Does the pharmaceutical agency really care about your health, or making billions in profit?

In a publicly traded company, it kinda is the inevitable. Those companies rub on the interests of people buying shares of their company. People but stock shares because they want a return on investment.

 

I agree for profit corporations are ultimately amoral entities. They only exist to maximize profit and provide legal protections for their owners.

I would stil say they play an important role in not just this economy but in our society. While we should hold them accountable and regulate them for ethics the profit motive is a strong motivator for getting things like drugs to market and to get them distrubuted.

 

Not necessarily. The profit motive isn't diametrically opposed to long term thinking. A smart business would consider the longterm health of the market and survival of the business. For example while tobacco companies still want to sell tobacco and fought regulation on smoking companies like RJ Reynolds also branched out into things like food and beverages anticipating that the market for smoking would go down due to regulation.

 

Tell me the incentive for publicly traded companies to care about 20-30 years down the line.

 

as noted there are companies who do things like that. I raised in another thread that Google spends R&D money on projects that might never actually come to market.

 

The problem is that shareholders are humans, and humans are selfish pieces of garbage. When they buy shares, they want a return, and they don't want to have to know what bodies needed to be stepped over to get it.

Well I disagree. The ESG movement has actually made a difference imo. That same company, NRG, now has a promise to shareholders to achieve X reduction of carbon by 2050. People will argue if it's ambitious enough, but the company will definitely achieve it. Because the CEO's compensation package depends on it. It is a promise to shareholders, and shareholder promises are what corporations are good at delivering.

 

No, but generalizing here... they have different life experiences. Generally, they do not need to be concerned about paying for the next medicine or treatment. About food. About safety. About access, education, and so on. In a nutshell, they generally experience less pain and hardship. That will shape them differently.

Some of them understand those blind spots and purposely surround themselves with people that tell them or remind them. Some... not so much.

 

They pretend like they care because they are human, but their actions betray that they don't really care. Having worked with pharma companies in the past, they aren't bad people from the researchers to the business folks - they just ultimately care about their jobs and rationalize everything they do as being justified. They believe they are saving lives and improving lives...the cost is just what it is as otherwise their therapies wouldn't exist. Whether their therapies actually help people or not, they believe they do, because again, they have to in order to feel good about their lives and purpose.

So if you ask them, yes, they put patients first. They believe that. That doesn't make it true.

Part of my job has been to sell marketing services to these companies and folks. I always squeeze in there my own brand of BS, about how they are saving lives or the benefits of their drugs because I know how much it means to them, how much more it makes them wanting to work with whatever agency or vendor I am representing. The difference is, I know what I am saying is bullshit and just because it's my job.


The question of whether a drug should cost $3.5 million or not is moot. That's the price they have set, and in a market economy, that's how it works. Doesn't matter if it's soybeans or life changing therapies. You can argue it either way - that without the profit incentive, companies wouldn't invest in the research, or that it's exploitative and unfair. None of that matters.

 

I think there are things (like insulin) where we can do much better, but it's no coincidence as Americans got fatter the costs have risen.

Is obesity amoral? I don't think so, I think it's rather selfish. I'm not religious all, but gluttony is a sin for a reason.

 

The shareholders and executives are driven by profit. That’s not exclusive to Pharma. It’s any public company. It’s capitalism.

Competition, demand and cost are what drive true pricing.

The issue with medication is patents and exclusivity. I would rather there be a royalty system where the patent company makes money on every dose sold, which would allow other drug manufacturers to sell the drug. This is where we need to see litigation and law changes. And where big pharma shows its teeth in its lobbying, because none of those companies want that sort of change because it would lead to less profit.

 

What do you actually mean by "the pharmaceutical agency"?

 

lol. you know . . . the pharmaceutical agency