptions are set by government fiat, or the stall in creation of new drugs if We The Voters end up compelling them to simply take it in the behind on their bottom line.
It can take a decade or more to come out with something like Lipitor (a blood pressure, cholesterol and heart attack prevention drug). Scientists and doctors will be working on that product for years, in a laboratory somewhere, running chemical engineering software, animal tests, and controlled human tests. It costs tens of millions, per drug.
Then the drug company has 7 years of patent monopoly on that particular product, to make back all those millions and more to appease stockholders.
If there's no profit in medicine, stockholders will go to other industries.
If there's no investment in medicine from stockholders, there's no innovation and new tech.
I'd just as soon see a declaration that all drugs engineered from US based pharma labs MUST be paid for at appropriate market value, either by state-subsidized "free" medical programs (like the UK and Canada), or by the people in that country who directly consume the product. No fiat pricing of drugs abroad... otherwise export of that drug to that country is banned while it is still within its 7 year patent window.
That will lower prescription drug prices here in the US, since we currently pay the lion's share of R&D costs of a given drug.