Costly medication is sometimes prescribe by healthcare providers with no benefits to the patient’s health. This raises an ethical concern because the patients’ health is in jeopardy for taking medications that they do not need and they are now burden with the cost of that prescription drug. Often times, there is pressure on healthcare providers from the big pharmaceutical companies to sell their drugs to patients. Leonard J. Weber, a professor at the University of Detroit, talks about the ethics of the prescription drug marketing, in his book, Profits before People? Ethical Standards and the Marketing of Prescription Drugs. The healthcare industry market is different from the market of other products because ethical standards that are satisfactory
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Often time, there is a conflict of interest between the patients and the healthcare professionals resulting from drug marketing (Weber). Healthcare professional may prescribe costly medications that are not relevant in treating the patients. This may be caused by the pressure from the pharmaceutical industry to promote their drug. From this, we see that the pharmaceutical industry has a huge say in the healthcare community and is therefore impairing patient’s quality of life through unjust drug promotion and unethical drug prices. A recent controversy that came up was the price of EpiPens, a live-saving allergy medication. EpiPens are owned by Mylan Pharmaceutical, they have recently increased the price of this medication by more than 400%. The listing price of two EpiPens is now a little over $600 compared to back in 2007 where it was priced at only a little more than $100. Consumers did not feel the effects of this increase initially because insurance coverage masked the increase. When patients lose their insurance or the deductibles goes up, that’s when they start to feel the financial burdens of the price …show more content…
Some patients just simply do not take their medications and other are forced to take out enormous loans that they will never be able to repay, just to buy medicine. Patients may even resort to illegal acts such as sealing medications or other crimes to try to pay for these expensive drugs that they need to increase their quality life. For example, patients who need Warfarin, a blood thinner drug to prevent strokes and heart attacks. If they cannot afford this medicine, their health and life is in danger because to people who are at risk for a heart attack or stroke, Warfarin is a lifesaving medication. These inflated prices affect mostly the under-served populations and the elderly community. Most people from low income families might not have insurance and the money to pay for medications that they need to maintain their health. The elderly may not have the support and/or money they need to afford expensive medication. This ties into ethics because companies should not put patients’ lives in danger just because of the profits they want to make on lifesaving medications. By pricing medications at such a high cost, this discourages patients from taking their medication, which can cost them their
Often time, there is a conflict of interest between the patients and the healthcare professionals resulting from drug marketing (Weber). Healthcare professional may prescribe costly medications that are not relevant in treating the patients. This may be caused by the pressure from the pharmaceutical industry to promote their drug. From this, we see that the pharmaceutical industry has a huge say in the healthcare community and is therefore impairing patient’s quality of life through unjust drug promotion and unethical drug prices. A recent controversy that came up was the price of EpiPens, a live-saving allergy medication. EpiPens are owned by Mylan Pharmaceutical, they have recently increased the price of this medication by more than 400%. The listing price of two EpiPens is now a little over $600 compared to back in 2007 where it was priced at only a little more than $100. Consumers did not feel the effects of this increase initially because insurance coverage masked the increase. When patients lose their insurance or the deductibles goes up, that’s when they start to feel the financial burdens of the price …show more content…
Some patients just simply do not take their medications and other are forced to take out enormous loans that they will never be able to repay, just to buy medicine. Patients may even resort to illegal acts such as sealing medications or other crimes to try to pay for these expensive drugs that they need to increase their quality life. For example, patients who need Warfarin, a blood thinner drug to prevent strokes and heart attacks. If they cannot afford this medicine, their health and life is in danger because to people who are at risk for a heart attack or stroke, Warfarin is a lifesaving medication. These inflated prices affect mostly the under-served populations and the elderly community. Most people from low income families might not have insurance and the money to pay for medications that they need to maintain their health. The elderly may not have the support and/or money they need to afford expensive medication. This ties into ethics because companies should not put patients’ lives in danger just because of the profits they want to make on lifesaving medications. By pricing medications at such a high cost, this discourages patients from taking their medication, which can cost them their