Celegene Corporation and all companies who are researching and developing pharmaceuticals that include derivatives of Thalidomide are stakeholders. Their business may thrive with the use of Thalidomide or they may wind up bankrupt if Thalidomide produces further side effects. The Food and Drug Administration, National Institutes of Health, and the Centers for Disease Control are stakeholders in this debate because they are suppliers of health policy that will govern the use of Thalidomide. Interest groups who want to protect the rights and health of unborn children must be included as stakeholders. The Thalidomide Victims Association of Canada as well as the American Academy of Pediatrics can be included in this category.
Physicians are stakeholders in the debate because they have to prescribe the drug to their patients.
They will be demanders, economically, for the pharmaceutical companies and suppliers, economically, for patients who want to use Thalidomide. Medicaid, insurance companies, and other third-party payers need to be included in the list of stakeholders because they will be responsible for the access to thalidomide, as well as the payments to the pharmaceutical companies who develop the drug. It will take individual policy initiatives for each company to decide whether it will provide its clients access to thalidomide. Describe the nature of the political marketplace in which this new health policy exists. In the context of our textbook, the are two sides to the political marketplace, suppliers and demanders.