IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/buetqu/v12y2002i04p451-480_00.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

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

Author

Listed:
  • Maitland, Ian

Abstract

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.

Suggested Citation

  • Maitland, Ian, 2002. "Priceless Goods: How Should Life-Saving Drugs be Priced?," Business Ethics Quarterly, Cambridge University Press, vol. 12(4), pages 451-480, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:buetqu:v:12:y:2002:i:04:p:451-480_00
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S1052150X00001998/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Arzi Adbi & Ajay Bhaskarabhatla & Chirantan Chatterjee, 2020. "Stakeholder Orientation and Market Impact: Evidence from India," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 161(2), pages 479-496, January.
    2. Thomas Carson, 2013. "Free Exchange for Mutual Benefit: Sweatshops and Maitland’s “Classical Liberal Standard”," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 112(1), pages 127-135, January.
    3. Juan Elegido, 2009. "The Just Price: Three Insights from the Salamanca School," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 90(1), pages 29-46, November.
    4. Alan Singer, 2010. "Integrating Ethics and Strategy: A Pragmatic Approach," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 92(4), pages 479-491, April.
    5. Bénédicte Bourcier-Béquaert & Loréa Baïada-Hirèche & Anne Sachet-Milliat, 2022. "Cure or Sell: How Do Pharmaceutical Industry Marketers Combine Their Dual Mission? An Approach Using Moral Dissonance," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 175(3), pages 555-581, January.
    6. Edward Balotsky, 2009. "Where Strategy and Ethics Converge: Pharmaceutical Industry Pricing Policy for Medicare Part D Beneficiaries," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 84(1), pages 75-88, January.
    7. Lori Verstegen Ryan, 2006. "Foundation and Form of the Field of Business Ethics," Journal of Private Enterprise, The Association of Private Enterprise Education, vol. 22(Spring 20), pages 34-49.
    8. James Huebner, 2014. "Moral Psychology and the Intuition that Pharmaceutical Companies Have a ‘Special’ Obligation to Society," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 122(3), pages 501-510, July.
    9. Juan Elegido, 2015. "The Just Price as the Price Obtainable in an Open Market," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 130(3), pages 557-572, September.
    10. N. D. Albers & A. O. Wren & T. L. Knotts & M. G. Chupp, 2021. "Consumer Perceptions and Pricing Practices for Weddings," Journal of Consumer Policy, Springer, vol. 44(3), pages 407-426, September.
    11. Wade M. Chumney & David Wasieleski & E Günter Schumacher, 2017. "The conflict between U.S. patent protection and technological innovation," Post-Print hal-01768893, HAL.
    12. Michael Buckley, 2013. "A Constructivist Approach to Business Ethics," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 117(4), pages 695-706, November.
    13. Thomas Hemphill, 2010. "Extraordinary Pricing of Orphan Drugs: Is it a Socially Responsible Strategy for the U.S. Pharmaceutical Industry?," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 94(2), pages 225-242, June.
    14. Alexei M. Marcoux, 2006. "The Concept of Business in Business Ethics," Journal of Private Enterprise, The Association of Private Enterprise Education, vol. 22(Spring 20), pages 50-67.
    15. Alexei M. Marcoux, 2009. "Retrieving Business Ethics from Political Philosophy," Journal of Private Enterprise, The Association of Private Enterprise Education, vol. 24(Spring 20), pages 21-33.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:buetqu:v:12:y:2002:i:04:p:451-480_00. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/beq .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.