Pfizer fined £84m for charging ‘unfair’ price for epilepsy drug (Blog 10)

Pfizer fined £84m for charging ‘unfair’ price for epilepsy drug

After reading this article I have a feeling of disgust which I am unable to compare with anything else. The basic summary of this article is the drugs company Pfizer uses the distributor Flynn Pharma to distribute it's drugs to the National Health service, the drugs are phenytoin sodium pills used to help people with epilepsy. My main problem is the price of the drugs inflating by a huge 2,600 per cent “overnight" which I personally think this is a disgrace. How can a company, with an estimated 48,000 patients using the treatment, increase the price for 100mg packet of pills from £2.83 to £67.50. This is so morally wrong on so many levels it frustrates me when I see it happen. However this is the worst part of the nightmare, Pfizer advised it's patients not to switch to other products so the NHS had no alternative but to pay the higher prices, this again is another case of a multimillion pound business who are driven by profits and show a total disrespect to the people who rely on them, and in this case it's potentially a life or death situation.

In my eyes it is yet again another cases of an industry which problem occur due to a lack of regulations in a field which is primarily focussed on mass profits and lack of ethics. I wonder how the people who make these decisions sleep at night, I also wonder what decisions would be made if it was one of their family members who relied on this drug to live a relatively normal life. This effects me personally not through anyone I know who uses the drug but when it comes to the money which is spent on it. The annual NHS spending on the drug shot up from £2m to £50m. Now when I see this figure I firstly think of the other drug's companies which must be doing the same thing, exploiting the market and let's face it basically taking the biscuit, secondly I think of how the £48m difference and how it could be spent on other areas such as education and more importantly education fees.

I feel there should be a lot more focus on this area especially because it is most likely happening in other companies and indeed other industries, in my opinion it should be dealt with as a serious matter and brought to light immediately, I'm sure this is just one of the problems the government could look at and actually tackle, surely it should increase the NHS budget which has come under much scrutiny in recent months, can the government not see the how stopping this now can benefit everyone? The government would save massively and be allowed to invest funding into new and old areas helping the people of Britain, it will also improve their public image and for one slim second show them doing something useful for once which I and many others would agree they have done very little of over recent times.

So after reading this article I would say I'm a mixture of emotions, I feel this is just another case of the rich staying rich as the gap between poverty and a normal standard of living increases at a rate which is uncontrollable. These businesses are not only robbing the government of funding but ruining the lives of the people who depend on the drug, anyone can see how this is an unfair situation where we lose out yet again and businesses make millions off a product which is in demand and surely something has to be done about it before it becomes even more ethically unjust. 

Let me know how you feel about this topic below:

https://www.ft.com/content/0a1d0f6e-bc5c-11e6-8b45-b8b81dd5d080