The medicine industry has remarkably revolutionized the management and control of infectious diseases
The medicine industry has remarkably revolutionized the management and control of infectious diseases. Chronic diseases, including cardiovascular diseases, stroke, and cancer have become the major causes of death as the lifespan is extended. The burden of disease has changed and altered the applied medical approaches and created new problems for healthcare providers. In the past, medical care was decided by doctors and hospitals for the coverage of the most visible diseases and symptoms. Medicine started becoming a successfully profitable business in the 1900s, and advancements in technology gave physicians a wide-array of the medical armory to treat patients as organ transplantation, improved cancer treatment, cardiac bypass, and new families of drugs like immunizations and antibiotics were developed (Conrad & Leiter, 2003).
The medical industry has taken dramatic steps in improving healthcare throughout the world, with its corporate stakeholders playing an instrumental role. The challenges to international health have immensely shifted from 1950 to 2000. In the 1950s, the medical industry had placed very high expectations for global cooperation through the United Nations. Recently, the UN has faced difficulties with the domination of G8 countries in global policy and collaboration and called for regional integration to convert systems initially developed in the European Union into African ownership and stimulate renaissance. Continued integration between the systems in different regions has stimulated progress against infectious diseases including the Ebola epidemic in 2014-2015. National healthcare systems in developing nations remain insufficiently equipped to offer quality healthcare services (Bayne & Woolcock, 2011).
With the success of medicine came
some obvious problems, especially involving the emergence of chronic health
problems, inequalities in health outcomes, the costs of care, and access to
care. Medical professionalization has been associated with numerous benefits,
but it has also developed industry with little public accountability. The last
two decades have seen an increase in the corporatization of medicine, including
the increased influence of insurance companies over healthcare providers and
the rise in for-profit medicine by pharmaceutical companies (Leinster, 2011).
Corporate stakeholders and their response to issues
The medical industry is comprised of
shareholders including insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies,
employers, physicians, patients, and the government. Insurance companies sell coverage
plans to patients either directly or through intermediaries in the government or
employer. The insurance companies then pay renumeration to pharmaceutical companies
through governmental drug-benefit plans and insurance. Pharmaceuticals are
involved with the development and marketing of medications prescribed by
physicians to treat patients. The employers provide their employees with health
insurance coverage with varying deductibles and co-pays. Patients are the
recipients of healthcare, while physicians are healthcare providers. The
government usually subsidizes the healthcare for the poor, disabled, and
elderly and ensuring that the corporate stakeholders stick to regulations (Shore,
2011).
The relationship between the major
stakeholders in the healthcare industry is complicated, especially due to the
two corporate stakeholders: insurance companies and pharmaceutical firms. Being
publicly owned corporations on the stock exchange, they have the primary aim of
making a profit and maximizing their shareholder’s wealth. This aspect has, at
times, inconvenienced patients as they are subjected to unreasonable price
raises.
The insurance industry has had growing
premiums and strict demands that have barred many people from benefitting from
health insurance. Though the insurance companies are mainly driven by profit,
their service nature should not be fixated on profit, and this proclivity has
incommoded people facing financial hardships. Insurance companies have faced
criticism for not balancing their respective responsibilities towards both
patients and shareholders. Usually, the companies are encouraged to focus more
on profitability rather than affordability by quarterly reports. They then
adopt tight regulations, including stance against pre-existing conditions, so
that they can only select the most healthy individuals. These patients do not
use costly procedures compared to those with chronic diseases; hence healthcare
is reduced to a revenue-centered industry that prevents needy patients from
receiving treatment due to their unfortunate financial situations (Shore, 2011).
Pharmaceutical companies perform a
considerable role in the medical industry as many patients depend on their
products. Recently, the prices for particular drugs have been rising, and the
industry has not set caps to ensure they do not reach extravagant prices. At
times, pharmaceutical companies have argued that they need to charge high rates
to cover costs in research and development, which is overstated. Many scholars
have acknowledged, at the very least, that pharmaceutical companies have a duty
to practice fair marketing and be honest. Paradoxically, pharmaceutical
companies have stuck to a profit-based marketing strategy (Shore, 2011).
A trend that has significantly
picked in the pharmaceutical companies is a change in their drug marketing.
