Pharmaceutical drug companies are making an extreme amount of money off their products, to the detriment of many Americans who are unable to afford them. At the same time making an inflated amount of profit from every consumer who need the products for various reasons, even though they may have better means to pay for them. Through this paper I will discuss my reasons for my thoughts on this, based on some facts I have compiled. These will include the government involvement from our capitalistic society, the amount of dollars spent as an expense of total health care and by sharing the amount of profits drug companies are receiving. The rebuttal from the drug companies will be that the research and development process is long and very expensive. In addition scientists on these projects make a substantial amount of money during this time frame, which rises during it. These companies list safety as one main concern, trying to limit side effects and the unknown of how a new drug will perform and the risk of it harming or killing consumers. They also spend a lot of money on marketing, this is a key area that continues to drive the costs up more and more. This continues to increase as the companies insist they must do so to continue making the profits they feel entitled to earning.
Our country has the world's largest Capitalistic economic system that is built around the setup of profit and market exchange, as described in our textbook, Business Ethics, 8th Edition, written by William Shaw. (pg. 116) Businesses are privately owned, specifically manufacturing facilities, banks, and insurance companies, to name a few examples. Companies decide on their own how much of each product they will produce, market and sell, then deciding on the pricing margin they want to achieve for each item. Thus competition in the prescription drug market is fierce, as it is in some of the other top industries our consumers support by buying the products.
