Life after the election

George Bush and John Kerry are each promising to reshape the American healthcare system in ways that would affect the size and dynamics of markets for biotech and pharmaceutical products. Both are focused principally on meeting demands for access to drugs and lower prices, promoting policies with uncertain consequences for pharmaceutical innovation.

President Bush advocates a consumer-driven model that would put greater reliance on market forces to increase the efficiency of healthcare. He relies on the private sector and empowered individual consumers to contain costs, while proposing an incremental expansion of some government programs to enlarge the safety net beneath the poor...