In October, Goldman Sachs — remember that name? — did an analysis of health-care legislation. The conclusion was that the best scenario for stockholders and insurance companies was for health-care reform to fail.

However, the prescription drug industry, no doubt fearing that reform aimed at reducing the cost of their products would eventually pass, chose not to put its hopes in lobbyists working to convince Congress to preserve the status quo.

Instead, drug companies have decided to fall back on the old, tried-and-true strategy of raising prices before the government moves to control them, a recently released study done for AARP now shows.

The drug industry has done this at the very time many drug manufacturers were promising to support health-care reform by reducing the costs for consumers by approximately $8 billion a year, The New York Times reports.

There's no reason to be surprised.

In 2006, when the drug benefits Congress added to Medicare went into effect, the drug industry raised prices higher than they had been raised in the previous six years.

This year, drug makers have raised the wholesale prices of brand-name prescription drugs by 9 percent in light of anticipated reforms to hold down costs. These increases will add more than $10 billion to the national drug bill and more than cover the $8 billion reduction the companies promised.

No one is blaming inflation for this, not when the Consumer Price Index fell 1.3 percent last year. The only inflation is in the cost of prescription drugs, which, thanks to what smacks of price gouging, has posted the highest rate of drug-price inflation since 1992, The Times reported.

Drug companies deny that they are trying to counter the effect of any reform that might pass Congress — and maximize their profits in the process. While not disputing the study's findings, the companies claim they need more money to invest in research and development since patents on many of their products will soon expire.

This, however, is cold comfort to consumers who must have

their medications and are hard-pressed to afford them.

If people get the medicines they need at a price they can afford, fewer patients will wind up in the hospital with serious, life-threatening, expensive conditions.

If the White House and Congress are serious about reducing the cost of health care in America, and if drug makers are as concerned about the country as they are their profits, these price increases should be rolled back.