One of the reasons for the rising cost of healthcare in the United States is the cost of prescription
drugs. It is a complex problem and poses many ethical dilemmas for which solutions have yet to be
implemented. Pharmaceutical companies set the prices for drugs and negotiate the actual payments with insurers. Insurers do not always cover the full cost of the drugs, leaving even insured patients to pay out-of-pocket for their prescription drugs. Pharmaceutical companies spend a lot of
money on developing new medications to help people. The price of the medication must cover the upfront costs of drug discovery, development and testing, and manufacturing. It must also include the cost of the clinical trials required for approval by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)
before the medication can be sold.
Read the following 3 articles about the high cost of drugs and how the pharmaceutical industry
sets prices:
1. https: The Ethics Behind the World’s Most Expensive Medication
2. https: EpiPen Pricing
3.https: Prescription Drug Pricing in America
After reading the articles, answer the following questions:
What may be legally permitted is not necessarily ethical. What are your concerns from an ethical
standpoint about the pricing of prescription drugs and the new therapies based on precision
medicine discoveries such as the gene therapy described in the first article?
Pharmaceutical companies must make a profit to stay in business, be accountable to their
investors, and be able to continue developing new medications. Imagine you are responsible for drug pricing for a pharmaceutical company. The CEO has tasked you with setting a price for a newly
developed drug that is profitable for the company and shareholders based on the time and
resources that were used for production. If you turn a profit, you will receive a bonus as well. How
would you handle the price set in this situation?
An ethical dilemma arises when a person, company, organization, or country is forced to choose between some established law or principle and the consequences of setting aside that law or
principle. Brand-name drug manufacturers believe they are serving humanity by making life-saving drugs and ensuring people who need their products have access to them.
But what if the wholesalers buying the products—for example, online pharmacies—unethically or illegally abuse the process? What if the quality of the drugs is compromised? Can the risks to patient safety outweigh the benefits of getting medications to those who need them?
Here are some articles that should assist you in your posts.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/drug-use/Psychotropic-drugs
https://www.mlive.com/opinion/kalamazoo/2016/01/how_high_drug_prices_can_creat.html
https://sevenpillarsinstitute.org/pharmaceutical-industry-ethics/