Background To The Online Discount Drug Controversy

The American market with one of the largest consumer bases in the world offers a huge variety of consumer items, including pharmaceutical products, in particular prescription drugs.

Though the prescription drugs are available at the counters of pharmaceutical stores/pharmacies around the nation, the high prices at which they are sold are perhaps the greatest benefit for the numerous pharmaceutical companies.

At the same time the same range of products for the average patients is indeed a burden, one that forces these patients to seek other and preferably cheaper avenues to obtain drugs. Drugs available at the Internet are yet the best option, as the prices offered through online sales are relatively cheaper compared to the same products purchased at the counters of pharmacies.

Another important factor that has forced American consumers to switch over from purchasing drugs from counters to the latest form of buying drugs Online is the pharmaceutical industry's somewhat 'ripping off' policies.

These policies openly exploit the average American consumers through the use of setting their own prices, a practice that is legal simply because there exist no pricing regulations in our country. Hence, the average buyer of drugs including prescription drugs is automatically attracted towards avenues where the same drugs are available at cheaper rates.

Even studies carried out by the famous Fortune magazine note that the pharmaceutical industry in the United States of America is the most profitable industry in all respects including the profitability factor, return on revenues, return on assets as well as return on equity.

In short, this industry is not only the most profitable, it is also the largest spender in any given election with huge sums spent for lobbying and for influencing politicians who later assist them in regulations and laws that more than favor the pharmaceutical industry.

It is thus of no surprise that the absence of any price regulation agenda openly allows the American pharmaceutical companies to set their own prices, in turn demanding prices of their choice from the unknowing population of patients across the country.