Frontline on PBS

A report on prescription-drug pricing focuses on complaints from consumers about high prices and state-government efforts in Maine and Oregon to control drug costs. The hour also includes comments from Eli Lilly and Merck executives, who describe what they say is the necessity to recoup the costs involved in drug research, and from drug-industry critics, who decry what one calls the industry's “staggering” profits. Summing up the dilemma: indpendent analyst Richard Evans. “As a soceity we've got two important questions here,” Evans says. “One is how do we make sure that everyone has access to existing technology, and how do we make sure that we do that in such a way that we don't wreck our access to better technology tomorrow.”