| Editorial: Corporate greed!
As I sit here looking out at a fantastic January day when the temperature should be in the teens and rain/snow/ice or whatever, it is about 70� and sunny. Life seems upside down. However, the news I saw on television last night really is upsetting to no end. As we have struggled over the past year with ridiculously high gasoline prices to the point that many families are suffering financially and it may take months to catch up, I saw that Exxon oil company, this past quarter (that's 3 months if you are math-challenged!), had over 10 billion dollars in profits. That is obscene! I think most people would understand during the hurricanes and disasters that there may be some financial losses and adversity that we all must share, but, 10 billion dollars of profit! What has happened in the U.S. to allow such things to happen? Why are things upside down where it seems we support corporations more than them helping us?
I'll share what I think is one contributing factor. I remember the days of the 'mom and pop' stores, the local banks, local pharmacies, local gas stations purchasing from independent oil companies, and minimal "chain" operations; and many of the chains were simply within a state. I remember a faculty friend of mine from out of state berating our local standards because corporate and national banks were not encouraged or allowed. He thought that "bigger was better" and look at all the benefits everyone would receive if we had national chains, etc."
As we all know, competition is generally good when it is reasonable and between competitors of reasonable size. However, when competition is between a corporate giant and a small independent store, then it becomes unfair; note the downtown areas of many small and medium towns throughout the nation when a megachain "one-stop shopping" store comes in. Not only is the competition unfair with closing of the smaller stores, but some of the large players then start dictating prices for the commodities we purchase. This has happened this past year when gasoline prices were increased for no apparent reason, except possibly greed; however, we were all told it was due to the losses the oil companies experienced. This is a national tragedy and should not happen.
However, let's look at what has happened in our own "industry", pharmaceuticals. Where we used to have a very large number of pharmaceutical companies, due to mergers, etc., we now have fewer, but bigger, companies. These bigger companies tend to set their own prices, not based on the cost of producing the pharmaceuticals, but based on what the market can bear. Too many times this past year there have been stories in the pharmaceutical press about the prices of drugs being established by the cost of therapy per year as compared to something else, not on the cost of actually producing the drug. As fewer and fewer companies (but larger) are in the market, it seems they start telling everyone what they are going to have to pay. Now it seems they only have to tell the PBMs, government, etc. what their price is to be. There is no real competition where companies formerly were marketing their products to physicians, pharmacists, etc. and the local individuals would select which to use. What has happened to freedom of choice in business?
Should the government implement controls? Obviously not as that will only make matters worse. Why not support the smaller companies when options are available? Why not encourage decisions that will help out local companies and/or smaller companies? Why not purchase gasoline at stations that use smaller independent oil companies in place of the larger national chains? It used to be beneficial to use the gasoline credit cards at these stations. However, now they all take all credit cards (and there is always cash), it is just as easy to purchase gasoline at a smaller gasoline stations than at a larger chain station. For pharmaceuticals, encourage and recommend alternative pharmaceuticals if they have been demonstrated to do as good a job. It seems that we are observing more and more in the literature and media reports that many of the older drugs are just as effective and much less expensive than the "drug of the day" or "boutique" drug. And, since some of the older drugs are not longer commercially available, they may need to be compounded.
Loyd V. Allen, Jr., Ph.D., R.Ph
Editor-in-Chief |
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