Big Pharma envisions big changes
You can't turn on the TV without seeing glitzy commercials for some new wonder drug. If Big Pharma has its way—they'll have ads in every language, because their execs think the U.S. market is declining.
There's a feeling that change is on the way, and no consensus on how to respond. The inevitable result will be tighter price competition, the experts feel. A global look comes from a study by Roland Berger, a British firm that specializes in "strategic consulting," entitled "Pharma at the crossroads — Choosing directions in a transforming health-care world."
It's based on interviews with 50 key policy-makers from large drug companies.
The big players are expecting the United States drug market, the biggest in the world, to decline in importance because of cost-cutting. Now Big Pharma marketers are angling for the best strategy to gain advantage in other markets, particularly emerging consumer economies in Brazil, Russia, India and China. These are countries where drug marketing is in its infancy—and ripe for the picking. I wish those countries luck with trying to keep the focus on patients and good health in the midst of the gathering storms of Big Marketing. This cold-hearted strategy reminds me of what's been happening in the tobacco industry. Business is down in the U.S., so they go after emerging countries like China and India. And with help from the U.S. taxpayer to boot!
The drug industry is uneasy about changes in the structure of health-care systems in many countries, including the United States. Some execs believe the answer is in combining elements of pharmaceutical and insurance marketing into corporate entities. I wonder if any of them will remember to listen to the patients and the doctors while they're set up all of their survival restructuring.
The study included some opinions about Big Pharma paying less attention to influencing doctors and more to selling their product to companies paying health claims in the insurance industry.
No wonder Big Pharma is uneasy and feels a threat to their bottom line. I have no doubt that the trend for more and more patients (in the United States and elsewhere) to use safer natural and alternative methods and side-stepping a slew of prescription bottles to manage their health is a large factor.
