Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Figures
- Tables
- Abbreviations
- 1 Introduction: global markets and transnational social movements
- 2 Industry structure and movement opportunities
- 3 Drugs = life: framing access to AIDS drugs
- 4 Movement coherence and mobilization
- 5 Advocacy strategies to address costs
- 6 Institutions to stabilize the market
- 7 Lessons for other campaigns
- 8 Conclusions: implications for research and policy
- References
- Index
5 - Advocacy strategies to address costs
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2014
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Figures
- Tables
- Abbreviations
- 1 Introduction: global markets and transnational social movements
- 2 Industry structure and movement opportunities
- 3 Drugs = life: framing access to AIDS drugs
- 4 Movement coherence and mobilization
- 5 Advocacy strategies to address costs
- 6 Institutions to stabilize the market
- 7 Lessons for other campaigns
- 8 Conclusions: implications for research and policy
- References
- Index
Summary
. . . price is a man-made obstacle that we can change . . .
Alan Berkman, founder of Health GAP (cited in Smith and Siplon 2006, 56)So you have to develop a coherent critique of public policy . . . If you can't persuade serious people you have a good idea, you are not going to go very far. You have to really have a persuasive argument why your policy will work, will get things done, will not destroy the incentive system, for example, for pharmaceuticals, or that it's a reasonable exception in the case of people with low incomes.
Jamie Love, Director of the Consumer Project on Technology/Knowledge Ecology International, 2003In the previous chapter we saw that the AIDS treatment movement was able to cohere around universal access to treatment as its primary objective. But how could a universal access regime become (or at least approach) reality? With ARV drugs costing thousands of dollars per patient per year, there was no way that the international community would mobilize around that objective. Yet by the late 1990s, drug prices would begin to fall radically, with the expansion of “differential pricing” by the branded pharmaceutical companies and, even more important, the entry of generic manufacturers into the ARV market. These developments, however, were not simply a reflection of rational decision-making by corporate executives who were seeking to maintain their share of the AIDS marketplace. Instead, they were a product of advocates' strategies that had as their explicit objective the reduction of ARV prices.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- AIDS Drugs For AllSocial Movements and Market Transformations, pp. 135 - 168Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2013