Consumer Confidential: It shouldn't take generous strangers to help patients cope with drug prices

The inherent goodness of people was made clear last week when a pair of readers offered to pay for a 75-year-old Southern California man's prescription meds after the drug maker imposed a $1,100 deductible to be eligible for financial assistance.

Meanwhile, the warped priorities of our for-profit health care industry once again tumbled into the open as the drug company in question, Eli Lilly & Co., responded to this demonstration of humanitarian fellowship with a shrug of its corporate shoulders.

Call me a starry-eyed optimist, but I had a notion