Previously, the companies employed experienced and knowledgeable pharmacists
who objectively educated physicians on the benefits and risks of certain
medications. However, presently, the use of sales-persons with no formal market
training and use them to establish social relationships where physicians are
offered incentives for the prescription of their products.
The year 2015 had two startling
cases where companies acquired extremely important drugs and spectacularly
raised their price level. It became tough for insurance companies and patients
to purchase them. On February 10, 2015, Valeant Pharmaceuticals bought the
rights to Isuprel and Nitropress and immediately raised their price by 525% and
212% respectively. The life-saving heart drugs are relied on by a large number
of people and having a monopoly over the drugs, the company decided to get as
much money as they would from the patients per each tablet. Later the same
year, in September, Turing Pharmaceuticals secured the rights to market
Daraprim and in August, Vecamyl. Turing Pharmaceuticals then elevated the price
level of Daraprim from $13.50 to $750 per tablet, a 5555% raise. Both companies
moderated their prices after public outcry and made it more possible for
hospitals and individuals without insurance to buy the drugs. The government
has been instrumental in checking rogue CEOs of pharmaceutical companies, as in
this case, both CEOs were called on to testify before congressional
fact-finding committees that led to the collapse of their companies in the
stock exchange (Jeffrey, 2012).
Pharmaceutical companies have
exploited patients for profits with the argument that their responsibility is
to increase profits and wealth for their shareholders. The classical economic
school perspective asserts that entrepreneurs should not be concerned with
social issues whose resolution is a responsibility of the government and
legislation. However, pharmaceutical companies have taken a crude shortcut to
maximize profit without conforming to society’s rules, those embodied in law or
ethical customs. The Friedman’s entire statement has three categories:
economic, legal, and ethical. It has also been deployed in the prosecution of
pharmaceutical CEOs when federal authorities have evidence of fraud from their
trade.
The role of the industry in its social, economic, and political setting
The need for local and international cooperation have been heightened in the modern world as the risks associated with global trends in communication, travel, and trade can only be effectively addressed with networks transcending traditional national borders. Risks highlighted include infectious diseases, human trafficking, international drug smuggling, environmental pollution, and displacement of populations. These problems cannot be solved individually by different countries. The medical industry has been involved in global action for communicable and non-communicable diseases, international financial architecture, trade, and environmental concerns.
The medical industry has been
successful in alleviating most diseases and extending the average life span,
especially in developed economies. However, African countries have been faced
with more problems due to the worsened trade conditions, poor governance,
conflict, and weakened public health systems. Therefore, there have been vast
inequalities between and within states. Development assistance is required
since the world is becoming increasingly interdependent, and the effects of
ill-health and poverty are not confined to the traditional country borders. To
combat international health issues and organize with strategic efforts,
international communities comprising of countries throughout the world have
developed health agencies.
The UN’s main health agency is the
World Health Organization (WHO), whose roles are the direction and coordination
of international health work. However, other players have challenged and
criticized its activities, including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation,
UNAIDS, and the Global Fund to fight AIDS, TB, and Malaria. These agencies have
been invented in the past decades, which proves that international cooperation
is increasing rapidly.
Ecological and natural resources
Linkages can be
found between global forces and individual tragedies in specific ecologies that
necessitate medical attention. For instance, children in Sierra Leone have been
in the past victims of the global diamond trade and suffered arm amputations.
Massacres in DRC have wiped away entire communities have been viewed as a
misfortunate of living in the world’s largest tantalum source. Tantalum is used
to make mobile phone chips, and it is the abundance of such minerals that have
turned habitats rich in primary resources to a survival burden to the immediate
population.
Climate change research also
indicates how events occurring in one place can result in disease and death in
areas far away. Climate change, resulting mainly from activities in most
industrial countries, will have effects including landslides, floods,
landslides in susceptible regions, and also change the distribution of
infectious disease vectors. The application of these links into the healthcare
framework has needed the input of new skill that draws from a wide range of
disciplines, many of which may not lie in the conventional public health
portfolio.
For this purpose, international
cooperation has crossed not only national boundaries but also disciplinary
frontiers. This strategy will enable the already adopted international
cooperation that permits the diagnosis of problems, including appropriate
surveillance systems that gather data and demonstrate it to visibility. At the
moment, there is a lot of data that goes unrecorded and is thereby invisible.
These developments will help develop teams that undertake the analysis of world
regions where populations are most vulnerable and research capacity weakest.
