is it a business or socialized medicine ?

About the Author

Richard Meyer is a passionate Internet DTC marketer with over 15 years of progressive experience in consumer marketing who`s worked on top pharmaceutical brands like Cialis, Prozac and Sarafem, as well as two years with Medtronic Diabetes. He is currently consulting for his own company, Online Strategic Solutions, and writes a DTC column for PM 360 magazine and blogs for Eye for Pharma in addition to his own blog, World of DTC Marketing.

First let’s me start off by saying that most people who still have jobs are being hit with substantial increases in their company sponsored healthcare insurance rates. These increases are sure to offset any raises that employees may get and have a lot of people scratching their heads and asking “what the hell is going on?” But of course it’s easier to target the pharmaceutical industry because everyone hates the drug companies (or at least that’s the perception).

Now let’s look at the facts surrounding the prescription drug business:

1. The costs of drug development have increased substantially to close to $ 1 billion for a new drug.

2. A lot of drugs in development will NOT make it market thus the R&D will not see a ROI.

3. The FDA is requiring is more clinical studies for more drugs. This means less time on the market for drugs and less time to recoup ROI.

4. Some big name drugs are getting ready to come off patent soon and they are going to be replaced with inexpensive generics.

5. The drug industry had let go over 45,000 people in cost cutting moves this year.

6. The drug industry has restrictions on where and how they can market their products even though consumer healthcare, including prescription drugs, is now a consumer product with empowered consumers making more choices.

Of course with all this being said I also need to include the fact that the drug industry has paid record fines this year for illegal marketing of drugs. There is no excuse for bad decisions and for putting dollars ahead of patient safety but if you look at all these stories you will see that most of them are in the past. My guess is that it will take some more time to get rid of the people who are more interested in making themselves look good at the expense of patients but it will happen or else the hammer will come down and come down very hard.

So do drug companies have the right to raise prices? The answer to that is yes they do. If they are survive in a capitalist society than they have to do what is necessary to make money. What about the people who can’t afford the drugs? There are a lot of programs to get these people their drugs for free or at very low cost. Remember that Rx drugs are only 12% of every healthcare dollar that is spent.

So while insurers stick it to us and spend hundreds of millions of dollars to protect their interests in Congress. While hospitals are not required to disclose failures in patient care let’s target the drug industry again.

The drug industry is not squeakily clean folks and in order to earn patients and consumers trust they have to embrace open branding but maybe, just maybe a lot of people are leading longer and healthier lives because of some of the drugs that are out there.