On the surface, it may sometimes look like drug companies are doing good things with their money and trying to improve the society that consumes their products. Nestle, a candy company based in Switzerland, is partnering with a drug company to provide its food engineering expertise in a joint effort to make medicines taste good. For years, candy companies disbursed their unhealthy, sugary products through society subsequently making people diabetic, obese, and depressed. With the increase in nutrition education, sugar restrictions imposed by governments, and people being generally more health-conscious, candy companies like Nestle are experiencing an all-time low period of sales. This is what has caused Nestle to enter the drug flavoring sector. “If making consumers fat has been big business, making them healthy could be bigger” (Campbell & Gretler, 2016). Big Pharma’s intention is always related to making money.
The combination of lousy settlements, the FDA passing suboptimal drugs, and the scarceness of new drugs allows Big Pharma to continue to carry out their agenda while not having to consider the needs of the patient. The entire healthcare system in general is broken. This is mostly due to failed policies; segmented markets and services; and a lack of consensus on how the system is to operate while pleasing the most stakeholders. The prescription industry has become corrupted due to the greedy agendas of Big Pharma executives. In theory, this smaller segment of the healthcare system should be easier to fix.
References
Campbell, M. & Gretler, C. (2016). Nestlé Wants to Sell You Both Sugary Snacks and Diabetes Pills. Bloomberg Businessweek. Retrieved from https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2016-05-05/nestl-s-sugarempire-is-on-a-health-kick