Capitalism In Healthcare Research Paper

"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

This topic is important because I stated before there are other human beings out there that are dying and instead of getting the treatment they need they are forced to live with the disease until they die, and pharmaceutical companies are now charging an arm and a leg. Take the medication Daraprim, a medication that is given to AIDs patients it used to cost a dollar a pill something that most individuals could pay, that was until 2010 when the company CorePharma bought the rights and started charging 13.50 a pill. (CNN Money) This amount is still semi reasonable for individuals in America, while those in Africa well if they couldn’t pay for it before then they certainly won’t be able to buy it now. (CNN Money) CorePharma was once lead by Martin Shkreli the man who is now awaiting sentencing because he was charged with fraud and conspiracy (Business Insider). This same man raised the medication again from thirteen dollars and fifteen cents up to seven hundred fifty dollars a pill, that is a five-hundred percent increase. (CNN Money). They then dropped the price in half so now pill costs

There is a vast difference between the economic systems of capitalism and socialism. While both are ways to govern a country’s market, they vary tremendously when looked at in depth. Capitalism is more effective and it encourages business growth and economic risk.

Everybody reaches out of pocket to pay for different prescription drugs. Parents for children, elderly for health conditions, and pet owners for pets, but there is one extensive concern; the price and outcomes. Transiently, it may be common for someone to come out of pocket for some prescriptions, but when people draw out of pocket every time just to pick up a prescription drug, it becomes annoying and upsetting. Pharmaceutical companies like CVS and Walgreens collect over $1,000,000 dollars just from gouging people for medications. According to David Belk (M.D.), Pharmacies buy medication in mass from pharmaceutical corporations and suppliers, then sell for a profit. What everyone is trying to ask the companies though is why. Why would a top-producing company like CVS or Walgreens sell expensive medications to a group of people like the elderly for profit?

We in America tend to take medications for almost any problem we have, from headaches to gastrointestinal pain, to more serious chronic disorders such as depression and attention deficit disorder. While many of the uses of such medications may be necessary and legitimate, many are not, and due to this fact, many people become dependent on medications, mentally, and or physically. This problem is not simply the fault of the individual; in fact, the blame can also be placed upon the medical community, and the pharmaceutical companies who produce the drugs. How often can one turn on the television to see advertisements for Claritin, Aspirin, Pepto-Bismol, or even Zoloft or Ritalin? The pharmaceutical industry is motivated by monetary

This is obviously a huge topic in bioethics debates, especially recently after various changes in Federal Healthcare protocols. Some people depend on pharmaceuticals as a daily part of their routine, requiring some medicine or other for a condition or health issue. A prime example of this is the recent hike in the price of epinephrine shots, commonly known as the Epipen produced by Mylan Pharmaceuticals. This medication has seen a huge increase in pricing rising from roughly $50 in 2007 to over $600 this year. This is a shot used for common allergic reactions and therefore is used or carried by millions of people every day. The concern then is that pricing will get too high and patients will have to do without some medications leaving them vulnerable or even helpless in the face of certain conditions.

The drug industry has severely attacked government, feeling that they are too restricted and that government has no right to

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.

A lot of people, particularly the patients who need them, are beginning to wonder why American drug prices are so high. It makes sense why the pharmaceutical companies are selling at the prices they do: they are a business; and they want to, above all else, make a profit. But the real question is: what are all of the

These companies are clearly putting the health and well-being on people to save money, them bypassing the laws to save money and avoid regulations and protocols of the United States. The low standard of medical treatment these companies are providing in addition to the slave labor wages is preposterous to say the least. Many major pharmaceuticals companies make sure to inform the public of all the free medicines they donate to developing countries. One would think that is the least they can do considering these products were probably tested on them years ago, and let us not forget the tax

Additionally, a Marxist approach is one that strives to be action oriented and affect change. Accordingly, a prospective analysis would observe the saturation of painkillers in the American market. With the opioid epidemic formally declared in 2011 as a healthcare crisis in the United States, there is the apprehension surrounding the movement of the sale of OxyContin to target other states where the market has not been oversaturated. If this were to follow the footsteps of other addictive or otherwise controlled substances such as tobacco, then the law of capitalist accumulation acutely captures the expansionist nature of businesses. As Purdue successfully led the charge in opening the American market for painkillers – and we have seen the

I’m finding it challenging to add something different from what I think the opinions of d’Holbach and Sartre would be. After all, one blames nothing on no one and the other everything on everyone. Their different opinions, their perspective on what’s true, is not necessarily mutually exclusive; their definitions of free will are different enough to be compatible. Without a doubt, pharmaceuticals, doctors, and congress share a large portion of the blame, however, we must spend most of our energy on finding solutions instead of finding the culprits. Governments are quite lax on corporations, yet strict on individuals. It should be the other way around. We need to support empathetic drug laws and stronger regulations for pharmaceuticals.

But the question still remains, how has ethics become involved in the pharmaceutical Industry? To understand this better, I will briefly talk about the history of the industry. In the late 19th and early 20th century key discoveries, such as insulin and penicillin, were made. These medicines were needed in large quantities, and thus allowed major companies that we know today to begin the mass-manufacture and distribution of these. In order to test and approve drugs and to require appropriate labeling legislation was enacted. As the pharmaceutical industry grew, prescription and nonprescription drugs became legally distinguished from one another.

A competitive market is one that allows easy entry and exit: a market in which companies are generally free to enter or to leave at will. This does not describe the health care market in the US. There are certain assumptions that the competitive market model operates under some assumptions, first is the consumer/patient has full information about the nature of the services required, the anticipated results of their decision and the benefits obtain from the service. This is not true in health care often time the patient is operating at a distinct information disadvantage when they require health care services such as insurance. If a patient purchases health insurance often they don’t know enough information to ascertain if they have

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