better firms make a vast and valuable contribution to medicine. (Breckon 171)Large vs. SmallAccording to Joseph Califano, former secretary of health, education, and welfare, “there is precious little competition among pharmaceutical companies…For pharmaceutical companies…research has become big business, with patent monopoly pots of gold at the end of the research rainbow.5The drugstore industry is conventionally divided into chain and independently owned stores.6 Most physicians indicate that sales representatives are a source of data- among other commercial promotional means- on which they tend to rely, particularly for learning about new drug products.7 The larger firms have heavy influence over doctors’ choices of drugs. As mentioned above, the smaller firms have little representation. They have trouble getting salesmen to the physicians and cannot compare their products to the equivalent brand names for fear of legal action. (Walker 33) Therefore, cheaper generic drugs consisting of the same materials as the more expensive brand names are not available as widely as brand names.In contrast, physicians argue that not much is known about these smaller companies, and that the safety is in question. Another thing that doctors feel confident in is that the larger firms have more money to help defend the doctors in practice if they get in any legal trouble. (Walker 51)Research CostsWhenever drug industry executives are challenged at congressional hearings by legislators looking into the high cost of drugs, their response is the same: Pharmaceutical research is very expensive. For every discovery that results in a breakthrough drug, many expensive efforts fail. (Drake 65)Critics argue that drug companies make it sound like that it is a difficult business to which survive. Yet they not only survive, they manage to absorb all these costs and remain the most profitable business in America. (Drake 65) How do they...
