Analysis of Article about Pharmaceutical and Medical Device Manufacturing Companies - Essay Example

Article analysis The economic questions in the article include how much money are pharmaceutical and medical device manufacturing companies spendingon healthcare professionals for promotional speaking and prescription? What factors have contributed to a decline in the amount spent by such companies on the healthcare professionals? And how reliable is a doctor’s advice who has a business relationship with a pharmaceutical or medical device manufacturing company? These questions are important because a doctor’s biased opinion driven by his/her motive of making profit can prove disastrous for the patients.

Also, the pharmaceutical and medical device manufacturing companies are using their relationships with healthcare professionals as a means of doing business. This means that large amount of money spent on the promotion of a low-quality product can increase its sales compared to a product that has not been promoted as much. This could translate into low quality of healthcare for the receivers. The underlying economics behind this issue is that a lot of money is being used to buy loyalties of healthcare professionals which is unreasonable and unethical.

There are incentives for doctors and healthcare providers for promoting drugs from the paying companies. The relationship between a physician and a patient is very important for the quality of healthcare. Patients need to trust the physicians to follow their advice as well as to get positive outcomes by doing this. The business relationship between physicians and companies distorts the physicians’ relationship with the patients particularly regarding the issue of asymmetric information. While the patients are uninformed, physicians know that they are prescribing a drug that has better alternatives available in the market.

This is breach of ethical conduct which is fundamental to the delivery of good healthcare.