According to Harvard Health, millions of Americans are not taking their “medications due to their high cost” (LeWine). Cost should not be the reason that people go without their medicine, something they need. Lack of medicine can lead to hospital trips and death. It is in this way that prescription drugs are similar to water. Those who take medicine are dependant on it, and absence of the drug can be disastrous, as lack of water is terrible for the body. Prices of prescription drugs are very high, and continuing to climb. As a result, many people cannot afford to take the medicine they depend on. Prescription drug prices should be lowered; drug companies are unfairly hiking up the prices, many people cannot afford their medicine, and high prices have a negative impact on patient health. Similar to how findiing safe water is beoming harder, hiking up the prices of drugs and overcharging customers. For example, the price of Nitropress, a blood pressure drug increased from $215 to $881 in one year. It increased by three hundred and ten percent (Edwards). Prices of prescription drugs have not always been high: over the …show more content…
Many people are forced to not buy the drugs they need to survive, which can result in deaths. Even some people that can afford their medicine have a very hard time finding a way to pay for their prescription. The government needs to change it, whether it be importing drugs from Canada, or enforcing price controls. The prices are far too high, and that is why millions of Americans do not take their medicine. Millions of people not taking their prescription is way too many, in fact one person not taking their medicine is too many. People are having to live without the medication they need to thrive, and that needs to
A doctor should always take into consideration what is best for their patients without being influenced by anyone. In Stephanie Saul’s article “Drug Makers Pay for Lunch as they Pitch” she discusses how pharmaceutical companies use free lunches as an incentive to influence Doctors to prescribe their brand drugs. Many see this situation of pharmaceutical companies purchasing meals for a Doctor’s entire office as not having any effect on the doctor’s decision to prescribe their brand. The reality is that these free lunches do influence a doctor to prescribe a certain brand drug when writing a patient’s prescription. A doctor should consider what is the best option for a patient something that is affordable and if the case is that a name brand drug is the best option it should not be influenced by the pharmaceutical company in any way.
It is interesting to see how the United States has a high rate usage of medication comparing it to other countries. Why is it that more people in the United States are hooked on prescription drugs if the cost of medication is much more
Right now in the United States of America, there is a monopoly that exists that involves epinephrine auto-injectors. EpiPen is the United States only supplier of these auto-injectors because other brands have suffered setbacks and failures, patent protection laws, and because there are currently no generic versions of EpiPen in the United States (Johnson). This monopoly was not a problem until Mylan bought Meda AB in 2007 (Paton). “Since Mylan bought the rights to EpiPen in 2007, it has raised the price on 15 separate occasions, bringing the current list price to $608 for a two-pack up from about $50 a pen in 2007” (Mole). This has been a price increase of more than 500%, and this shows that Mylan has been using the monopoly to its advantage.
Steven Brill’s Bitter Pill: “Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us,” by Angelina Salikhbaeva Summary: Steven Brill in the article “Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us” clarifies his opinion about the costs of healthcare services in the United States. The author writes about different stories of how families become bankrupt or unable to pay the total cost of the treatment to the US hospitals and related medical facilities. According to Steven Brill’s article, the US hospitals prescribe too much health care to patients.
A free market system only hurts the economy, which is why the U.S is a mixed market economy. A mixed market economy is beneficial to consumers due to the fact there is government regulatory oversight of goods, and there is competition for goods. This type of economy means that companies cannot become monopolies and control prices of certain goods. However, this is not the case for pharmaceutical industries because there is little to none government intervention occurring. The lack of government oversight means that pharmacies that only develop specialized medicines have complete control of the price due to the fact they are the only ones able to reproduce the product.
Within the last 22 years, from 1991 to 2013, the prescriptions written by doctors for opioids have increased from 76 million to 207 million. Opioids are a drug class that were developed originally, to treat severe pain for people who are dying of cancer or other severe illnesses. This began when pharmaceutical companies assured the medical community that people would not become addicted to opioid pain relievers. As a result doctors began to prescribe opioids more frequently. There are different kinds of opioids.
Thus, the increased prescription of addictive opiates has also helped cause the increase in addiction to illegal
The United States no longer posses the ability to effectively drive down premium costs through the means of insuring healthy people. For example there is a town with ten houses, and, on average, one house a year burns down. If no one in the town pays for insurance they have a 10% chance of their house burning down each year. If everyone in the town pays insurance they spread the risk because no matter whose house burns down no one will have to pay anything as the insurance company will cover the cost of the house that burns down each year and make a slight profit. This is the same logic applied to the whole medical insurance market.
For less dosage of the painkillers, patients would decrease the number of opioid addiction that being said that could lead to death. As to cutting back on opioid prescriptions, there will be less of inappropriate distributing to those who would abuse it improperly. Doctors have found other medical treatments to their patients without providing opioids. Hospitals have prescribed opioids more than doctors do. According to the Baltimore Sun, "Only 20% of doctors have shown to only provide opioids.
On top of that, bringing prescription drugs under Medicare, which would quadruple the cost of Health Care in Canada. However, it is an issue that cannot be overlooked, according to CBC News, almost 1 million Canadians give up on basic necessities like food and heat to afford prescription drugs. Rather than relying on taxes to fund prescription drugs under Medicare, a tax reform for businesses would be more effective. Lowering taxes and making it mandatory for companies that are in a certain
If there was an open market for drugs and Americans’ were educated on the effects drugs can have on their bodies, the monopoly for drugs would rapidly decrease. Drugs are outlawed in America yet prohibition has never been successful in America. Anytime the government has tried to stop the distribution of a substance people have always jumped at the chance to make
There is proof and evidence that Americans citizens do not receive the healthcare that they need despite the fact that the U.S. spends more funds per individual on health care than compared to any other country. Individuals who are battling prolonged diseases such as, diabetes, high blood pressure, or heart disease does not get the established and actual treatment that they should. For example, these individuals should be receiving drug therapies or self-management services so that they can assist them more efficiently and help them control their conditions. This goes for every American citizens that is uninsured, insured, or under-insured. These problems that the individuals are facing are only worsen due to the fact of lack of coordination
Prescription drugs (opiates only) have caused over 165,000 deaths within the last 15 years and is currently on the rise. Over 2 million Americans in 2014 were addicted to Opiate prescription narcotics. The most troubling fact is listed directly on the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) website: “As many as 1 in 4
Most Pharmaceutical Drugs are essential in saving a life. By causing the prices of these drugs at all-time highs and forcing Americans to buy these drugs, taking loan after loan out, we are essentially denying access to effective treatment for most socioeconomic groups. • The costs of these Pharmaceutical drugs without the help of insurance coverage are a significant obstruction to access because insurance companies don’t help with cost as much. A Parent with a youth in need of these drugs, whether in the higher or lower voice of the economy will pay thousands of dollars on simple medication that will be used to save their lives. • “State laws and other “well-intentioned” federal policies limit generics abilities to hold prices down.”
Health care cost has seen to increase gradually as years go by. This has been influenced by major factors such as political influence, emerging chronic diseases, new procedures that are coming up including the technologies being invented for treating illnesses, pricing of medicines and treatment is not regulated and when treating ailment their may arise repetition of tests or a patient gets over treated for a particular ailment. The cost of healthcare has increased due to chronic diseases such as cancer and diabetes etc. The lifestyle people are living in this generation has led to the development of diseases that are expensive to treat or has led to there being over treatment in such for a cure of a particular ailment.