Biopolitics plays a huge role in the medication of the mass population. Joseph Dumit writes Drugs for Life to show how the consumption of medicine and the cost of healthcare came to be and how it is taken for granted. Dumit gathered his information by attended pharmaceutical industry conferences and speaking with the marketers, researchers, doctors, patients and looking at the strategies used to expand markets for prescription drugs. What he discovered from his study was that the continuous growth in medications, disease categories, costs, and insecurity is a new perception of people and they feel as if they are ill and in need of chronic treatment. This perception is based on clinical trials that have been largely outsourced to pharmaceutical …show more content…
“We have a new masshealth model in which you often have no experience of being ill and no symptoms your doctor can detect, but you or your doctor often discover that you are at risk via a screening test based on clinical trials that show some efficacy of a treatment in reducing that risk; you may therefore be prescribed a drug for life that will have no discernible effect on you, and by taking it you neither return to health nor are officially ill, only at risk”(8). Originally people only came to the doctor if they felt sick or as if something was genuinely wrong with them but people are now encouraged to engage in preventative care. Dumits research looked in a wide variety of areas to prove that the overall view of pharmaceutical companies use marketing and clinical trials for the goal of trying to get people to take more pills. The strength of biopolitics is seen when Dumit findings shows that these companies seem to never consider what would be the best treatment but base every decision on how to get the most profit. The corporations can find alternatives to medication but they just want to maximize the number of prescriptions to maximize
It is not hard to obtain the same drugs from different sources so the customer loyalty is virtually non-existent and the pharmacies have to try extremely hard to sustain their consumer base.
Dr. John Abramson’s book Overdosed America debunks the myths about the excellence of American medicine. Abramson backs up this claim by closely examining research about medicine, closely examining the unpublished details submitted by drug manufacturers to the FDA, and discovering that the unpublished data does not coincide with the claims made about the safety and effectiveness of commonly used medicines. Abramsons purpose is to point out the flaws of the pharmaceutical industry in order to warn the readers about the credibility of the drugs they are buying. Given the critical yet technical language of the book, Abramson is writing to an audience that may include academic physicians as well as those who want to learn about the corruption of the pharmaceutical industry.
In Melody Peterson’s “Our Daily Meds” , the history of marketing and advertising in the pharmaceutical industry is explored. The first chapter of the book, entitled “Creating disease”, focuses on how major pharmaceutical companies successfully create new ailments that members of the public believe exist. According to Peterson, the success that these drug manufacturers have experienced can be attributed to the malleability of disease, the use of influencial people to promote new drugs, the marketing behind pills, and the use of media outlets.
"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 is 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 order to cure their ailments. For instance, they may present symptoms that are perfectly harmless, and lead potential citizens to believe that, because of these symptoms, they are "sick" and in need of medication.
The United States of America accounts for only 5% of the world’s population, yet as a nation, we devour over 50% of the world’s pharmaceutical medication and around 80% of the world’s prescription narcotics (American Addict). The increasing demand for prescription medication in America has evoked a national health crisis in which the government and big business benefit at the expense of the American public.
The author of this article, Carolyn Johnson, a reporter for The Washington Post where she covers politics. The Washington Post is a very popular newspaper that is known for its political coverage as well and read by millions. Carolyn’s audience for this essay was the public, and it is written in a manner to inform them and she abstains from contributing her opinions to the reader. Her article is about the fight over insulin, a lifesaving drug, that has doubled in price over the last decade, however the formula for the medication has not changed much since its invention in 1921. Reps Diana DeGette and Tom Reed have requested a meeting with reps from; drug companies that make insulin, insurance companies that cover the drug, and the pharmacy
More than often, American’s argue that if we have the technology to gain access to these “miracle meds”, then we should take advantage of it. To receive an opposing view, the National Institute of Drug Abuse asked teens around America why they think prescription drugs are overused, and the results were shocking; 62%: “Easy to get from parent's medicine cabinets”, 51%: “They are not illegal drugs”, 49%: “Can claim to have prescription if caught”, 43%: “They are cheap”, 35%: “Safer to use than illegal drugs”, 33%: “Less shame attached to using”, 32%: “Fewer side effects than street drugs”, 25%: “Can be used as study aids”, and 21%: “Parents don't care as much if caught”. I believe the major problem here isn’t the medication, but instead the fact that our nation is extremely uninformed on the “do’s and dont’s” of prescription medication. When “the United States is 5 percent of the world’s population and consumes 75 percent of the the world's prescription drugs” (CDC), there is a problem present, no matter the reason. Clearly, many critics believe the breathtaking amount of pills we consume in America is simply for the better good, but tend to forget the effects that are soon to follow.
In America, it has become a battle to earn a high paying job to cope with the expenses of a typical American. It has become even more of a battle for some people to afford medical prescriptions to keep healthy. Health becomes a crucial issue when discussed among people. No matter what, at one point or another, everyone is going to stand as a victim of the pharmaceutical industry. The bottom line is Americans are paying excessive amounts of money for medical prescriptions. Health-Care spending in the U.S. rose a stunning 9.3% in 2002, which is the greatest increase for the past eleven years. (Steele 46) Many pharmaceutical companies are robbing their clients by charging extreme rates for their products.
