Contradictory goals plague China's pharmaceutical policy. The government wants to develop the domestic pharmaceutical industry and has used drug pricing to crosssubsidize public hospitals. Yet the government also aims to control drug spending through price caps and profit-margin regulations to guarantee access even for poor patients. The resulting system has distorted market incentives, increased consumers' costs, and financially rewarded inappropriate prescribing, thus undermining public health. Pharmaceuticals account for about half of total health spending in China, representing 43 percent of spending per inpatient episode and 51 percent of spending per outpatient visit. Yet some essential medicines are unavailable or of questionable quality. [Health Affairs 27,no. 4

ABSTRACT:The literatures of business ethics and international business have generally had little influence on each other. Nevertheless, the decline in the power of nation states, the emergence of non-governmental organizations, the proliferation of self-regulatory bodies, and the changing responsibilities, roles, and structure of multinational corporations make constructive engagement between these two disciplines imperative. This changing institutional landscape creates many areas of common concern. In this article, we describe the changing institutional context of global business and suggest ways in which both business ethics and international business may inform each other more fruitfully.

The cost of drugs is a major and rapidly rising component of health-care expenditures. We survey recent literature on the ethics and economics of skyrocketing pharmaceutical prices and find that advances in economic research have increased the sharpness and focus of the ethically based calls to increase access by modifying patent protection and reducing prices. In some cases, research supports ethical arguments for broader access. Other research suggests that efforts to broaden access result in unintended consequences for innovation and the medical needs of patients. Both ethicists and economists need to be more cognizant of the real clinical settings in which physicians practice medicine with real patients. Greater cross-disciplinary interaction among economists, ethicists, and physicians can help reduce the disjunction between innovation and access and improve access and patient care. This dialogue will impact private industry and may spur new multistakeholder paradigms for drug discovery, development, and pricing.

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ABSTRACT:This article examines the presuppositions and theoretical frameworks of the “new-wave” “Post-Westphalian” approach to international business ethics and compares it to the more philosophically oriented moral theory approach that has predominated in the field. I contrast one author’s Post-Westphalian political approach to the human rights responsibilities of transnational corporations (TNCs) with my own “Fair Share” theory of moral responsibility for human rights. I suggest how the debate about the meaning of corporate human rights “complicity” might be informed by the fair share theory. While I point out that Post-Westphalians and moral philosophers may have fundamental disagreements about basic concepts such as legitimacy, justice, and democratic deliberation, I conclude that the Post-Westphalians have made a major contribution to the expansion of the field by presenting business ethicists with an opportunity to inform and guide debates about the potential future course of transnational governance.