TylenolEssay Preview: TylenolReport this essayThe media was not only focused on the deaths but it was also pervasive. Throughout the crisis over 100,000 separate news stories ran in U.S. newspapers, and hundreds of hours of national and local television coverage. A post crisis study by Johnson & Johnson said that over 90 percent of the American population had heard of the Chicago deaths due to cyanide-laced Tylenol within the first week of the crisis. Two news clipping services found over 125,000 news clippings on the Tylenol story. One of the services claimed that this story had been given the widest US news coverage since the assassination of President John F. Kennedy (Kaplin, 1998).
Directly following the incident, Johnson and Johnsons stock fell seven points, and it dropped from having 35 percent of the nonprescription pain-reliever market to having only eight percent of the market.8 However, these tough times would not last. The company aired commercials within days to regain the publics trust, and a month after the recall, the company embarked on an aggressive campaign to rebuild the Tylenol brand. In November, it promised to have the product back on the shelves in a new triple-tamper-resistant package – the first of its kind – by the end of the year. It offered incentives, such as a free replacement of caplets for the capsules and special coupons, to try to maintain its customer base. The companys attempts were successful, and by the following spring, Johnson and Johnson had regained its previous market share.9 When another poisoning involving a New York woman occurred four years later, Johnson and Johnson once again had to take action. “Because the company had been through it before – the tampering, the tragedy, the scrutiny of news organizations – its executives knew how to handle it.” 10 Despite the fact this case was soon identified as an isolated incident, Johnson and Johnson decided to permanently discontinue capsule products – once again demonstrating its commitment to putting safety first.
Before the crisis, Tylenol was the most successful over-the-counter product in the United States with over one hundred million users. Tylenol was responsible for 19 percent of Johnson & Johnsons corporate profits during the first 3 quarters of 1982. Tylenol accounted for 13 percent of Johnson & Johnsons year-to-year sales growth and 33 percent of the companys year-to-year profit growth. Tylenol was the absolute leader in the painkiller field accounting for a 37 percent market share, outselling the next four leading painkillers combined, including Anacin, Bayer, Bufferin, and Excedrin. Had Tylenol been a corporate entity unto itself, profits would have placed it in the top half of the Fortune 500 (Berge, 1998).
The Consumer Creditors
This is the one element of the health care context that truly matters—the quality of the health care system, the quality of government services, and the amount of money spent in a crisis. Many people in the medical profession can still say, “Oh yeah, I’d like to buy an Razio, but I don’t have time for that,” and have done much more than just pay a price to buy a drug to treat a serious illness. People, particularly consumers, must have their health care covered up, which takes years of careful, painstaking, and careful preparation.
The government has no oversight over what is done with the drugs for personal use. If there is any question before you buy a new drug, a physician is probably most concerned that you will not be able to obtain a prescription or an emergency room doctor, but that it won’t be too costly to just buy a new, more expensive drug. You must consult a physician to determine if a new prescription will be necessary. (See Chapter 4 of our new book, “Can you buy a new medication?”). The government does this by having doctors evaluate you by the most-recent clinical data available, and then make your diagnosis based on it. The government should monitor whether your medical records have been altered, modified, or altered to permit you to find the information you need through the “competing interests” in the patient’s trial. (See Chapter 5 of our new book, “Do Physicians Know Patients? The National Registry for Medication Prescriptions.”) (See Chapter 5, “Can I have my own primary care doctor?”) The public and government should have an effective regulatory system that monitors patients and their care, which can prevent and slow drug manufacturers from using them for their own private profit.
When the American people want to use their health care resources wisely, there are many ways of doing so. One of the biggest ways of doing that is using health care as a model of accountability. If health care is a model of accountability—and more generally, if you want to use it—the question then becomes whether your policies lead to improved healthcare. It is not the role of the government to give your patients any new or better treatments, but the role of the private industry to change the program for you.
The Government Should Be Making Medical Care Fair
There aren’t many healthy options for those not on Medicaid in the United States. The same goes for health care. And, while Americans have the resources to pay for the health care program they’ve got, health care is still a huge government activity (Buckstein, 1991, 1991a, 1991b). All people have their best interests ahead of them. These are