A Wall Street Journal Article Essay

Imagine this: you are tragically diagnosed with a chronic life-threatening illness. Your only hope to survive is through medication to treat your disorder. The medicine is pricy but you can work out the costs each month. One day, you go to fill your prescriptions and realize the cost of a $13 pill has jumped to an astounding $750. You need this patented medication to survive and to afford it you end up losing your home, filing for bankruptcy, and sleeping in your car. This story sounds fictional but it is the reality for many Americans who can no longer afford their grossly overpriced medications.

In 1938, and in the teeth of the longest and fiercest depression that the United States had ever known, capital spending hit an all time high. That’s right! In 1938 the men who owned America began to pour millions of Dollars into new plant and equipment as if there was no tomorrow. We don’t think much about it today, because it has been a long time since the United States has experienced a real bone jolting economic slowdown. The fact is, however, that the very best time for the industrialist to invest in new technologies is in the middle of a depression. This is because it is at such times that labor, raw materials, and new equipment can be purchased at rock bottom prices. Henry Ford may have jumped the gun a bit. He shut down his River

The cost of prescription drugs in America has risen to the level that most Americans could not afford them with out 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 and enormous margins. Recently the issue has extended into the mainstream political arena, thanks in part to the new Medicare bill(2). With the push by congress for the importation of drugs from foreign sources, regardless of the potential long and short term consequences, the time to vocally support health care reform is upon the American public.

1 Kaiser Family Foundation Report on the Uninsured. Available at http://www.kff.org/uninsured/7451.cfm. 2 Danzon, P., et al. “The Impact of Price Regulation on the Launch Delay of New Drugs.” Health Economics, 2005; 14(3): 269-292. Available at http://hc.wharton.upenn.edu/danzon/html/Journal_Articles.htm. 3 The Boston Consulting Group. “Ensuring Cost Effective Access to Innovative Pharmaceuticals – Do Market Interventions Work?” April, 1999. Available at http://www.bcg.com/impact_expertise/publications/files/Ensuring_Cost_Effective_Access_Innovative_Pharmaceuticals_Apr1999.pdf 4 Thorpe, K. et al. “Differences in Disease Prevalence as a Source of the U.S.–European Health Care Spending Gap.” Health Affairs (Web Exclusive) Oct. 2, 2007. Available at www.healthaffairs.org.

In the New York Time Article by Timothy William, Inquiry to Examine Racial Bias in the San Francisco Police Department, first thing to remember known as implied social perception, implicit bias refers to the attitudes or stereotypes that affect our understanding, actions, and decisions in an unconscious manner. Another key point of argument is that there is no systematic bias in the criminal justice base on race. To point out, in performing their policing duties, police officer are able to exercise a high degree of discretion. This means that they have a have a broad freedom to make a decision about how to act on the given situation. For this reason some police officer deliberately use their wide power of discretion and their authority to perform acts of misconduct. In this article it is generally agreed that discrimination based on racial or ethnic origin is morally wrong and a violation of the principle of impartiality. In fact impartiality principles requires that those who are equal be treated equally based on similarities, and that race not be a relevant consideration in the assessment. However, in May, District Attorney George Gascon appointed a three-judge body of distinguished jurists to look into bias in the department following a series of misconduct scandals, the most troubling being a group of police officers who were caught sending racist text messages. Now, the scope, aim, participants and timeline of the ongoing investigation have been revealed in a series

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.

Prescription drug prices are on the rise in the United States. Currently, the United States does not implement a price control on prescription drugs. Every day the supply and demand for prescription drugs fluctuates. Pharmaceutical companies produce drugs that are necessary for survival. Therefore, it is necessary for research and development to continue in the United States. Those suffering the effects of exorbitant prices must do so until a generic form of a prescription drug is produced. Once approved by the FDA, new drugs will make their appearance on the market and patients will no longer suffer financially. Until then, it is necessary for pharmaceutical companies to price their drugs based on the idea of supply and demand. This produces the profit used to fund research. Price controls discourage innovation. If a price control were set in place, of course the price of prescription drugs would decrease. However, the development of new drugs decreases with it. Today’s generation would benefit from lower prices, while future generations would suffer from the loss of drug innovation.

