Fear, Pharma or Ethical Choice?

Today I received a notice about a Forbes magazine article on the pharmaceutical industry’s plans to fight any moves by Democrats to push for federal negotiation on drug prices for Medicare and to limit direct-to-consumer advertising of drugs. (Democrats Bad News for Big Pharma).

Parmy Olson states that David Seemangul, an analyst with S&P Equity Research, sees A Democratic congress as detrimental to pharma. Price negotiation would put pricing pressure, but it would also increase volume and that could mean lower operating margins.

So, if I understand it correctly, he says if we lower health costs for Medicare patients, save the government and taxpayers money, and help people actually get more of the drugs they need, pharmaceutical companies will be upset because their profits won’t be as high.

And then, heaven forbid, we could also address the concerns about direct-to-consumer advertising that many times lead patients to demand drugs from their physicians that may not even be the treatment they need. Patients sometimes switch physicians to get what they want – or perhaps more accurately said, what pharma wants them to want, and continually influences them to want.

To me, drug price negotiation and some boundaries around direct-to-consumer advertising would be a more ethical approach. And yet, Seemungal pulls the fear card that we will lose pharmaceutical business as they look to markets like India and China if we don’t keep feeding their profit margins.

Actually pharma already outsources their research and more to China and India. Turning to India to conduct clinical trials has already saved them billions. Never mind, that ethical questions have been ever-present with the practices associated with those trials. Pharma claims that labor is cheaper and there is a large population of people with diseases and little or no previous treatment. (Watch for another story about some of the ethical concerns.)

To me, the question is what, or who, will make our healthcare decisions that will create our future – fear, pharma profits, or ethical choice?