Case Study: Big Pharma

The prices of prescription drugs in the United States are by far the highest in the world. [1] On average, Europeans pay 40% less than Americans for the same medications. [2] Consumers have been resorting to several ways, sometimes putting themselves in harm’s way, to alleviate the burden of high prescription drug costs. Some buy their medications online or cross the borders to neighboring countries so they would be able to afford buying their needed medications. Others have resorted to the illegal act of selling their unused medications in online forums just to recover part of their expenses. Many factors contribute to the increased drug prices in the United States including research and

In Our Daily Meds: How the Pharmaceutical Companies Transformed Themselves into slick Marketing Machines and Hooked the Nations on Prescription Drugs, Peterson, covers biotechnology for the Los Angeles Times, claims that the Pharmaceutical companies are taking advantage of Americans. Peterson proceeds by using facts that support her claim that Pharmaceutical companies are making profit from Americans, by convincing the people they cannot function without their meds. Peterson goes deeper by making points that America is the biggest Pharmaceutical company, at which they produce unnecessary products. To continue, Peterson also leads into how Pharmaceutical companies advertise to the most profitable target consumers. Peterson uses Secretary of

The journalist Nadia Kounang further explains the differences between what the U.S pays on drugs and other similar developed countries, in the article Why pharmaceuticals are cheaper abroad. Kounang displays how much American need to pay for Gleevec (cancer medication) which is $6,214 (per month/per customer) whereas in Canada patients only have to pay $1,141 and in the U.K $2,697 (Kounang 1). These prices are the result of different organizations setting different price ranges with drug companies (U.S.A), and these enables American insurance companies to take advantage of it (Kounang 1). While in other countries there are not as many organizations, so this helps to set a deal of a price that benefit both the drug company and consumers (Kounang). Strictly speaking, by having these different medical insurance companies it has made it difficult for patients to afford their medication because there is no singular organization that can set drug price ranges with pharmaceuticals, while in other countries they don’t a variety of different medical insurances which enables the country to provide treatments that its citizens can afford. Thereby, if the government does not fully cooperates with other medical insurances, lowering the cost of medication will be difficult without affecting research and development. And as a result people who can not afford them will still struggle to obtain their required prescriptions.

In Marcia Angell’s book, The Truth About the Drug Companies: How They Deceive Us and What to do About It, she reveals to readers the truth about what the pharmaceutical drug companies do to make money and how it effects us as customers and patients. Angell shows through her use of facts from credible sources and her use of statistic and knowledge on the subject that the pharmaceutical industry has transformed into one that is more profit based than one that is trying to help out people with innovative medication.

On september 2nd 2011, a Twenty-four year old man from cincinnati named Kyle Willis´ fell victim to the corruption of the pharmaceutical industry(Gann, Carrie). Willis had a severe toothache on his wisdom tooth that resulted in its extraction. After the surgery, Willis´s face started to swell and was sent to the emergency room. He was prescribed antibiotic medications and also painkillers in order to follow standard recovery procedure. Kyle Willis’ could not afford both drugs so he just purchased the pain killers because of the swellings unbearable pain. The infection continued to spread into his brain which lead to severe brain swelling and eventually Kyle Willis’ death. Kyle Willis’ died because he could not afford the medication that would have saved his life. There are many other people that can 't afford the drugs they need, which results them losing their lives. According to harvard studies, over 45,000 people annually die due to lack of health care coverage(Harvard Gazette). According to their studies, those who are privately insured have 40% chance less of dying than those who have insufficient funds(Harvard Gazette). The monopoly and corruption of the pharmaceutical industry is un-american and inhumane because it causes the middle class to not receive the help they need to recover.

Not following prescriptions as ordered causes more stress on the health care system because it increases visits to physicians’ offices and emergency departments that may have been avoidable if the medication was covered for all Canadians (Lexchin, 2017). There are various political barriers to implementing a universal drug coverage plan in Canada. Primarily the federal government’s Patented Medicine Prices Review Board of Canada (PMPRBC). This board controls prescription and non-prescription prices by making comparisons of across seven selected Organisation of Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) countries (Tang, Ghali, & Manns, 2014). However the OECD countries have high costs for medications, four of which have the most expensive prices in the world, therefore increasing Canadian prices. According to Morgan and Boothe (2016), another barrier to universal drug coverage stems from “pharmacare’s initially low place on the policy agenda” (p. 249). Healthy public policy development requires synergy between the public, policy makers, and institutions alike. If universal drug coverage has “less attention than other health policy debates” a political change is less likely to occur (p. 251).

Marketing and priorities of the pharmaceutical industry have been a dilemma for years. Scare- mongering has been increased on the importance of drugs (Shah, 2010). For example, executives at Mylan, a pharmaceutical company that owns Epipen, reportedly reaped in nearly three hundred million in compensation from 2011 to 2015 (Tuttle, 2016). Heather Bresch, the CEO of Mylan, was accused of jacking up the price by 600%; her response was to blame the “broken health system”, Obamacare, and the rise of high- deductible health insurance plan. But should this be the case to do these to millions of families who can barely afford something that take thirty dollars to make and jack the price up to seven hundred dollars? We live in a greedy nation that is only there to take from one another. When people see this you can only think of how the pharmaceuticals being an “industry” it basically prioritizes that revenue comes before the needs and cures to the human society.