1. “Nearly Half of U.S. Lives in Household Receiving Government Benefit” written by Sara Murray. Found in Business section. Published October 5, 2011.

Anyone who has purchased prescription medications has probably wondered why they cost so much, and rightfully so. Medication prices in the United States have been on a steady increase for decades, however, prices have been drastically increasing as of recent. Pharmaceutical companies have tried to justify these price increases due to the demand, the high cost of research, and the high costs of development and approval. Notwithstanding, the extent to which the prices have increased is not justifiable. Americans should be against these high medication prices and take action because pharmaceutical companies are taking advantage of our health care system in order to capitalize from the sick. In order shed some light on this issue, we must examine the magnitude, scope, and consequences of these rises in price.

Effective medication helps with the rising cost of health care. When medication is working, the patient’s visits to the hospital and doctor’s office will decrease. The cost of new medication is exceeding the buyer’s ability to pay for it, and pharmaceutical companies begin to lose money when the drug loses its patent. However, generic drugs become available for the medication, and patients can afford to purchase it to treat their disease or condition. National discussions with providers, payers, and health policy makers have seriously considered various solutions for mitigating drug cost, with the ultimate goal of allowing patients to access appropriate and necessary treatments (Li & Shane, 2017). The government no longer has to decide who gets the medication, and certain therapies because of cost. Insurance companies will now cover the drug in its generic form. On the other hand, the pharmaceutical companies can no longer profit from and generic drug, and are forced to make new and improved drugs for profit. The patient will benefit by getting the medication that is needed to have a better quality of

Other opponents charge that the high prices of drugs aren’t examples of price gouging at all, but necessary increases for drug makers to recoup costs of research and development. Yet a Health Affairs study shows otherwise: enough money is made by US drug companies that they could cover research and development and still save “US patients, businesses, and taxpayers approximately $40 billion” per year, if they operated like the rest of the world.

One of the underlying issues of rising costs lies in the hands-off role that the government is given in regards to the price-setting of drugs offered through prescription drug plans (PDPs). The Medicare Prescription Drug Improvement, and Modernization Act (MMA) of 2003 is the essential piece of legislation that created what Medicare Part D provisions (Frank & Newhouse, 2008) are in place currently. While this provision provides low-income older Americans with necessary medications, within the initial bill, the governmental program suffers a loss of autonomy. Under this bill, the government is barred from engaging in negotiations with pharmaceutical companies through the “noninterference” clause (Cubanski and Neuman, 2015). This prohibition

Under a free-market, doctors are by contrary business people who are looking for a profit, and can use the consumer’s lack of knowledge of medicine, and sheer trust as they are a doctor, as a platform to over-charge buyers. Flower (2009) agrees that, ‘Medicine is a matter of high skill and enormous knowledge. So doctors, by necessity, act as sellers, and agents of other sellers (hospitals, labs, pharmaceutical companies). Buyers must depend on the judgment of sellers as to what is necessary, or even prudent.’ Many doctors in the US are giving rewards for selling more products and in contrast giving fewer bonuses by not selling as many products. Surely selling more drugs to patients will only give them more health problems. Within a command economy, health care is not a business, and the correct drugs assumed truthfully by the doctor will be given to the patient.

This was an editorial that was wrote in The Wall Street Journal it was not attributed to a particular editor it just said staff. This was a hard source to locate so I could read the whole article and see if it was relevant to my paper. The Wall Street Journal online you have to have a subscription for which I do not have. Finally found it on microfiche at a library and it was worth the effort. It explained the history of raising minimum wages over the years and what effect it had on the unemployment rate immediately thereafter. I used this editorial to back up my other research that was against the Federal government being in charge of deciding when and what the minimum wage should be.

In 1985, Bud Fox is a young stockbroker in New York City at Jackson Steinem &Co. He wants to become bigger and better and work with his hero Gordon Gekko, a legendary Wall Street player. He became so obsessed with working with Mr.Gekko, that he called his office 59 days in a row in hopes to get through to him. Since that didn’t seem to work, he decided that he would approach it a different way, and go and pay him a personal visit with a birthday gift, Gekko’s favorite Cuban cigars. With Mr. Gekko being impressed by Fox’s boldness, he offers to listen to his pitch.