Is Pharma a Scam?

 Matias Lopez Carrete

Science Topic of Interest

1/28/25

 

Is Pharma a Scam?

Are all pharmaceutical companies corrupt? Do some of them do good? Do they try to rob the common man by selling a so-called cure to a sickness or disease? How do we address the drug prices in the US? 

 

These are my genuine questions that I have been thinking about recently, and I think this is because of the presidential debate and Luigi murdering Brian. Which really sparked this, because me and my girlfriend had a huge debate on the healthcare system in the US and the Pharmaceuticals in the US a couple days after this happened.

 

To give you some background, my mother has been in the pharmaceutical industry her entire life and is now higher up in the ranks, which is probably why I sided more for the protection and support of these pharma companies, most likely for the fear in the moment that there would be some frenzy on healthcare and pharma leaders across the US.

 

But genuinely my mother speaks a lot about her job and how much she loves it, and all of the drugs she has developed and led, all of the hospitals and clinics she has visited to speak to patients in her focused disease or illness. So, this has obviously been fed into my brain all of my life, and which is why this is my topic of science that I am interested in.

 

Now you can see the background to my grounding on the take I took in this argument with my girlfriend, which was that pharmaceutical companies (not all, but the majority, I hope) are developing drugs for the greater good of mankind and drug prices are higher than they should be because it gives the money necessary to cover the costs of developing said drug and furthering research into other diseases and drugs. 

 

I conducted some research and found a study in the NIH done by Fred D Ledley,  Sarah Shonka McCoy, Gregory Vaughan, and Ekaterina Galkina Cleary, Profitability of Large Pharmaceutical Companies Compared With Other Large Public Companies. In this study, it furthered my point previous about pharma’s charging more for drugs, “From 2000 to 2018, the profitability of large pharmaceutical companies was significantly greater than other large, public companies”. 

 

Now obviously the biggest question is what do pharmaceutical companies do with these larger profits. To which my answer is R&D, which is also answered by this study conducted by the Congressional Budget Office, which has showed that, “Pharmaceutical companies have devoted a growing share of their net revenues to R&D activities, averaging about 19 percent over the past two decades. By comparison, other research-intensive industries, like software and semiconductors, averaged about 15 percent.” 

 

Unlike Mr.Hawking, who believes that there will eventually be a unified theory on the laws on physics, I am more like Professor Horgan, I believe that scientists and more specifically Pharmaceuticals do not know everything or know how science will explain everything, because genes and diseases mutate. So Pharmaceuticals will always have to spend money on research, hence why they have a higher profit margin than most other companies.

 

Do not get me wrong though, I do know there have been many companies that have been corrupt and I also think there are many dark examples to the pharmaceutical industry. For example, insulin, which is just the medical device being paid for to inject the insulin into your body, because insulin doesn’t change, it just the injector, that’s shady and messed up. 

 

Although, I think the US is taking shade onto the wrong part of the industry. Obviously when people get upset with drug prices, the first finger they point to is to the Pharma’s, but that’s pointless. Sure you can get nitty gritty about all the corrupt and greedy companies to overcharge on drugs, but take this in practice in a perfect world. You can’t cut profits on the Pharma’s, then no research would be done and no drugs would be produced. So, what is the solution. Enter the middlemen, the PBM’s or your CVS, Cigna, and ironically enough UnitedHealthCare, which these three make up 80% of the market share.

 

These guys are inflating drug prices like crazy, and has gone under the radar of many. Not until now, the FTC is now currently suing these three giants because “These powerful middlemen may be profiting by inflating drug costs and squeezing Main Street pharmacies”. This is where the focus on drug prices should be set on and regulated more, rather than regulating the prices on Pharmaceutical companies, who are simply trying to keep up with the inflation in this country. And speaking from experience, there are many unhappy campers in the pharma industry, many without jobs and soon to be without one. My mother’s company went through 6 layoffs in the past year and many other companies are following suit. The happy campers in all of this, the PBM’s. Take note.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Molecules, Models, and Magic: The Exciting World of Computational Chemistry

Vrinda Modi I often spend time in a little cubicle in McLean in the freezing corporate cold wrapped in a blanket in the Hoboken summers sipping on free coffee from the office above. It almost always tastes like chalk, but the routine is so embedded in me. Hence, this is the perfect opportunity to talk a little more about my research in computational chemistry here at Stevens and the advances I expect in the next few years. This field excites me because it bridges my interest in chemistry with modern computing techniques, a powerful tool for advancing our understanding of chemical reactions and molecular interactions. This means we are a dry lab – running simulations on computers. No chemicals, no PPE, just models and algorithms. But why does computational chemistry exist in the first place, especially when chemistry is so rooted in physical matter? The answer is efficiency. Modeling molecules on a computer saves us from ordering chemicals, waiting for deliveries (a delay in chemistry t...
Read more

Scaling the Potential of Vertical Farming Going into 2025 and Beyond

Image
  Matthew P Kearney Scaling the Potential of Vertical Farming Going into 2025 and Beyond      Vertical farming may seem like something out of a futuristic movie, but they are very real in today’s agricultural industry. Vertical farming may promote a stronger relationship between urbanization and sustainable crop production. Based on recent innovations across agriculture and technology, vertical farming has the potential to revolutionize our current farming system. Through the development of vertical farming-based production lines, cities and otherwise unfarmable areas can be provided with fresh, local, and pesticide-free produce. Vertical farming and other adaptations of agriculture are not new ideas, but instead a historic and human process.      These technologies are ready to meaningfully address global food security through the technological and computational advancements in agriculture. Vertical farming has a promising future, which becomes a case...
Read more

Knot Your Average Problem: How do Tongue Ties Impact Oral Myofunctional Health?

Image
  Hadia Hussain      Knot Your Average Problem: How do Tongue Ties Impact Oral Myofunctional Health? Sitting in the nursery of the dental office where I worked, I reviewed Baby V’s medical history and reports from the Emergency Department at Jersey City Medical Center. I found it odd that, despite multiple visits and clear signs of malnutrition, no physician had been able to diagnose the cause. Baby V, at a low weight of 12 pounds was struggling with difficulty nursing and bottle feeding, excessive gassiness, colic, clicking sounds when feeding, milk dribbling out of the mouth, and mouth breathing—but doctors had dismissed these signs, labeling him as "healthy."  It didn’t make sense as his low weight raised serious concerns.  According to Pediatric specialists Jenny Olson, DNP, and Sarha DeVrieze, ARNP, at the UnityPoint Clinic, a 9-month-old baby boy should weigh anywhere in between the range of 17 to 25 pounds. Baby V's situation was clearly a ...
Read more