The cost of prescription drugs in America has risen to a level that most Americans could not afford them without the help of an insurance plan. The greedy and capitalistic pharmaceutical companies rely on the United States to fund the future development of drugs with skyrocketing prices. Public health costs are bankrupting individual Americans and posing serious challenges to the city, state, and federal budgets. Some people are even going to Canada and Europe to buy prescription drugs. A numbers of Americans are forced to choose lower-priced drugs rather than expensive prescription drugs as their first line of defense against illness. The FDA is fighting both initiatives saying “they cannot guarantee the safety of imported drugs and challenging both the safety and effectiveness of many dietary supplements”. (by. Wyn Snow)

"Pharma Lobbying Held Deep Influence over Policies on Opioids." US News Online, 18 Sept. 2016. Points of View Reference Center, lafayette.libproxy.ivytech.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=pwh&AN=AP3499b1c089144f10bf844f29c1355ef5&site=eds-live. Accessed 29 Apr.

The Pharmaceutical industry has been in the spotlight for decades due to the fact that they have a reputation for being unethical in its marketing strategies. In The Washington Post Shannon Brownlee (2008) states, “We try never to forget that medicine is for the people. It is not for the profits. The profits follow.” This honorable statement is completely lost in today’s world of pharmaceutical marketing tactics. These tactics are often deceptive and biased. Big Pharma consistently forgets their moral purpose and focuses primarily on the almighty dollar. Big Pharma is working on restoring their reputation by reforming their ethical code of conduct.

If only one pharmaceutical manufacturer imports medication from the U.S., costs of prescription drugs will significantly rise for Canadians (Lopert, 2017) because if there is no competition, the manufacturer is free to set the medication prices. It will ultimately be these trade policies, over health policies (Galea, 2017), that causes disturbance to Canada's progress in establishing a national pharmacare program. Reality is, these conflicts are arising due to different political-ideological values that cause the nations to react differently to the same global forces (Petrin, 2017).

This protects the consumer rights, market stability, and safeguards the basic principles of fair trade. Nevertheless, opposition to market regulation has been fierce. Pharmaceutical companies do spend a fortune to prevent strict rules on the industry. This is done through the powerful lobbyist in Washington in order to influence the votes at the congress (Fincham, 2010). Many lawmakers with good initial intentions are swayed through fear of losing elections or the temptation of fortune through campaign contributions. This limits the power of ordinary Americans to regulate this

In the United States, consumers are now spending upwards of 200 billion dollars a year on pharmaceutical drugs, and this number is slated to increase by 12-15% each year in the coming decade (Hoey 1). Many life-saving and essential drugs for consumers tend to get quite expensive depending upon the type of treatment prescribed to that patient. Depending upon market variables, including mergers, and buyouts, drug prices will have a greater chance of going up in price due to less competition in these cases. Most generic drugs that are manufactured have to delay release of these live-saving drugs until the much larger drug companies are able to make a substantial profit first. The real issue for many consumers is that the ones paying for premium health insurance plans will feel the effects of these price increases first as prices rise. Most elderly folk, or anyone covered under Medicare and Medicaid have some semblance of price protection from several federal acts of law to help maintain reasonable price points. However, even with regulations in place, some companies and drug entities are able to delay drug approvals with the FDA shorting stocks and betting on the loss of other smaller companies. These practices endanger the consumers at all levels as drug companies increase the cost of life-saving pharmaceutical drugs causing extreme hardships for patients, the delay of drug releases affecting consumer care, the potential for paying

For example, the American Medical Association (AMA) has called for a ban on DTC advertising for drugs and medical devices. Physicians in the association raised concerns about the growing costs associated with increased DTC advertising. According to the AMA press release, in the last two years spending on advertising by drug companies has increased by 30 percent. This, combined with anticompetitive behaviors of companies (ex: trying to re-patent the same drug for slightly different symptoms), may contribute to the rising prices of drugs, according to the report. The rising prices, in turn, create yet another problem for doctors and patients; in cases of generic brand options, the brand-name drug might be much more costly but not significantly more effective. For drugs for which the manufacturer holds the only patent, high prices have the potential to prevent or discourage people from receiving the best and necessary treatment. For this reason, the AMA created a policy to help consumers. To achieve this, the AMA plans for an advocacy campaign to raise support for competition and fair choice in the industry as well as more price transparency for each drug. The AMA also calls for better enforcement by federal regulators of existing regulations. Lastly, the AMA will study the interactions between pharmaceutical companies, specifically mergers and acquisitions, and the effects on drug prices. The AMA’s new policy aims to encourage a balance

In 2004, Merck Pharmaceuticals underwent difficult times as the U.S Senate investigate the unethical practices of the company in distributing their once highly profitable pain relieving drug, Vioxx. From the investigation, the infamous CEO, Raymond Gilmartin “involuntarily” resigned after public documentation in relation to Vioxx was released, (Lyon and Ulmer, p. 355-356). Along with Gilmartin resignation, the company fiscal future was damaged as the $90 per share stock price, dropped to $30 per share (Lyon and Ulmer, p.356). This all can be attributed to the unethical communication practices by Gilmartin and many other internal stakeholders associated to Merck Pharmaceuticals in placing Vioxx pain reliever on the drug market.