In 2008, drug companies raised the wholesale prices of brand-name prescription drugs by about 9 percent, according to industry analysts. That added more than $10 billion to the nation’s drug bill, which was on track to exceed $300 billion in 2009. By at least one analysis, this was the highest annual rate of inflation for drug prices since 1992. “When we have major legislation anticipated, we see a run-up in price increases,” says Stephen W. Schondelmeyer, a professor of pharmaceutical economics at the University of Minnesota. A Harvard health economist, Joseph P. Newhouse, said he found a similar pattern of unusual price increases after Congress added drug benefits to Medicare a few years ago, giving tens of millions of older Americans federally subsidized drug insurance. Just as the program was taking effect in 2006, the drug industry raised prices by the widest margin in a half-dozen years. “They try to maximize their profits,” Mr. Newhouse said. However, the drug companies claimed they were having to raise prices to maintain the profits necessary to invest in research and development of new drugs as the patents on many of their most popular drugs were set to expire in a few years. The drug makers were proudly citing the agreement they had reached with the White House and the Senate Finance Committee chairman to trim $8 billion a year — $80 billion over 10 years — from the nation’s drug bill by giving rebates to older Americans and the government. However, if realized, the price increases in 2009 would effectively cancel out the savings from at least the first year of the Senate Finance agreement. Moreover, some of the critics claimed that the surge in drug prices could change the dynamics of the entire 10-year deal. “It makes it much easier for the drug companies to pony up the $80 billion because they’ll be making more money,” said Steven D. Findlay, senior health care analyst with the advocacy group Consumers Union.
That the firms were trying to maximize their profits ought not be viewed as new thing. That is what they do. To expect a shark not be be a feeding machine is at the very least highly unrealistic. It is not fair to the shark that was designed to feed. If a shark is able to feed, it will. If a drug company is able to charge more for its products, it will. It is interesting that the question of motive is deemed relevant. I myself wonder whether the price increases are really motivated by the anticipated expirations of patents or the $80 billion to be paid as part of the health-care reform. Can I trust the self-serving explanation of the firms in the face of the experts’ studies of historical price patterns before major pieces of legislation affecting the industry? A shark will feed; we don’t ask about its motives. Were a shark to have reasons, they would be whatever furthers its feeding. Whether it is lying would be irrelevant. In fact, the normativity of truth-telling would not register, as it does not have a taste-element. We project onto the shark when we presume a motive or that a normative judgment is pertinent. If the shark can feed, it will. It is a feeding machine. Social responsibility does not make sense to a feeding machine or to those humans in their capacities in running the machine. For them, it is a technical matter. To realize the wider social goals through business, the wider goals must be put in line with the feeding incentives. As the umpire and protector of the chessboard, the government can structure the rules of the game--and there must be rules for any game--such that the incentives match. The question is perhaps whether the rules might function as nets and suffocate the sharks, or channel them as mighty yet dangerous swimmers.
If we as self-governing citizens do not want the sharks to feed on a given plant, we could make it very costly for them to do so. Simply forbidding them is apt to be disobeyed, and thus costly to enforce. Telling them they shouldn’t feed on something tasty simply does not make sense to a shark. They will be like cats circling an open can of tuna, constantly trying to figure a way around the artificial barrior. As an alternative, leaving the matter to the sharks themselves to regulate would be like having the wolves police the hen house. In terms of social responsibility, getting mad at a shark for having what we presume is the wrong motive is utterly futile. We tend to assume or project motives on business managers other than simply to feed. If we want to delimit the feeding, we might look into how the tank we have designed permits or even encourages over-feeding. That is to say, we can change the tank.
We can’t very well change the shark without making it no longer a shark. We could pass legislation outlawing profits, then we would not have companies, and they produce our products that we consume. We want some feeding. We are convinced that we need some feeding in the tank. We just don't want such feeding that compromises the tank (or us). The question is how to prevent over-feeding at our expense. Presuming the shark will respond to our charges of its immoral motive is a non-starter, but we can redesign the tank, which the shark must take as a required constraint.
For example, we can apply anti-trust law such that any sharks that become too big for the tank get chopped up and become shark-food. We can install steel bars in the tank to limit where the sharks can feed (i.e., maximum prices or profits). That the drug companies are price-setters rather than takers strongly points to the need for anti-trust enforcement. Of course, if the sharks are threatening to eat our representatives, we can’t count on our politicians to give us straight talk on significant reform of the tank any time soon. Rather, they will try to convince us that they have sufficiently modified its structure, when in fact they are enabling the sharks to continue over-feeding. Perhaps the officials are sharks themselves. Sharks, whether in business or government, policing a tank of sharks while the rest of us wonder why the over-feeding goes on and on is simply a recipe to get gouged, or bitten.
Source:
Duff Wilson, "Drug Makers Raise Prices in Face of Health Care Reform," The New York Times, November 15, 2009.