Liberia experienced problems with
‘conflict timber’ in 2000 when rebel leader Charles Taylor, elected president
in 1997, changed the law to allow him unlimited exploitation of Liberia’s
natural resources. The president, together with illegal entrepreneurs accustomed
to transnational crime, continued to destroy rainforests. As they cut down
trees, they enhanced the population’s access to wildlife, which were hunted to
decimation from 20000-30000 as civil clashes raged on.
To avoid these issues, the medical
industry has undertaken campaigns highlighting the harmful effects of illegal
trade, and the government has taken a complementary social harm-approach. One
of the agents for this calamity, Gus van Kouwenhoven was put to trial in the
Netherlands (Sollund, 2008).
Social
issues
The medical industry has adopted a
social problem approach to health and healthcare, which assumes that health and
illness are at least partly socially produced and that serious social problems
may accompany healthcare; hence it is essential always to improve practice,
which is not an unfettered good. Therefore, the industry has invested in
understanding the development of health problems in the social and physical
environment. This has been instrumental in environmentally and occupationally induced
diseases like asthma and black lung diseases among miners (Evidence-based
practice).
Social environments have been linked
to health and illness; hence healthcare givers focus on the patient as a locus
of intervention by considering social factors such as environment and
inequality, which can be the primary cause of a disease. The concern has been
transformed into a means of intervention in the social environment to promote
health and prevent disease. For instance, the current asthma treatment standards
emphasize the significance of controlling triggers and irritants in the
environment and educating patients of safe-care in this regard.
With public health perspectives, the
healthcare industry has conducted successful lifestyle and behavior
interventions such as combating HIV/AIDS with needle exchanges and safer sex,
and obesity and cardiovascular diseases with diet and exercise. The medical
industry tends to respond to social issues aligning with medical-specific
approaches through interventions in the social structures as a way of
treatment. However, the medical industry has failed to adequately reach
populations in third world countries, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa.
It is estimated that by 2009, the
number of people living with HIV/AIDS was 33.3 million, 2.6 million people
contracted the infection, and 2 million people died. There has been a disparity
in the distribution of global HIV infections, and 22.5 million of the infected
people are in Africa, which is 68 percent of the infected global population.
Only 10 percent of the infected individuals are receiving treatment, though the
need for treatment is expected to increase dramatically (Institute of Medicine,
2011).
President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS
Relief (PEPFAR), launched in 2003, established the US’s position as a leader in
expanding the care and treatment in the fight against AIDs in Africa. The
United States forged an extra-ordinary global response to mobilize donor and
private sector resources for this cause that though significantly rewarding,
was challenged by the anticipated expansion of the epidemic (Institute of
Medicine, 2011).
The industry’s social problem
approach involves principles that include the individual right to access
quality medical care. Concerns regarding limited access due to financial and
other barriers have been reflected in public debates over universal health
insurance and emphasized a need to eliminate the large population of uninsured
people. Social inequities are reflected in healthcare, and a key finding of social
research on disease is the inverse relationship between social class and
illness. Lower social levels are affected by higher illness rates, while higher
social classes are affected by lower illness rates.
The US population has unevenly
distributed access to healthcare, and about forty-four million Americans have
no health insurance, while more are underinsured. People with higher incomes
are more likely to be insured, and only 9 percent of people whose income is 200
percent or more above the poverty line are not insured compared to the 34
percent individuals living in poverty. While the UK has had some form of
universal healthcare, the US only has a mixture of public financing for
individuals who are poor, disabled, or elderly, and a private system that
offers insurance covers through employment. Insurance does not entirely cover
all costs, especially in long-term care and prescription drug costs.
Technology has come into conflict
with the traditional approach of establishing and disseminating knowledge through
the publication of research results. In many science disciplines, notably
physics, the instant online publication of results yet to be peer-reviewed enables
their critical assessment and is commonly practiced. It is expected that there
will be difficulties as published results in disciplines such as biomedical
research may follow the trend and result in the publication of results that
have not been reviewed. However, medicine has managed to strictly restrict the
publication of papers that are already peer-reviewed (Duquenoy, 2008).
