BSB111 : Business Law and Ethics - Law Assignment

Internal Code : MAS6096

Law Assignment

Questions : Case 1: A.For there to be an ethical issue, the issues raised within the media report would have to do with an action being right or wrong, good or bad. The radical increase in the price of the EpiPen of 480 percent since 2009 is an ethical issue. It’s wrong because consumers are forced to pay extreme amounts of money for a vital product that can combat severe allergic reactions. Another ethical issue evident is the millions of dollars spent on TV advertisement and donating the device to schools across the US, ensuring it was a familiar product with consumers/society. This can be viewed as a good thing as it raises awareness of severe allergic reactions and provides an answer to the problem in the form of a medical device. B.There are different approaches to understanding ethics, each raise different questions that should help in understanding the issue, such as descriptive and normative questions: Descriptive questions: How many families are taking extreme risks by not purchasing the EpiPen? How many coupons are needed to purchase the product without incurring any out-of- pocket expenses? What are the effects on the health care system when patients choose not to purchase the EpiPen? Normative questions: Should consumers have to pay more for the actual device when the drug only costs a few dollars? Should Mylan be allowed to corner the market on the lifesaving drug and raise the price of product at will? Case 2 : Utilitarianism A utilitarianism approach involves identifying all possible stakeholders that will be affected by the proposed action; predicting and quantifying the pleasure and pain involved with the action on each stakeholder; and determining if the action has a greater contribution to the net happiness over the perceived alternative. In this case the action involves raising the price of the EpiPen. This will considerably affect a range of stakeholders. The analysis should include all the stakeholders affect by it, however we will focus on just two stakeholders: (1) the consumers of the EpiPen, (2) Mylan the pharmaceutical company that produces the product. In this case the calculation of happiness points indicates that there would be a net increase in pleasure if Mylan were to largely increase the price of the EpiPen. So, from the utilitarian analysis it’s evident that there is a moral choice and it would be ethical to raise the price of the EpiPen.