Temp Image
Domain Design
Story Audit
My first essay was a major success. I was the hotshot freshman who felt like he had it all. My professor liked my About Me post and I had just earned my first A. I was on top of the world and I let the fame and success get to my head. I hit rock bottom, lost my touch. This is the story of how I got it back.
On September 15, I submitted my first revised essay. This was the best essay I would submit all semester. This essay had it all: the critical conversation, the quotation sandwiches, direction, style, etc. Although this essay was still far from perfect, I had the most fun writing this one. I threw in fun phrases such as, “While Carr neglects to consider the positive contributions the internet holds, Fitzpatrick danced with them,” and I enjoyed writing this essay. This was my first college essay and I didn’t know how to write them yet, so I just wrote like me.
Essay one had its flaws: improper citations, ambiguity, clutter. But what this essay lacked in, it made up for in style, direction, and flow. Knowing those were my strengths, I worked to capitalize. Essay two came around, and I was in for a nasty surprise. I was not as passionate about my thesis in essay two, and I didn’t know how to drive my thesis forward. My argument felt lazy and stagnant, having no direction or destination in sight. It felt like the high school bucket filling strategy, and I would simply repeat the phrase that Bechdel “tells her own story.” The argument in this essay had no direction, and I relied too much on my playful style and flow that served me so well in my About Me post and my first essay.
Soon after, Essay three was upon us and my writing suffered a similar fate. My essay was fixated on proving one major claim, my thesis. Instead of proving one thesis, my essay should have proved multiple baby theses that support my main thesis, as essay one had done. Essay three was filled with one claim that read “Hamid fails to foster understanding of the lives of refugees.” Not only was that claim false, but it was the only claim I was making throughout the entire essay. That being said, my essay, again, had no direction, and my style could not dig me out of this one.
Though essays one and two fell short, I certainly learned a lot from them. Over this semester I learned how to create correct citations, began cutting clutter, and got more specific with nouns instead of using phrases such as “this.” I learned a lot about my style and writing over the semester. But most importantly, I learned that without direction and thesis development, style can only do so much. Essay four follows a different fate. I am passionate about this essay’s thesis as it develops throughout the essay. I used my skills of academic writing and I supplemented them with my research and analysis to create an essay that will be leagues better than essay one. I’m back baby.
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Big Pharma: the Missing Piece That’s Energizing the Growing Incarceration Rates of the Mentally Ill
In 2015, Walmart made a profit margin of 3.1% (Perry), whereas American pharmaceutical companies “have had annual profit margins of 40%” (Schewe). What we are witnessing here is an unexpected disparity between the world’s largest retailer and a couple of no-name pharmaceutical companies. This disparity is possible with the power of Big Pharma, a multibillion-dollar system of unchecked, FDA approved monopolies (Kesselheim). A monopoly is “a firm that is the only seller of a good or service and does not have a close substitute” (Hubbard 326). Monopolies are how Big Pharma has achieved such dazzling profit margins. Big Pharma was born in the years following WWII, as “the discovery of penicillin accelerated [the] development of therapeutic drugs” (Schewe). WWII set off an explosion of medical and chemical research, and this explosion of research set off an explosion for profit. These companies maintain their monopolies because “new drugs receive 20 years of patent protection and 5-7 years of exclusivity” (Schewe). This means that the only people who can manufacture these drugs are the pharmaceutical companies that own the patents. As such, at the turn of the century, “the total revenue share from prescription drugs increased from 32%… to 83%” (Schewe). As Big Pharma grew, so did its potential for profit.
Interestingly enough, in the years that Big Pharma has grown, so have the incarceration rates of the mentally ill. Bryan Stevenson also notices this increase in his book Just Mercy. Stevenson’s book is about racism within the justice system but is also equally about the mass incarceration and treatment of the mentally ill. Stevenson claims that “today, over 50 percent of prison and jail inmates in the United States have a diagnosed mental illness, a rate nearly five times greater than that of the general adult population” (Stevenson 188). Big Pharma has been growing, and uncoincidentally, so have the incarceration rates of the mentally ill. I am not suggesting a false syllogism in this essay—that because Big Pharma and the incarceration rates of the mentally ill grew at the same time, they must be connected. Instead, I aim to analyze the economic impact of Big Pharma and highlight an aspect that Stevenson dismisses when determining who to blame for the mass incarceration of the mentally ill.
