Priceless Goods: How Should Life-Saving Drugs be Priced?

This article examines the ethical issues raised by the pricing of priceless goods. Priceless goods are defined as ones that are widely held to have some special non-market value that makes them unsuited for buying and selling. One subset of priceless goods is prescription drugs—particularly life-sav...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Maitland, Ian (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Cambridge Univ. Press 2002
In: Business ethics quarterly
Year: 2002, Volume: 12, Issue: 4, Pages: 451-480
Online Access: Volltext (JSTOR)
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Summary:This article examines the ethical issues raised by the pricing of priceless goods. Priceless goods are defined as ones that are widely held to have some special non-market value that makes them unsuited for buying and selling. One subset of priceless goods is prescription drugs—particularly life-saving and life-enhancing ones. Drug makers are under pressure to price their medicines responsibly, which means to restrain their prices (and profits). However, this article argues that it is precisely because life-saving and life-enhancing medicines are priceless that it is especially urgent to leave companies free to charge market prices for them.
ISSN:2153-3326
Contains:Enthalten in: Business ethics quarterly
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.2307/3857995