Summary Of The Truth About Drug Companies: How They Deceive Us
1192 Words5 Pages
Viviana Yon
#216
HIST110
TH 4:00 PM
Term Paper: The Truth About Drug Companies: How They Deceive Us and What to Do About It The book that I am reading and analyzing is called The Truth About Drug Companies: How They Deceive Us and What to Do About It written by Marcia Angell. The author's thesis of the book is that big pharmaceutical companies are taking advantage of consumer by raising prices, patent on so called “new drugs,” and how the corporations conceal their profits and expenditures from the government. The author is informing the readers by explaining how the pharmaceuticals corporations operate their businesses in secrecy. Angell is arguing that pharmaceutical companies should change how they run their company. Overall, her achievements…show more content… The industry is sly about how they market and produce their prescription drugs. They target doctors because they know that doctors are respected by society and that they are very knowledgeable about what they do to help a patient. Another reason why they target doctors is because they are the ones prescribing the drugs. A patient is going to believe the doctor on what they say because the doctor is giving a diagnosis and recovery plan. For example, she explains, “These are prominent experts, usually on medical school faculties and teaching hospital staffs, who write papers, contribute to textbooks, and give talks at medical meetings – all of which greatly affect the use of drugs in their fields” (142). In the industry there is a hierarchy between big corporations, smaller private companies, and advertising companies. The bigger corporations outsource the work from small companies for cheap labor (such as research, development and marketing), but is also as a means to micromanage and control the market. This shows that the bigger pharmaceutical companies are on the top tier of the hierarchy that controls the way they manage all the other companies involved. Angell explicitly displays the reasoning behind social, economical, and political standards with sufficient…show more content… She lists all the possible ways to improve the way corporations regulate. (239) The way to change pharmaceutical corporations’ perception is to lobby with the government and or try to change their morality views. For instance, the pharmaceutical companies can provide for the Medicare and Medicaid programs instead of just selling and profiting from their drugs. According to Foner in Give Me Liberty!, he states that during the Obama reelection, “… forty-seven percent of the people would not vote for him because they were ‘victims’ dependent on government payments like Medicare and Social Security” (906). Since there are so many dependents on Medicare and Medicaid system that can profit from these big corporations, corporations could donate or even less the costs of prescription drugs for consumers. There are also consequences that needs to happen for the pharmaceutical companies to open their eyes to the need of change. The reason why is because the pharmaceutical industry is so big that there has to be a drastic event to happen to force them to change their ways. In other terms, society can make a difference at their own free will and protest towards pharmaceutical companies or the government to make a