Drug Companies Monopolies, Profits and Ethics Essay

Drug Companies Monopolies, Profits and Ethics - Essay Example This research will begin with the statement that in this present era, consumers are forced to spend a huge amount of money for buying prescribed and brand-name drugs. This is because all big pharmaceutical companies are allowed to charge whatever they want from the consumers. These companies possess the patent rights due to which they can easily stop the competition in the market and can set the price at its highest level. The drug companies’ monopolies refer to the situation where big companies are controlling the sale of the brand-name drugs. These drugs are becoming the most expensive component of the health care expenses. According to the research, Americans are now spending more than $500 billion annually to buy prescription drugs. These monopolies can be categorized as the government made monopolies. Actually, whenever the big pharmaceutical giant makes a new drug, it applies to the government to possess the patent right. And after getting the patent, the company gets th e right to become the sole seller of that drug for a specific time period. The researcher states that this allows companies to charge maximum prices for the patented drug and, as a result, the company can generate immense profit. These higher prices enable companies to recover its R&D cost for that particular product and also allow companies to focus on further research. But due to this monopoly, consumers have to pay a large amount of money for buying that product.... The most common price increase was related to the three types of drugs including anti-infective, cardiovascular and central nervous system drugs (Hoskins, 2012). Patents make monopoly in drug companies Patents are intellectual property rights and this is granted by the government to the company for the purpose of preventing others to copy its new invention. In the drug industry, the patent is given to the brand-name drug companies to stop competitors from selling, making or importing that particular drug. These types of restriction cause monopoly in the drug industry as few companies are controlling the sale of the drugs. This also leads to higher prices due to decreased competition. Pharmaceutical companies can easily take patent right for 20 years based on different aspects of innovative drugs. The World Health Organization program which was based on essential drugs indicated that patented drugs can only be marketed under the proprietor’s brand and this leads to more monopol ies which increase price pressure on the consumers and results in generating higher profits for the drug industries (Elliot et al., ?2002). Drugs are available at lower prices in developing countries Developing countries and underdeveloped economies make similar expensive medicines with generic or alternative sources. The major reason is that the purchasing power of the consumer in these areas is very low and they cannot afford high-priced medicine. The prices of these drugs are much lesser than the original one. Moreover, they can produce the same drug with such ingredients that are not healthy but are cheap. Sometimes, they find out local herbal ingredients to make similar medicines. These medicines give relief to patients for a very short time period (Angell?, 2004). They can also import