This isn’t the first time Tim Anderson, a drug-industry analyst at Prudential Equity, has implored the drugmaker to get moving.

Why? As he writes in a new report, Anderson argues ceo Fred Hassan needs to take Schering-Plough to “the next level,” and that means getting “its hands on new product flow.” Internal product development, he says, is making “slow progress.”

Supposedly, Schering-Plough looked at Sepracor last spring, before the run-up in its stock price. And then Hassan’s team floated a trial balloon about interest in Bristol-Myers Squibb.

Hassan talks about “the high price of assets for sale in the current environment, likening it to a housing bubble. In our opinion,” writes Anderson, “those asset prices are not likely to go down anytime soon.” Meanwhile, the drugmaker hasn’t “loosened” its valuation criteria.

As Anderson also notes, Schering-Plough let Abbott Labs buy Kos Pharmaceuticals, something he once encouraged Hassan to explore. Now that Pfizer’s torcetrapib failed, he argues that Kos looks like an even better deal.

So the question is this - who or what should Hassan buy?