This paper offers a review of the Alan Sager testimony on West Virginia bill H.B. 4084, the Pharmaceutical Availability and Affordability Act of 2004. (hereinafter Sager).

• A close reading of Sager.s testimony reveals substantial confusion with respect to the precise nature of the policy problem confronting West Virginia.
  

• Sager discusses not at all the cost savings in the larger health care context made possible by the availability of pharmaceuticals, in that drugs can and are substitutes for such other forms of health care as hospitalization, and can and do improve the effectiveness of other health care protocolswhen used as complements.
  

• Sager's argument that total sales revenues will fall little if at all upon the implementation of price controls is highly problematic, and in any event is largely irrelevant with respect to the issue of whether price controls will affect future pharmaceutical research and development.
  

• Because Sager blandly asserts the absence of an important adverse research and development effect attendant upon the imposition of price controls, he is able to ignore those effects; and thus he ignores also the "cost/affordability" dimension represented by higher future mortality/morbidity rates caused by the reduced future availability of pharmaceuticals. Unavailable drugs are very costly in terms of human health outcomes.
  

• Sager complains that U.S. consumers are subsidizing the rest of the world, argues implicitly that the federal government ought to engage in the same regulatory wealth redistribution process as Spain and Australia, and then argues that West Virginia ought to obtain the same free ride.
  

• The West Virginia proposal guarantees that pharmaceutical producers over time will not be allowed to earn competitive rates of return on sales in the state.
  

• The Sager testimony exhibits a large number of secondary errors, omissions, and non sequitur arguments, the totality of which renders the document useless for purposes of policy analysis and formulation.

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