> Nope. Development costs $1B+ by itself, as you can see from my source or your link. Marketing spend is on top of the R&D cost. Irrelevant. You said: "And exp

> Nope. Development costs $1B+ by itself, as you can see from my source or your link. Marketing spend is on top of the R&D cost. Irrelevant. You said: "And expensive drugs are expensive primarily because it really does cost $1B+ to develop a new drug" [emphasis mine] and I demonstrated this to be untrue. The data shows that the primary cost is not in R&D. It doesn't matter what you say about the necessity of that sales and marketing. I didn't comment on that. The primary cost is still not in R&D. > Third, drugs only account for 40% of J&J sales--their scary marketing budget includes lots of advertising for non-pharmaceutical products. This may be true and perhaps more data is needed, but I haven't seen any evidence that demonstrates unequivocally that the primary cost of drugs in the US is due to R&D.