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Instructions
Ethics spans a large spectrum in our business world. Healthcare has gained a great deal of discussion and importance. Both developed and developing countries are facing healthcare affordability. Businesses are faced with tough questions and the rising costs of healthcare to offer employees. Some businesses have reduced healthcare packages or dropped coverage to employees altogether. Global healthcare is a rising problem. Please read the topic “Healthcare” on pages 267 & 268 in your textbook.
Companies around the world are getting into ethical and legal trouble due to this question: Is healthcare a right or a privilege?
Choose one of the questions below and elaborate on your response in the discussion. When responding to your peers, keep ethical conduct in mind. Since this is a personal issue, emotions may be involved.
Question 1:
Healthcare protects life; it is a fundamental right and should be provided by the government. Why or why not?
Question 2:
Healthcare is a privilege and due to high costs should not be provided by the government. Why or why not?
Health Care (Pages 267 & 268)
Another ethical issue gaining in importance is health care. Globally, a billion people lack access to health care systems, and about 7.5 million children under the age of five die from malnutrition and preventable diseases each year. As a result, global concern about the priorities of pharmaceutical companies is on the rise. This ethical dilemma involves profits versus health care. Those who believe pharmaceutical companies are inherently unethical suggest the quest for profits led these companies to research drugs aimed at markets that can afford luxuries, such as cures for baldness or impotence, rather than focusing on cures for widespread deadly diseases like malaria, HIV, and AIDS.
Patents are another challenging issue. Since patents give pharmaceutical companies exclusive rights to their products for a certain period, the companies can charge higher prices—prices those in emerging economies cannot often afford. This has led to disputes not only between health care activists and pharmaceutical companies but also between countries. For instance, Brazil and South Africa are considering reform that would make pharmaceuticals cheaper, while Eli Lilly filed a lawsuit against Canada claiming that the country’s compliance in letting rivals sell copies of its medicines violates the North American Free Trade Agreement.Pharmaceutical companies such as Eli Lilly argue that high prices are needed to recoup the costs of creating the drugs, and without profits their companies would not be able to function. Another argument is that since other firms are allowed to patent their products, pharmaceutical companies should be allowed the same privileges. Yet when the issue is one of life or death, businesses must find ways to balance profitability with human need.
A related issue affecting both developing and developed countries is the affordability of health care. Rising health care costs continue to pose a critical challenge, particularly in the United States. Studies have revealed that the United States spends more per capita on health care than other industrialized countries—but with-out better results for the investment. Prices of health care products and procedures can vary greatly within the country. When health care becomes too costly, businesses tend to either drop health care packages offered to employees or downgrade to less expensive—and less inclusive—packages. For instance, some unions, companies, and insurers have begun dropping mental health care plans due to a law that states mental health care, if offered, must be as “robust” as the rest of the medical benefits. Rather than offer the more costly mental health benefits, some companies are choosing to drop them entirely. Global health care fraud is a serious ethics issue, costing businesses and governments millions and depriving individuals of funds needed for critical care. One estimate places the losses from global health care fraud and error at S487 billion annually. Fraud includes providing less medicine in packages for the same price, filing false Medicare claims, and providing kickbacks for referrals, and fraud can be committed by individuals, companies, doctors, and pharmacists. A doctor, pharmacist, and marketer were convicted of health care fraud in the form of false billing and the diversion of drugs. The pharmacist bribed doctors to prescribe expensive prescriptions bought from his pharmacies. Prescriptions were also billed to Medicare and Medicaid that were never dispensed to the patients but were instead sold on the street.
The fundamental issue leading some businesses into ethical and legal trouble around the world is the question of whether health care is a right or a privilege. Many people in the United States see health care as a privilege, not a right; thus, it is the responsibility of individuals to provide for themselves. People in other countries, such as Germany, consider it a right. German employees have been guaranteed access to high-quality, comprehensive health care since 1883. Many countries believe health care is important because it increases productivity; therefore, governments should provide it. As health care costs continue to increase, the burden for providing it falls on companies, countries, employees, or all three.
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