Because the incarceration rates have increased, Stevenson calls prisons “warehouses for the mentally ill” (186). He explicitly blames the court and justice systems for the mass incarceration of these people, asserting that “mass incarceration has been largely fueled by… excessive sentencing… of poor and mentally ill people” (186). Though Stevenson confidently blames the justice system in the previous quotation, I find it interesting that he includes the word “poor.” Is Stevenson suggesting a correlation between the poor and the mentally ill? He suggests this link again on a later page, saying that “the ‘free world’ became perilous for… poor people suffering from mental disabilities” (188). Stevenson senses a connection, as he hints toward this relationship multiple times, and he is not alone.
Emily Sohn, author of “Can Poverty Lead to Mental Illness,” also analyzes the correlation between these people. She claims that, “of 115 studies that spanned 33 countries… nearly 80 percent of the studies showed that poverty comes with higher rates of mental illness” (Sohn). Sohn’s findings inform us that poverty can lead to mental illness, but Dean Barnett, the author of “Mental illness and poverty,” shows us that this is a two-way street. Barnett is also interested in the link between mental illness and poverty, and his response to Sohn suggests a contrary conclusion altogether. He suggests that mental illness is a significant cause of poverty, citing that mentally disabled individuals have a “much harder time finding work, maintaining jobs, and taking care of themselves” (Barnett). Barnett tells us that mental illness can lead to poverty, but Sohn tells us that poverty can lead to mental illness—who is right? The truth is, they both are. Their findings suggest a back and forth relationship between mental illness and poverty—that one can cause the other, and vice versa—but what does this have to do with Big Pharma?
Thus far, I’ve shown that the incarceration rates of the mentally ill have increased and that poverty and mental illness are correlated. Yet, there is still something missing, a piece of the puzzle that doesn’t quite explain how or why the rate of incarceration has gone up. Enter Big Pharma, the previously mentioned monopoly on pharmaceutical drugs. Big Pharma effectively fuels the correlation between the poor and the mentally ill—who Sohn and Barnett have already shown us, can often be the same people. Big Pharma affects both poverty and mental illness directly, but to see how we must understand two things: elasticity and the price of drugs.
First, elasticity is the measure of responsiveness that consumers have to the prices of goods, responsiveness meaning a willingness to buy (Hubbard). The more responsive consumers are, the more elastic the product is. For example, if the price of a chocolate bar went up, fewer people would purchase this good because chocolate is not a necessity, making it elastic. Conversely, if little to no people respond to a change in the price of a good, that product would be considered inelastic. EpiPen, for instance, is very inelastic. The “inexpensive life-saving drug saw a price increase from about $100 to over $600 per package” (Kesselheim), and because this is a life-saving necessity, consumers had no choice but to spend.
Second, as seen above with EpiPen, the prices of drugs have increased dramatically in the United States. Daraprim is another example. This antiparasitic drug “increased its price 56 times to $750 per pill” (Schewe). The price of drugs continues to rise, and because Big Pharma is an unchecked monopoly, they have no reason to stop skyrocketing their prices for profit.
Now that we understand elasticity and that drug prices are rising, we can see how Big Pharma directly affects both the mentally ill and the poor.
Big Pharma is the only supplier of the prescription medication that mentally disabled individuals need. These medications are intended to ease the quality of life, and because they are a necessity, they are considered inelastic. As such, the mentally disabled are put in a position where they must pay, regardless of price. Because these individuals must buy their medication regardless of price, Big Pharma is rapidly raising its rates. The price inflation of medication leaves less money for food, rent, clothes, etc., until eventually, the medicine becomes too expensive. These individuals must then choose between entering poverty or letting their illness go untreated, as “cost is the most commonly reported barrier to using mental health services” (Kamal), as shown below.
