Kantian Universal Medical Intent

Is their a possibility that a doctor or physician can actually be under some sort of influence when prescribing medicine? This concept goes under most noses of the American people. However, doctors are in fact influenced. They are influenced by drug companies, who provide subsidies to medical professionals that prescribe their specific brand of medication. These subsidies can range from simple company products such as bags or financial royalties (Cline). Just in the year of 2013, drug companies paid out doctors with 1.2 million payments, totaling to nearly 1.4 billion dollars (Ornstein). There are an estimated 800,000 to 900,000 active doctors in the United States. The drug company Pfizer in 2014, was giving subsidies to about 142,600 medical …show more content…
Kantian principle makes one look at the original intent of a perpetrator, in this case the drug companies. Drug companies are businesses and the intent of all business in the end is to make money. Therefore, the intent of this health care reward practice is nothing more than to make money while eliminating competition. Since the practice maliciously violates autonomy, it can be gathered that the real intent is corporate greed. To those that object to the Kantian principle of intent, the concept of Kantian universal maxims can be used to prove that the practice is still immoral. Kant states that human beings should act only on those maxims that can be willed to become universal laws. If drug companies universally all used this reward practice, variety of companies would diminish rapidly. Companies that are small would go under as they could not keep up competition with bigger drug companies as they can offer bigger rewards. Then big drug companies would compete with each other until only one or two remained. This business practice cannot become a universal maxim as it would lead to the collapse of the prescription drug industry, which would be illogical, thus immoral according to …show more content…
In fact, Kantian ethics and virtue ethics work hand-in-hand with one another. Kantian ethics helps to answer the question by revealing the original intent of drug companies. As the real intent is greed, virtue ethics already deems the practice immoral. Greed is a trait that virtuous people do not have, but what about other traits? Is it honest of a doctor to prescribe subsidized medicine to a patient without the patient’s knowledge? Going along with dishonesty is the lack of informing patients that the doctor does take drug company subsidies and or the fact that only a limited selection of medicines are offered. Since doctors are not required to inform the patient of these activities, patients are left entirely ignorant and fully vulnerable to the lack of choices for treatment with their doctor. Is this something a virtuous person