The main issue impacting American consumers is that of one revolving around drug prices within the healthcare industry, and this issue broadens itself into one that shows possible issues of monopolies and oligopolies in the “free market” economy. Consumers are impacted by the issue of drug prices on a consistent basis, and something needs to be done about the issue.
Over the past few decades, government-issued patents and monopolies in the healthcare market, have created sky-high prices for consumers on necessary healthcare products. The most obvious example here is with EpiPen’s, the life-saving injection used by people when suffering from an allergic reaction. Originally created in the late 1980s, no other company is allowed to make a similar product and sell it in the market until 2025 due to government patents barring competition. Because of this, the life-saving drug can be sold to American consumers at upwards of $700, even with insurance, because the providers know the inelasticity of demand EpiPen possesses. However, the issue doesn’t stop here. Insulin, another necessity in the healthcare market, costs up to $450 per month for diabetic users, due to few sellers in the market being able to partake in legal price-gauging due to the lack of competition still existing. When it was originally created over a century ago, the patent to the insulin formula was sold to a university in Canada for $1, for the creator hoped cost would never be a barrier to the product. In 2020, limited producers have the right to produce insulin, so they can charge a premium for the product, and they do so accordingly. Thousands of American’s see health insurance as an unattainable cost due to their current financial statement, so shelling out over one thousand dollars a month is something that is unfathomable to many yet has come to be expected by the healthcare industry.
The simplest policy to improve this situation is to eliminate governmental patents on healthcare products. This would allow hundreds of smaller pharmaceutical companies and laboratories to create their own products that possess the same formulas as EpiPen’s and insulin and enter the seller’s market, thereby forcing companies to compete for buyers, and lowering costs substantially for the American consumer. While these drugs take on heavy costs in the form of research and development before ever being placed on the market, high-profit returns have become accessible at price-points much lower than what they currently sell for. Pharmaceutical companies realized the key to making money on opioids and prescription painkillers were to make them as cheap as possible and then hook users, and if a prescription of OxyContin can go for less than $20, there is no reason for life-saving drugs to be thirty-five times that price. Ultimately, over-priced and unregulated drug prices pose an immoral and uncompetitive challenge to American consumers, and the elimination or at least shortening of government-issued patents could do a lot to boost the financial and physical health of American consumers.
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