Prescription Drug Price

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Prescription drug companies have a monopoly in the pharmaceutical drug field and have complete control on the price because of it. “One problem has been that prescription drug prices are increasing at four times the rate of inflation because without free market competition, drug companies can raise prices at their discretion” (Faldon). Without competition, there have been dramatic increases in the price for prescription drugs. America’s unnecessary regulations give these pharmaceutical giants this ability. There are regulations on every aspect of prescription drugs, excluding price. “One of the factors most often cited for that disparity is the presence of price controls in many foreign countries and their absence in the United States” (Prescription-Drug …show more content…
That does not stop Americans from importing drugs illegally. When does every single person follow every single law anyway? People who live in the United States are getting drugs from other countries, most common is Canada. Some used to take busses to Canada to acquire cheap prescription drugs, because the drugs in the United States were too expensive. Some of the other countries that Americans are known for getting drugs from are Mexico and France. “Consumers pay more for prescription drugs in the United States than in any other country. For instance, they are estimated to spend 38 percent more than consumers in Canada and 45 percent more than consumers in France” (Prescription-Drug Pricing). With the increase in use of the internet, it is becoming much easier to obtain drugs from overseas. The Internet has become a method of buying drugs from other countries and it is becoming an increasingly more popular strategy. “Growing Internet use in the late 1990s made prescription-drug imports more popular, as consumers were made more aware of cheaper foreign drugs through online advertisements and could purchase them more easily” (Prescription-Drug Pricing). The big pharmaceutical companies claim that importing drugs from other countries is unsafe, because they do not have the equivalent regulations as the United States. The thing is, these companies import a lot of the ingredients of their drugs. If it is …show more content…
The other countries stop the monopoly that the drug companies in the United States hold. Those certain countries say that a price for different medications cannot be too high. America does not have these price regulations therefore, the United States has extremely high prices for simple prescription products. There are pharmaceutical giants in the United States that solely control the price. The truth is that the prices that are set are based on what the market can handle. The giants will keep raising the price of the products as long as the market is still buying the drugs. Most of the drugs that are offered are a needed drug, this means that the price can be much greater than most other products. The pharmaceutical companies claim that the price of the drug is not excessive, because of the process that the companies must go through to create the drug. They claim that the price is exclusively based on the research and development of the drug. That appears to be a valid excuse until research is done on that. Once doing research, anyone will come to the same conclusion that there is not enough spent on the research and development to justify raising the price of that drug to that extent. “The pharmaceutical industry claims that the high prices of new drugs are necessary to fund ongoing research and development (R&D) maintaining that it costs $800 million to develop a new drug. However, an