America’s Pharmaceutical Prescription Market Nightmare

As the coronavirus spread throughout many countries, WHO has declared it as a pandemic- a spread of disease over a large region of the world. As of this report, COVID-19 has infected 155 countries, with 182,407 confirmed cases globally. As medical physicians and scientists are coming together to work on treatments and vaccines for COVID-19, we should take preventive measures to slow down the infection rate. As of recently, Trump tried to buy exclusive to a promising COVID-19 vaccine from a German biotech firm which sparked anger across the United State. However, Trump’s action should serve as a reflection for us to look at the pharmaceutical industry that has monopolized over the prescription drug market which in result has affected a lot of people’s lives. However, the government themself are the ones who contributed to this monopolization of each pharmaceutical company since they grant the company “patent” rights for 12-13 years. Once they are granted the patent, they are free to mark up the price of their drugs, most companies charge a high price for it making the industry of prescription drugs very profitable. A study in the Journal of the American Medical Association found, nearly half of the drugs approved by the Food and Drug Administration between 2005 and 2011 lacked any tangible health benefits, such as prolonging life or relieving symptoms. Not only does the drug company keep increasing the price for their products, but they are also becoming less innovative with their newer drugs. This means that the consumers are paying unreasonable prices for a product that isn’t much more effective than previous drugs or methods. Throughout history, the United States has reinforced policies on pharmaceutical companies to prevent them from colliding and reduce competition. After WW2, many companies were competing to sell a drug named “Penicillin” which caused the market to be filled with competitors causing the market price to drop from $3,995 per pound in 1945 to $292 per pound in 1950. However, at the beginning of the 1980s, the United States started to move away from policies that had fostered the open and free market of prescription drugs into a much more concentrated one. Due to this, between 1955 and 2015 60 pharmaceutical companies merged into only 10 companies. An example of this would be Mylan Pharmaceutical where they acquired a patent over Epipen which they could raise the price of it by over 450 percent since they control over 90% of the market share. This is only the tip of the iceberg on explaining as why the American prescription drug market is the way it is today. Which such a complex and controversial topic, it is impossible to cover all the nook and cranny and to pinpoint an exact reason to one specific factor.