Discussion Post
Complete the following:
One of the reasons for the rising cost of healthcare in the United States is the cost of prescription drugs. It is a complex problem and poses many ethical dilemmas for which solutions have yet to be implemented. Pharmaceutical companies set the prices for drugs and negotiate the actual payments with insurers. Insurers do not always cover the full cost of the drugs, leaving even insured patients to pay out-of-pocket for their prescription drugs. Pharmaceutical companies spend a lot of money on developing new medications to help people. The price of the medication must cover the upfront costs of drug discovery, development and testing, and manufacturing. It must also include the cost of the clinical trials required for approval by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) before the medication can be sold.
Read the following 3 articles about the high cost of drugs and how the pharmaceutical industry sets prices:
o The Ethics Behind the World's Most Expensive Medication
o EpiPen Pricing
o Prescription Drug Pricing in America
After reading the articles, answer the following questions:
a) What may be legally permitted is not necessarily ethical. What are your concerns from an ethical standpoint about the pricing of prescription drugs and the new therapies based on precision medicine discoveries such as the gene therapy described in the first article?
b) Pharmaceutical companies must make a profit to stay in business, be accountable to their investors, and be able to continue developing new medications. However, would you have a personal moral conflict if you worked for a pharmaceutical company and learned that the company was charging a price that was much more than would cover costs of development, manufacture, and a reasonable profit?
The response should include a reference list. Using one-inch margins, Times New Roman 12 pnt font, double-space and APA style of writing and citations.