Has anyone noticed that there seems to be a drugstore being built on every corner these days? Revco, Walgreens, and Rite Aid seem to be just a few of the drug store chains that are expanding. One has to wonder if this has anything to do with the possibility of including medicine under coverage by healthcare systems. This means that they may become part of a capitated payment system to the pharmaceutical providers. "By capitation, we mean a prospective payment to physicians or providers - either individually or as a group - of a fixed amount of money to care for each patient (Pearson, 1998)." In other words, every physician is provided a set sum of money whether they see any patients or not and every pharmacy would be given money whether they prescribe any drugs or not. Drug costs will rise.
In today’s society, there is growing sentiment that our government should provide a “socialized” type of universal medicine for the masses; that the onus to provide healthcare should no longer be on the individual or business. I posit that entrusting our healthcare to a government that can barely manage itself is misguided; that even if The United States could successfully implement a system of socialized medicine the economic and medical hardships this would cause to so many would far outweigh the benefits to a relative few. Although socialized medicine appears to provide adequate healthcare for each person, regardless of economic status, in reality this flawed and expensive system penalizes everyone associated with it. It will cause wide spread economic distress, a marked increase in taxes, and will severely limit access to care.
The United States spends more per capita on health care than any other country, with the percentage of gross domestic product dedicated to health care doubling from 9% in 1980 to 18% in 2011(Kesselheim,). One of the contributors to health care inflation is prescription drugs. Pharmaceuticals account for about 10% of total health care costs, spending on pharmaceuticals is poised to swell in upcoming years as a result of the increasing prices of complex specialty medicines (Kesselheim). Name brand drugs are going to have to be set at higher prices, in order for pharmaceutical companies to receive a profit. If the patient has full coverage on a medication, there is a greater chance that medication will be taken, although it may not be
The first social problem surrounding the health care system in the United States is the growing problem with pharmaceutical companies. The industry averages a 17% profit margin and it has been booming for decades, but the industry is being heavily led by a core group of companies (Dr. Pratt). “In 1992 the top 10 companies accounted for roughly one-third of global pharmaceutical revenue, after a period of consolidation, by 2001 the top 10 accounted for nearly half.”( Leon-Guerrero, Zentgraf, 172). These companies hold a large majority of the market share and make most of their money off patented drugs. This growing core of companies that are dominating the market are causing more problems rather than solving them. These companies are all about making as much money as they can and it shows through the salaries of the executives of these companies (Dr. Pratt). The pharmaceutical industry should have their number one priority be to the users of their products rather than profit gains.
It is the profits rather than the need of the world that drives the market, as Cahill points out. She laments that while in the 1960-1970 's theologic bioethicists influenced the field of bioethics, nowadays the ethical discourse involving Christian narrative gets" thinner and thinner," shifting away toward more secular and liberal views. As theologians are welcomed to partake in the ethical debates, their voices and opinions are rarely considered in policy making. Such situation causes the current trend amongst health care institutions,medical-surgical companies, and research labs, to focus on financial gain rather than ways to deliver health care to those who needed it the most. It is the consumers with the most "buying power" that have at their disposal the latest medical treatment, equipment, technologies, and medications while millions around the world lack the most basics of needs, such as clean water, food, shelter, education as well as the basic health care. Cahill fears that medical companies seeking profits will neglect or stop altogether to produce medications that are bringing low profits. Medications that are necessary to treat prevalent in the third- world countries or if you prefer the developing countries diseases, such as Dysentery, Cholera, Malaria, Rabies, Typhoid Fever, Yellow Fever, even warms, to name a
In recent years’ health reform has been a driving force in the United States political system. If you watch the news, you will understand how citizens, the government, or the economy are or might be affected by some sort of change in medical regulation. One of these hot topic issues is the cost of prescription drugs. Every major drug market besides the United States regulates the price of drugs in some way (Abbott and Vernon). By the United States not doing so, many believe it opens consumers up to being exploited by large pharmaceutical companies.
One thing is guaranteed to happen; people will always get sick. Diseases and bacteria are always changing and the human body’s immune system isn’t always prepared to fight it off. The pharmaceutical industry knows this, and that’s why they are a multi-billion dollar industry. Today, you will see a pill that will virtually cure every kind of “disease” out there whether it’s physical, emotional, or neurological. What is a “disease”? Supposedly if you have constant headaches, you have a disease. If you’re overweight, you have a disease. If you have trouble concentrating, you have a disease. Any little problem that you can think of, there most likely will be a pill out there that will “cure” that problem. First, your body is the only thing that can cure a disease. Second, everyone experiences these little problems and there are simple solutions that can “cure” these problems without the expensive pills that can cause harmful side effects. Why isn’t this information being told to us? Because of money. Notice that in all commercial breaks there is a commercial advertising some kind of pill for a certain kind of problem. They make so much money that the drug companies can employ thousands of lobbyists to bribe, lie, and payout almost anyone they need to to get them to advertise their product. Even politicians benefit from the pharmaceutical companies, and if politicians have their back, then how can they be expected to be stopped? Modern medicine has no doubt done wonders for many people to get better from illnesses, but this industry is getting way out of hand.