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Patient Access to Prohibitively Expensive Medicines

   

Added on  2021-05-31

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Running Head: PATIENT ACCESS TO PROHIBITIVELY EXPENSIVE MEDICINESPATIENT ACCESS TO PROHIBITIVELY EXPENSIVE MEDICINESNAME OF THE STUDENTNAME OF THE UNIVERSITYAUTHOR’S NOTE
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1PATIENT ACCESS TO PROHIBITIVELY EXPENSIVE MEDICINESTHE ISSUE OF POOR PATIENTS NOT BEING ABLE TO EXPENSIVE MEDICINES Various international agreements such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and the International Covenant onEconomic, Social and Cultural Rights explicitly mention the Right to Health as one of thefundamental rights which every human being is entitled to and no person shall be denied thisright("Human rights and health", 2018). Despite the existence of this right, the patients across theworld are still not able to procure the most essential medicines which are essential for theirtreatment. This is not just limited to the poor countries of Asia and Africa but can also be seenand felt in the more advanced countries of Europe and North America (World HealthOrganization, 2017). The inability of the patients to procure costly medicines can be attributed toseveral reasons. The foremost cause of the unaffordability of life saving drugs and medicines isthat they are in limited stock due to which the prices of such medicines are on the higherside(Bashaar et al., 2017). The expensive medicines are not affordable by the patients who comefrom poor working-class families. The market dynamics act against the poor patients and theunavailability of the Biosimilar, which is the substitute of the life saving costly drugs, means thatthe poor patients are left without any access to medicines and healthcare facilities (Zhang & Chi,2014). The common good philosophy which adheres to the principle of sharing the commonreswithources goes against the current scenario where patients are denied the basic right to healthbecause of the unaffordability to pay the expenses for the medicines. The people employed in thehealthcare services, despite the willingness to help the patients, face the dilemma of whether togo against the organizational goals of following the respected protocols of the designatedorganizations wherein they are employed (Bigdeli, Peters& Wagner, 2014).This is due to the factthat the employees of the healthcare services are employees of the organizations and they have to
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2PATIENT ACCESS TO PROHIBITIVELY EXPENSIVE MEDICINESabide by the rules and regulations of the organizations. The organizations also have to keep thefinancial aspect intact. In these circumstances, they face a conflict of interest while performingCommon Good. RECOMMENDATIONS TO ADDRESS THIS CHALLENGE IN THE PROFESSIONALCOMMUNITY, LOCALLY AND GLOBALLY The issue of the patients not being able to procure the expensive medicines can bemitigated by the help and support from the Government as well as the International Bodies, suchas the United Nations Organization, the Red Cross, the World Health Organization. If theGovernment or the International Bodies agree to sell the medicines at a subsidized value then itbecomes easier for the patients to procure such medicines (Moura, 2017). The people are a formof resource for the country and for the proper functioning of the country’s economy, it isimperative that the human resources are maintained by the Administration. The interference bythe Government or the International Bodies, will lead to the expenditure of the Exchequer of theGovernment which the Government can balance out by imposing taxes on the sale of luxurycommodities as the rich can afford to spend more money to buy luxury commodities or ineconomical terminology, the Veblen Goods (Lee, 2017). Although, there is no direct evidence tothis idea being implemented anywhere but there are various countries which provides subsidiesto the people for buying medicines such as New Zealand offering Prescription Subsidies andIndia offering subsidies on the essential medicines as well as levying heavy taxes on the cost ofthe luxury cars. The Government of the respective countries must ensure that there are Biosimilars-substitutes to the lifesaving drugs, available in the market. In case the prices of the original life
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