Advertising And Marketing Operations Of Pharmaceutical Companies

In Money Talks: Profit Before Patient Safety, a documentary on the business behind drugs, states that sale representatives for drug companies only job is “to push for their products [to be sold] in doctor offices.” And quite frankly this statement is prevalent in today’s economy; the economy is centered around accumulating wealth, to the point where other factors to earn such wealth is not accounted for. Money is an object which makes everyone selfish. Drug companies only care about the benefits they’re receiving and the growth of their wallets. The society grew up to look upon doctors, because doctors are certified to diagnose and treat patients. Every time we have a health issue, we turn to doctors. Every time we have the flu, we turn to doctors.

While Walgreens is exposed to all the general ethical conundrums of the business world, the highly regulated “Pharmacies and Drug Stores” industry does not give much room for them to act unethically.

The ethical arguments of managed care are dependent on the goals of the physician and the provider. If the primary goal is always doing the best for the patient within the limits of available resources and less interest for the bottom line then subjecting patients to unnecessary risks is minimal. However, if the patient is regarded as a secondary issue the physician and providers are ethically wrong. "It is the position of the National Academies of Practice that is unethical to compromise a patient's needs and quality care concerns to satisfy financial objectives" (Pope, K. S. & Vasquez, M. J. T., (1998) pg. 322).

The twenty-first century has seen pharmaceutical companies grow in unprecedented size and strength. Due to the unprecedented growth the larger pharmaceutical companies have gained leverage and power in the prescription drug industry, but they lack innovation to market and they seek ways to help the business continue to increase its profits. The pharmaceutical industry was once ethically sound and was a valuable player in the development of human health. However, overtime with the lack of innovation pharmaceutical companies are becoming an unethical market that exploits patients, doctors and anyone else it can to increase its profitability. With eyes only on profitability this can create a hazard for patients because there

We are presented with a proposal made by a cardiologist wishing to invest collaboratively with the hospital in establishing an outside heart scanning center. Physician investment in a health care business, to which the physician will then refer, creates a situation ripe for potential conflict of interests. While physician investors may honestly believe the services provided in their facilities are of greater value and higher quality than competing institutions, the utilization of services in which they have a financial interest may well be influenced by the profit motive. Therefore this proposal creates a perfect target for regulatory bodies looking to find physician financial conflict of interest violations.

I think this particular ethical dilemma encompasses three of the APhA Code of Ethics principles. The principles involved are as follows: “pharmacist promotes the good of every patient in a caring, compassionate, and confidential manner”, second “pharmacist acts with honesty and

Traditional doctors prescribe their patients all types of drugs to treat conditions and diseases. Most people trust their physicians to give them the best care possible, but many doctors prescribe and recommend medications based on their relationship with a company. Pharmaceutical companies pay doctors or even provide meals, in exchange for meetings and education. In an article from Time Magazine from September 18, 2014, Your Doctor Should Reveal Biases and Pharma Ties, Says Group, author Alexandra Sifferlin explains the issue with these relationships. Sifferlin uses ethos, logos, pathos, and links to respectable websites to convince readers that patients should be made aware by their physicians of ties pharmaceutical companies and their positions of controversial practices.

"In the past two decades or so, health care has been commercialized as never before, and professionalism in medicine seems to be giving way to entrepreneurialism," commented Arnold S. Relman, professor of medicine and social medicine at Harvard Medical School (Wekesser 66). This statement may have a great deal of bearing on reality. The tangled knot of insurers, physicians, drug companies, and hospitals that we call our health system are not as unselfish and focused on the patients' needs as people would like to think. Pharmaceutical companies are particularly ruthless, many of them spending millions of dollars per year to convince doctors to prescribe their drugs and to convince consumers that their specific brand of drug is needed in

One reason a stigma is placed on forms of managed care, such as health maintenance organizations (HMO), is a highly publicized practice of providing material incentives to doctors to control the amount of costly tests and medications the doctor prescribes. Before providing these material incentives the HMOs would force the doctor to sign a gag rule, preventing the physician from disclosing any information pertaining to the unethical practice. Since the doctors who participated in the bribery can not speak about the practice, there is no way to tell the impact of this practice, but one can assume that many patients received diminished treatment of illnesses, possibly resulting in harm.

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.

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.

“A conflict of interest arises when a trustee has an interest that conflicts with the interest of the organization”. (American Medical Association, 2010).

Medical ethics have indirectly regulated the patient-doctor relationship for thousands of years. Today’s health care policies are primarily designed to politically regulate that relationship in accordance to medical ethics with a great focus on the patient’s best interest. Recently, however, the emergence of many physician-owned specialty hospitals has ignited a controversial debate over the legitimacy of their entitlement to receive Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement; especially with their higher prices than their competitor public hospitals offering the same services. It was not until 2006 when supported data proved that physician-owned specialty hospitals function differently from equivalent public hospitals.This paper discusses the

The corporate social responsibility states that "corporations can and should act ethically and be accountable to society for their actions." Pharmaceutical companies work to save lives and make a profit. Individuals should make sure that

Society expects drug companies to improve people’s well-being and to behave like a nonprofit company not overly concerned with making large profits. However, investors