This graph tells us that over 50% of all people not using mental health services do so because they cannot afford them (Kamal). And eventually, as Sohn and Barnett have taught us, these individuals can end up with both mental illness and poverty, completing the cycle that Big Pharma feeds.
Though Bryan Stevenson blames the justice system for the mass incarceration of the mentally ill, even he acknowledges the problems born from the ultimatum depicted above. Stevenson states that “the inability of many disabled, low-income people to receive treatment or necessary medication dramatically increases their likelihood of a police encounter that would result in jail time.” The inaccessibility of necessary medication is putting mentally ill individuals at a higher risk of incarceration. Pharmaceutical companies exist to provide medicines for people who need it. Yet, Big Pharma exists solely to make a profit. Big Pharma prevents the mentally ill from accessing their medication, as well as encourage poverty due to price inflation. Though Stevenson acknowledges the problems that Big Pharma creates, he quickly dismisses it, pitting the blame against the justice system. Instead, I believe Big Pharma is to blame for the mass incarceration of the mentally ill. Big Pharma’s high prices fuel the correlations between the poor and the mentally ill, and because those individuals cannot afford Big Pharma’s prices, their illness goes untreated, and their risk of jail time increases. The simultaneous growth of Big Pharma and the incarceration of the mentally ill was not coincidental. Although Stevenson acknowledges Big Pharma, they play a much more significant role in the mass incarceration of the mentally ill than Stevenson accounted for in his book Just Mercy.
Work Cited
Burnett, Dean. “Mental Illness and Poverty: You Can’t Tackle One without the Other | Dean Burnett.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 13 Dec. 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/science/brain-flapping/2016/dec/13/mental-illness-and-poverty-you-cant-tackle-one-without-the-other.
Hubbard, R. Glenn. Essentials of Economics. fifth ed., Pearson Australia, 2019.
Kamal Kaiser, Rabah. “What Are the Current Costs and Outcomes Related to Mental Health and Substance Use Disorders?” Peterson-Kaiser Health System Tracker, 31 July 2017, https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/current-costs-outcomes-related-mental-health-substance-abuse-disorders/#item-start.
Kesselheim, A S, et al. “The High Cost of Prescription Drugs in the United States: Origins and Prospects for Reform.” JAMA., U.S. National Library of Medicine, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27552619.
Perry, Mark J. “The Public Thinks the Average Company Makes a 36% Profit Margin, Which Is about 5X Too High.” Aei.org, 2 Apr. 2015, https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/the-public-thinks-the-average-company-makes-a-36-profit-margin-which-is-about-5x-too-high/.
Schewe, Eric. “How Did Big Pharma Get Big?” Https://Daily.jstor.org/, 19 Mar. 2017, https://daily.jstor.org/how-did-big-pharma-get-big/.
Sohn, Emily. “Can Poverty Lead To Mental Illness?” NPR, NPR, 30 Oct. 2016, https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2016/10/30/499777541/can-poverty-lead-to-mental-illness.
Website Evaluation
Website: Netflix.com
1. Who is the author of the page?
Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph founded Netflix in 1997
2. What is the intended audience?
This service is intended for its monthly subscribers or those on a free trial
3. What kind of information is the author sharing?
The founders are sharing various popular films and tv shows, as well as Netflix original productions
4. Is the platform design well suited for the chosen materials and audience? That is, is it easy for the user to navigate, search, and find answers? How so, how not so?
Yes, the Netflix website and app are both very easy to navigate. Specific categories of genres, in addition to a large array of suggestions, breeds a very userfriendly platform.
5. How would you improve the presentation and/or design?
Netflix does not enable its users to see the ratings of films or tv shows (e.g., Rotten Tomatoes or IMDb). Instead, Netflix only includes a “match” rating that tells the user how likely they are to like this film based on their account history. the match rating is a great feature, but I think the inclusion of critic ratings would be more insightful, and beneficial in aiding user-friendliness.
Pledged: MS
Work Cited:
“Unlimited Movies, TV Shows, and More.” Netflix, https://www.netflix.com/.
Essay 4 Rough Draft
“Prisons have become warehouses for the mentally ill” (Stevenson 186).
