do this?They are able to minimize their research and development risks in many ways. Such as merging with other companies who have already done research on certain drugs, benefiting from basic research done by federal and academic laboratories. They also get substantial tax breaks or other incentives to develop and produce many of the drugs for which they charge high prices. They even put premium prices on the drugs that they didn’t develop. (Drake 65)What the Future HoldsIn an interview with Andrea Jones, a pharmaceutical technician with The Medicine Shop, I found out that that particular drug store is not even breaking even with their sales. The are marking up the prices a little bit, but they cannot mark up prices enough to make a profit because insurance companies know how much the drug costs to make. Andrea Jones also feels that the prices could be much lower than they are. She stated that generic drugs come out and they do not get advertised enough. They can cost as low as a quarter of the brand name drug’s price, but because of either poor marketing or a patent on the drug they do not sell as much.Many of the authors used for reference in this paper had the belief that drug companies are, in fact, the most profitable business in America. The main reason for this is how they do not have to spend as much money on the research and development as they say. The high prices are high because cheaper drugs are not marketed as well as brand name drugs. The larger firms do not seem to have a care for the public and how much they can afford as long as they are making money. One author, Andrew Chetley, talks of how there are efforts being done to attempt Healthcare for all by the year 2000.8 That book was written in 1990. I do not think these ideals will be met by the year 2000 but could quite possibly happen in the near future. They key to this is that people forget about how much money they make and to simply just ...
