Several controversies have been hitting the pharmaceutical industry in the last few years. The larger percentage of the controversies ranges from Medicare fraud to high-priced medications that are marketed by these firms. From the researcher’s point of view, big pharmaceutical corporations are putting huge profits on top of patients, spiraling shammed public relations campaigns and more. Before the recent changes, Medicare CEOs and these companies had been reported to have involved in frauds worth billions of shillings.
The indications are that the costs of the drugs are rising more rapidly than any other thing a patient can pay for. It has been found that medications are the most rapidly increasing part of the patient health care bill. It is argued that most of the patient’s expenditure on drugs has also risen.
The reason is that the quantities of drugs that are being prescribed have increased. Moreover, the practitioners are prescribing new ineffective drugs that are more expensive than the old effective less costly drugs.
More appalling is the fact that the prices of these consistently prescribed drugs are in a great deal jacked up, in most cases a number of times a year. The discounts as well as other incentives the medical practitioners such as the oncologists are receiving are used as a reason for hiking the prices. The government as well as other researchers has found that these benefits are unwarranted.
The most shocking thing about these drug price controversies is that the trusted health care providers have an ulterior motive behind these prescriptions. Researchers found out that there is a correlation between the methods through which cancer doctors are being paid to the choice of drugs they use in a particular treatment of cancer such as chemotherapy (Abelson par.9).
Once the oncologists have decided on the type of treatment, the mode of payment influences the type of drug prescription. As opposed to the expectations those who are fairly paid are likely to prescribe more expensive drugs.
Reports indicate that most of the pharmaceutical firms’ representatives provide hand-outs to influence medical practitioners to recommend the drugs they represent. Going by analytic reviews of the articles on the diabetes drugs Avandia, it is true that drug manufacturers are paying medical experts to make positive conclusions about their drugs safety and effectiveness. In fact, Avandia case is one out of many (Bakalar par.1).
There are several cases where the medical expert opinions are influenced by the financial handouts. It is agreed among the medical professionals that the interaction between the pharmaceutical companies and the health providers are not in the best interest of the patient. Moreover, most of the doctors agree that solicitation of drugs directly from these companies compromises the ethical standards and impractical, most can be influenced by free gifts and hand outs from these companies.
Some sections of the medical profession argue that their treatment decisions are for the best interest of the patients (Abelson par.7). The argument is that doctors only prescribe drugs that are clinically recommended. Moreover, quality health care must be more costly. However, in the case of cancer therapy, there is no any evidence that one type of chemotherapy drugs are working better than the others.
In this case, the medical practitioners have the wide array of manufacturers or the pharmaceutical agents to choose from. Therefore, regardless of their persistence that their therapy decisions are based on what they feel is best for the patient; medical practitioners are influenced by other factors such as payment policies as well as other financial influences coming from the drug manufacturers.
Works Cited
Abelson, Reed. Pay Method Said to Sway Drug Choices of Oncologists. 2006. Web.
Bakalar, Nicholas. Study Sees a Slant in Articles on Drug. 2010. Web.