It’s true, as mentioned by the Treatment Advocacy Center, “Approximately 20 percent of inmates in prisons have a serious mental illness” (Torrey). Brian Stevenson takes issue with the growing incarceration rate of the mentally ill, as he focuses his frustrations in chapter ten of his novel Just Mercy. This book takes readers along Stevenson’s works and efforts throughout his career as a lawyer serving EJI, the Equal Justice Initiative. Stevenson’s novel takes us through numerous cases that he has fought for, but the backbone of the book is the case of Walter McMillian, a man wrongfully accused of murder who would have faced death if it weren’t for Stevenson’s intervention. Stevenson highlights many themes throughout his novel, but this essay will focus on is the theme that “mass incarceration… and excessive sentencing… of poor and mentally ill people has been a driving force in achieving our record levels of imprisonment” (186). Stevenson blames the justice system for the incarceration of Jenkins, however, I believe that poverty and Big Pharma played larger roles in Jenkins’ incarceration than the justice system did.
In an article entitled “Can Poverty Lead to Mental Illness,” Emily Sohn asserts that “of 115 studies that spanned 33 countries across the developed and developing worlds, nearly 80 percent of the studies showed that poverty comes with higher rates of mental illness” (Sohn). This finding suggests that Jenkins’ predisposed history of poverty could be another cause of his mental illness, which was what ultimately got him incarcerated. Sohn suggests a correlation between mental illness and poverty and she is not the only person who believes so.
Dean Barnett writes in his “Mental illness and poverty: you can’t tackle one without the other,” that “poverty is a major cause of stress. You can’t pay your bills, buy food, cover the rent” (Barnett), or for instance, purchase necessary medications. Barnett argues that poverty and mental illness go hand and hand, imploring that “you can’t ignore the links between poverty and mental illness” (Barnett). Barnett confirms the idea introduced by Sohn that “poverty can cause mental illness” (Sohn), and now that this idea is established, we can introduce a new player to the game: Big Pharma
Big Pharma is an FDA approved monopoly on pharmaceutical medications (Kesselheim). These monopolies are not only going unchecked but “the U.S. government reinforce[s] the monopolies of the big pharmaceuticals in the country,” which enables Big Pharma to “suppress the competition and allows for drug prices to reach unaffordable levels” (Kesselheim). The monopolies are detrimental. The prices of necessary drugs are increasing, leaving them out of reach for the individuals who need them. This effect is compounded when considering the ideas, proposed by Sohn and Barnett, that mental illness can have a strong correlation with poverty. If impoverished individuals cannot afford their medication, and they are already more susceptible to mental illness, then this is a surefire way to ensure these individuals make it to prison, as was the case for Avery Jenkins.
Big Pharma’s monopoly is quickly increasing its prices for pharmaceutical drugs, the same pharmaceutical drugs that the mentally ill need—and oftentimes, as argued by Sohn and Barnett, the mentally ill will be impoverished and will not have access to their medication. Big Pharma effectively prevents individuals who need medication the most from getting it. As a result, these individuals lash out, do things they otherwise wouldn’t, see innocent men as demons. Although Stevenson accurately directs blame at the justice system for the mass incarceration of the mentally ill, he neglects the effects that Big Pharma has on these individuals.
Works Cited:
Burnett, Dean. “Mental Illness and Poverty: You Can’t Tackle One without the Other | Dean Burnett.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 13 Dec. 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/science/brain-flapping/2016/dec/13/mental-illness-and-poverty-you-cant-tackle-one-without-the-other.
Kamal Kaiser, Rabah. “What Are the Current Costs and Outcomes Related to Mental Health and Substance Use Disorders?” Peterson-Kaiser Health System Tracker, 31 July 2017, https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/current-costs-outcomes-related-mental-health-substance-abuse-disorders/#item-start.
Kesselheim, A S, et al. “The High Cost of Prescription Drugs in the United States: Origins and Prospects for Reform.” JAMA., U.S. National Library of Medicine, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27552619.
Sohn, Emily. “Can Poverty Lead To Mental Illness?” NPR, NPR, 30 Oct. 2016, https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2016/10/30/499777541/can-poverty-lead-to-mental-illness.
