Philosophy
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Ethics and Philosophy of Pharmaceutical Price Gouging
Introduction
Price gouging is the act of increasing the price of goods, services, and commodities
and thus making them expensive for the consumers in the market. The demand for such items
leads to sellers tagging the products with prices that are unrealistic for the buyers. Such habit
has spread even in the health sector, whereby the price of medicinal drugs is increased. The
pharmacists target customers in times of emergency or when certain drugs are in demand that
they spike the price. Setting prices of commodities away from the normal pricing is against
the ethics and philosophical policies, and morals that guide people in such a profession as a
health officer. This paper will discuss the medical ethics of price gouging of pharmaceuticals
Principles
Among the elemental prima facie principles are beneficence, autonomy, justice, and
non-maleficence. By beneficence, it means being kind and being driven by the desire to help
and do good to others. As it is expected for all humanity, the fairness and receiving value for
the money paid for products and services rendered are related. For pharmaceuticals, the price
ought to remain at the right price that is friendly to all. Hiking prices for medicinal drugs is a
threat to human beings' survival since, without proper medication, people would end up dead
Corruption
Additionally, corruption has compromised the philosophy and ethics that are supposed
to be followed by the medical practitioners in ensuring that they save lives (Light et al.,
2013). The desire to get more money from products than the real value of the products has
been quite witnessed. The presence of a certain disaster, pandemic, demand for a specific
product, and shortage of drugs has pushed the pharmaceutical officers to hike the prices of
the drugs.
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Also, with the desire to make profits out of drugs, pharmaceutical companies have
been noticed to manufacture drugs that are of less benefit to human beings (Light et al.,
2013). Innovation is required in every sector of manufacturing and production, yet the current
companies are not bothered with it provided the sales from drugs bring profit irrespective of
the medicines' ineffectiveness. Companies in the pharmaceutical area of health require to do
R&D activities and to test the end product severally before releasing to the market and
identifying it with a cure and/or treatment to a particular ailment (Taylor, 2015). Failure to do
that, the drugs prepared in a hurry would end up killing many due to ignorance, greed, and
laziness from the laboratory experts. For instance, amid the novel coronavirus, many
companies might decide, as they may decide, to design a vaccine and claim to be one of the
recommended vaccines for protection against coronavirus disease.
In addition, lack of proper preparation of medicinal drugs in the laboratory leads to
side effects (Light et al., 2013) that may get worse on some people and end up killing them
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