Izvorni znanstveni članak
Liberalisation of the Market of Medicines: Social and Health Implications
Živka Staničić
; Farmaceutsko-biokemijski fakultet, Zagreb, Hrvatska
Vesna Loparić
; Farmaceutsko-biokemijski fakultet, Zagreb, Hrvatska
Sažetak
Starting from the basic assumption that the system of medical care with its inherent structural characteristics should be removed from the free market picture, the paper critically questions the rapid trend of liberalisation which neoliberal political economy has imposed
on the market of medicines in the last two centuries. The drug distribution system has changed so as to allow an increasingly large number of previously only prescription drugs become over-the-counter medicines. In other words, drugs have become a commodity
freely bought or sold like any other commodity on the market. Seeing that the market mechanism has lately intensified in the pharmaceutical sector, the paper draws attention to a number of insufficiently researched (or rather skillfully concealed) bad consequences of the deregulation of drugs. Contrary to the claims of the liberal drug market advocates about the availability, safety and efficiency of drugs due to the government deregulation,
the paper shows the other side of the demand for deregulation: it is deeply connected with the so called “advanced” or “postmodern” capitalism in which powerful pharmaceutical corporations pressurise into “simplifying” the sales of their “products” thus creating favour-
able conditions for unlimited market competition; drug distribution reorganization wishes to accomplish two utterly prosaic and pragmatic goals: firstly, reduction of the health insurance costs (by transferring most of them to patients) and secondly,creation of the institutional and legal network for pharmaceutical companies to allow them maximum profit. Their public health benefit rhetoric serves them not only as the best safe haven possible but it also gives them a lot more latitude in pursuing their own selfish, partial interests.
Ključne riječi
Drug market liberalisation; deregulation; “specific weight” of medicines; “total” effect of medicines; consumerism; “wide closed” access to drugs; raison d’etre of pharmacists’ activity
Hrčak ID:
27359
URI
Datum izdavanja:
9.10.2008.
Posjeta: 2.031 *