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Access to Medicines, Access to Markets
1Department of Philosophy, Queen's University, Kingston, ON, Canada.
Frontiers in Sociology
|April 19, 2021
Summary
The pharmaceutical industry uses "access to medicines" language to market expensive drugs, opening markets in wealthy nations. This strategy co-opts global health ideals for commercial gain, particularly in countries with significant public or regulated healthcare payers.
Area of Science:
- Global Health
- Pharmaceutical Marketing
- Health Economics
Background:
- The
- access to medicines
- movement advocates for affordable healthcare globally.
- The pharmaceutical industry faces challenges with pricing and market access for high-cost treatments.
Purpose of the Study:
- To analyze how the pharmaceutical industry utilizes language from the
- access to medicines
- movement.
- To investigate the strategic use of this discourse for market expansion, particularly in developed countries.
Main Methods:
- Discourse analysis of industry communications and marketing materials.
- Case study approach examining specific pharmaceutical products and markets.
- Review of global health policy and pharmaceutical industry reports.
Main Results:
- The pharmaceutical industry selectively adopts
- access to medicines
- rhetoric to align its commercial objectives with global health ideals.
- This strategy facilitates market entry into wealthier nations by framing access as a shared goal, appealing to public and regulated payers.
- The industry's use of this language can obscure the reality of extremely high treatment costs.
Conclusions:
- The pharmaceutical industry strategically employs
- access to medicines
- discourse to advance its marketing and market-access goals.
- This linguistic co-option can create a false sense of alignment between industry interests and global health equity.
- Further scrutiny is needed to differentiate genuine access initiatives from market-driven strategies.
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