In seven pages the growth of the U.S. pharmaceutical industry is examined in a consideration of image and twenty first century forecasts. Eight sources are cited in the bibliography.
Name of Research Paper File: CC6_KSmgmtPharmaMkt.rtf
Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
Everyone expected to pay more than they would like for their prescription medications in years past, but the former Burroughs-Wellcome component of the current Glaxo-Wellcome generated a public outcry when
it first marketed AZT(r) as the first - and only - drug treatment available for AIDS patients. AZT was priced far higher than any of the companys other products.
Little did we know then that the formula on which AZTs pricing was set would become the norm. That scenario from the
1980s can be seen as one of the significant events introducing consumers negative view of the pharmaceutical industry. The industry bears responsibility for many of the problems it has
encountered since then, but there have been other influences as well. The purpose here is to examine the industry, assessing the outlook for its long-range profitability. Description and Analysis
For most of its history, the pharmaceutical industry has been seen as being well-insulated from routine fluctuations in the business cycle. In
the United States, the notion that healthcare is a privilege has been pass? for at least half a century; today healthcare is seen as a right of all, regardless of
the cost and regardless of who pays for the care that individuals receive. Though grossly oversimplified, the skeletal structure of spiraling healthcare costs has the federal government at its
core: it allows automatic increases in acceptable Medicare charges; the insurance industry adjusts its allowable charges in like manner. Care providers are free to raise charges to those
levels, and the lack of competition - and self-pay - ensures that all individual components of the value chain can repeat the process with impunity.