The Battle Of The Attack Of Pharmaceutical Company

1. On balance, do you think Merck is an ethical and socially responsible company? Why or why not? How about Pfizer?

The abuse and evils of the corporate world FORCES US to have a BIG GOVERNMENT—for protection! One hundred percent fulfills George Orwell’s ‘1984, Big Brother is Watching’ OPPRESSIVE BOOT –- “crushing the face of humanity, forever.” https://www.facebook.com/1984.Big.Brother.Is.Watching/

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.

In the video Escape Fire, I was so flabbergasted by the numbers and health outcomes we as a society have let our nation become. One of the most heart-wrenching evidence is, even though our health care industry is so expensive our health outcomes are the worse. 75% of disabilities and dead’s are preventable, according to the film.

Angiomax is considered as a potential substitute for heparin. It has 3 major advantages when compared with Heparin. First, the effects of Angiomax are more accurate and more predictable. Second, it works better among patients at risk for bleeding, where heparin often proves problematic. Third, the product works faster than heparin and patients do not need to wait for 2 – 3 hours to identify the results. The major disadvantage of Angiomax is its high production cost against Heparin. As Heparin has a very long history dated back in 1916, the price is only $2 per unit while the production cost of Angiomax takes nearly $40 per unit.

Should the general public trust their doctors? Well, the answer should be “of course,” but unfortunately, the public cannot always trust the doctors caring for them, at least in terms of the medicines they prescribe. This is because of the Big Pharma industry whose corruption has come to take over much of the medical and political worlds as we know it. Big Pharma is the make-up of the largest pharmaceutical corporations in the world, who control nearly all of the world’s prescription drug production and manufacturing. What these corporations do is take short cuts and manipulate their tests in order to achieve the results they want and to “fit” FDA regulations. They then dive their way into the medical world through medical journals and doctors’

This casebook concentrates on the negative effects that the pharmaceutical industry’s trade and production policies have on third world nations suffering from disease epidemics. My position is that pharmaceutical companies are not concerned with the health benefits of their drugs, but rather with the market that their drugs generate. I illustrate this notion by describing the trade policies that pharmaceutical companies influence and the pharmaceutical companies’ production policies which concentrate on producing life-style drugs rather than drugs that cure life-threatening diseases.

"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

Market failure appears when there is a failure in allocation of goods and services. When the market is unsuccessful, the government is called to intervene and correct the failure. Over the years, government participation in the pharmaceutical market has been more wide-ranging than any other good or service. With the government’s ability to regulate, mandate, inform, finance and provide, their intervention to overcome market failure can be beneficial for the economy. Market failure plays a significant role in today’s economy.

1. Do pharmaceutical companies have a responsibility to distribute drugs for free or at low cost in developing countries? What are the main arguments for and against such an approach? What are the advantages and disadvantages of giving drugs for free versus offering them at low no-profit prices?

Value: Angiomax is a blood-thinning drug, or anticoagulant, used in emergency coronary heart care. Angiomax is positioned as an alternative to heparin, the most commonly used anticoagulant in emergency coronary heart care, so to assess Angiomax value to a hospital is required to compare these two drugs.

These pharmaceutical companies can increase their prices dramatically without the fear of losing profits because there is a lack of competition in their field. Since there is no other companies in the field to compete prices with, companies like Turing Pharmaceuticals can dramatically increase their price to increase their revenue. Even prior to Turing Pharmaceutical’s price increase, there was no competitors and large profits were being made. What is odd about this situation is that despite the large amount of profits being earned there are no new competitors entering the field. With other industries, when is an observed large amounts of profits being earned, there can be seen a large amount of new competitors entering the market. However, this is not the case for the pharmaceutical industry. According to Donna Sym, there are no new entrants in the pharmaceutical industry, only mergers within the industry (443). There are no new pharmaceutical companies entering the field. Instead the current pharmaceutical companies are buying the ownership of the different drugs from each other. When there is new ownership of a particular drug, most likely there would be a price increase that follows along. As observed with Daraprim, when Turing Pharmaceuticals gained ownership of Daraprim, there was an observed price increase of more than 5,000 percent.

Porter’s Five Competitive Forces Analysis is a framework developed by Michael E. Porter of Harvard Business School for study of industry analysis by analyzing five competitive forces which define industry and its business strategy. These five competitive forces determine the competitive advantages, disadvantages and attractiveness or profitability of industry.

Yes, there is an impact on the pharmaceutical company, like those in the US as a result of differential prices between that country and other nations.

Vincent Van Gogh was one of the most noteworthy and influential figures in the history of art, producing great paintings in his time by expressing his emotions such as Starry Night, which has captured the hearts of millions. He was a unique and unusual man and had led a troubled life. Van Gogh once said that he had put his heart and soul into his artworks and had lost his mind in the process.