Domestic
and international ethics
Contemporary global health extends
further than the diagnosis and treatment of diseases since it explores the
cultural, political, and social factors to an individual’s wellbeing as opposed
to the mere absence of infirmity. The medical industry has strived to promote
universal human rights and campaigned for global health by acknowledging and
integrating diversity. It also continues to encompass an inquiry into the
influences that separate disadvantaged and disenfranchised people from the
effluent and empowered people. This way, the industry monitors how factors such
as healthcare rights, displacement, environmental dynamics, discrimination,
inequality, and education shape personal wellbeing (Weinberg, 2010).
Physicians are motivated by a duty
to care and the body of healthcare providers. Confronted by health inequalities
in different regions, physicians have collaborated and worked out ways to
resolve challenges posed by resource-limited settings. All the personnel
involved in health-care provision learning have a duty to ensure that developed
global health programs uphold professional standards, are responsive to local
needs and are undertaken with safeguards to protect the patient and caregiver
(Weinberg, 2010).
The medical industry has developed
responsive and sustainable partnerships between resource-limited settings and
academic medical centres in the developed world. Research ethics is also
instrumental where researchers engage in research work in settings that are
limited in resources. Researchers reconcile their roles as educators,
clinicians, and researchers amidst the challenges of upholding their
beneficence and justice principles (Weinberg, 2010).
Rating
of the industry’s overall social responsiveness and its accomplishments in this
area
The medical fraternity has taken up
its inherent quest for the greatest good by seamlessly integrating joint
responses that have increased the highest number of potential survivors. The
medical industry acknowledges the effects of globalization that have resulted
in an interconnected and economically dependent world. Effective collaboration
between different states has been made possible by fundamental education and training
to facilitate disaster preparedness and understand environmental and social
influences on health of different populations.
The modern world has experienced social distress and calamities in the wake of disasters such as Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the Pakistan Earthquake, and the Indonesian Tsunami. Accordingly, the medical industry has adopted an international-accepted standardized response to emergencies (Cummings & Stikova, 2007). The American Medical Association (AMA) has provided leadership in disaster management by providing education and training programs in standardized disaster preparedness. These programs have targeted a wide scope of disaster response personnel. The international medical community encouraged collaboration with the National Disaster Life Support Foundation (NDLSF) in the establishment of global standards for disaster education and training. NDLSF was developed by AMA leading academic institutions including leading academic institutions, the Medical College of Georgia, and the Medical College of Georgia (Olivier, 2019)
The institution has developed all-inclusive, nationally homogenous, mass casualty all-hazards education and training programs. The programs target healthcare providers and associated non-medical personnel to achieve measurable improvement in disaster readiness to a pool of healthcare providers. With a foundation in disaster preparedness training and education underway in the USA, an initiative is now formally establishing a consortium of domestic and international stakeholder groups. This is a crucial step in meeting local and global preparedness and response (Jeffrey, 2012).
Rating
of the industry in relation to the Saint Leo University core values
The medical industry encompasses the
Saint Leo University core values. The medical industry has guaranteed
efficiency by applying evidence-based practice and improvement that emphasizes
the need for efficient, safe, and effective care. It has adopted initiatives
such as scientific engagement and study improvement that promote personal
development. By applying the social approach model, the healthcare industry has
built a patient-centered system that upholds the identity and respect of the
patient and integrates their preferences and opinion into the treatment. The
industry has also encouraged and worked collaboratively with federal
initiatives that ensure accountability and respect for governance to propagate
responsible stewardship. The cohesive interconnectedness of the medical
industry throughout the world demonstrates the value of community in its
wholesome diversity of population and resource (Rider et al., 2015).
However, the industry is plagued by
poor integrity, especially considering the conduct of insurance and
pharmaceutical companies. In the medical field, integrity can be considered to
be the relationship between professionalism and medical ethics. The widespread
issues of integrity have mainly been relevant within the corporate
stakeholders. Some practitioners, due to poor professional judgment, have been
colluded with inappropriately marketing pharmacists to mis-administer drugs.
In
summation, the medical industry has a sustainable structure among the physician
stakeholders- healthcare providers- on account of evidence-based practice and
firm ethical grounds. However, it is troubled by corporate stakeholders who,
despite being necessary for the provision of healthcare services, are more
profit-driven and tend to lack or loosen social responsibility to evade higher
costs of operation. Most of the time, controlling the actions of the corporate
stakeholders has been left for the judiciary and legislation. Meanwhile, the
medical industry has depended on its international health agencies and strong
international and interdisciplinary cooperation between different nations to
effectively combat new and emerging infections and calamities after disasters.