A Different Kind of Industry

Marcia Angell’s The Truth About the Drug Companies provides an insight into the pharmaceutical industry, how it operates, and what we can do to change what it does. I think that the pharmaceutical industry, or Big Pharm, as Angell refers to it in the book is a prime example of the growing inequality of wealth in this country because it is a multi billion dollar company profiting off of the general population which is made up if people who make a miniscule fraction of that amount. However, unlike many other industries that make astronomical amounts of money through questionable means in this country much of the financial success of the pharmaceutical industry can be attributed to the fact that the demand for many of its products stays constant regardless of the price. If the price of coffee becomes astronomically high, most people will stop buying it and switch to a substitute good such as tea for their source of caffeine. Because the coffee industry will not get much business at an extremely high price, they will be forced to lower it in order to attract consumers. In the case of the pharmaceutical industry, if the price of a person’s medication is ridiculously expensive, he or she is forced to pay the high price or risk a wide array of health problems. For this reason I think that there should be another series of checks on industries that produce necessities, as the consumers have close to no influence on the price. In the United States it seems as if we have gotten used to the idea that medications are expensive, and for the majority of people who take few or no prescription drugs, the issue can seem distant and maybe unimportant.

On a different subject related to the book, I would be interested to see what Angell’s reaction to Obama’s recent birth control policy, which requires health insurance plans to provide birth control to women without co pays. I found a short video on the New York Times website in which Angell talks about her opposition to Obamacare because she thinks it puts too much power in the hands of private insurance companies, so my guess would be that she would not be a huge fan of this policy (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/20/science/a-drumbeat-on-profit-takers.html?_r=1&ref=healthinsuranceandmanagedcare# the article is mostly just about the relationship between the two doctors, but the beginning to middle of the video are worth watching if you are interested in Angel and the New England Journal of Medicine). I do think that this issue of providing drugs co pay-free is an important one in relation to Angel’s book because it illustrates the possibility of providing drugs at no cost to the consumer. Birth control pills are a special case because for many people, they come along with moral issues, so I think it would be interesting to see what would happen if a less controversial drug were provided free to everyone. Of course this does not even begin to touch the issue of the millions of people in this country who do not have health insurance, and therefore do not have access to any of these benefits or changes in policy.

Again on a different topic, I recently watched Michael Moore's documentary Sicko, which criticizes the  healthcare system in the United States. Though, like all of Moore's films, it has been heavily criticized, I would recommend watching it as it delves into many of the things that we have been discussing in class, the pharmaceutical industry included.