The Price of Health

The Modern Pharmaceutical Enterprise and the Betrayal of a History of Care

Michael Kinch, Lori Weiman

• Publisher: Pegasus Books
• Year: 2021
• eBook ISBN:
  9781643136813
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Medicine Biographies

From "pharma bros" to everday household budgets, just how did the pharmaceutical industry betray its own history—and how can it return to its tradition of care? It's an unfortunate and life-threatening fact: one in five Americans has skipped vital prescriptions simply because of the cost. These choices are being made even though we have reached a point in the conveyance of medical options where cancers can be cured and sight restored for those blinded by rare genetic disorders. How, in this time of such advancements, did we reach a point, where people cannot afford the very things that could save their lives? As the COVID-19 global pandemic has pointed out, we need the leadership of scientists, researchers, public health officials and lawmakers alike to guide us through not only in times of a global health crisis, but also during far more mundane times. For the first time in decades, people from all walks of life face the same need for medicine. It is time todiscuss the tough questions about drug pricing in an open, honest and, hopefully, transparent manner. But first we must understand how we, as a society, got here.Medicines are arguably the most highly regulated—and cost-inflated—products in the United States. The discovery, development, manufacturing and distribution of medicines is carried out by an ever more complex and crowded set of industries, each playing a part in a larger "pharmaceutical enterprise" seeking to maximize profits. But this was not always the case. The Price of Health is the reveals the story of how the pharmaceutical enterprise took shape and led to the present crisis. The reputation of the pharmaceutical industry is suffering from self-inflicted wounds and its continued viability, indeed survival, is increasingly questioned. Yet the drug makers do not shoulder all the blame or responsibility for the current price crisis. Deeply researched, The Price of Health gives us hope as tohow we can still right the ship, even amidst the roiling storm of a global pandemic. How have medicines have been made and distributed to consumers throughout the years? What seaof changes that have contributed to rising costs? Some individuals, actions, and systems will be familiar, others may surprise. Yet the combined implications of these actions for will be surprising and at times shocking to both industry professionals and average Americans alike. Like so much else in human history, the history of the pharmaceutical enterprise is populated mostly by well-intended and even noble individuals and organizations. Each contributed to the formation or maintenance of structures meant to improve the quality and quantity of life through the development and distribution of medicines. And yet systems originally created to do good have often been subverted in ways contrary to the motivations of their creators. Only by understanding this disconnect can we better tackle the underlying problems of the industry head on, preventing foreseeable, and thus avoidable, medical calamities to come.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Foreword
• Introduction
• Chapter One: The Law of Unintended Consequences
• Chapter Two: A History of Medicine Men (and Women)
• Chapter Three: The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same
• Chapter Four: I Fought the Law (and the Law Won)
• Chapter Five: The Man behind the Curtain: Wizard of Odds
• Chapter Six: Finding a New Purpose in Life
• Chapter Seven: Self-Inflicted Wounds
• Chapter Eight: As Seen on TV
• Chapter Nine: I’m From the Government, and Am Here to Help…
• Chapter Ten: Odd Couplings
• Chapter Eleven: Generic, But Not Uninteresting
• Chapter Twelve: The Costs of Complexity
• Chapter Thirteen: Smart Bombs and Dumb Money
• Chapter Fourteen: Reputation Decimation
• Chapter Fifteen: How Are Drug Prices Determined?
• Chapter Sixteen: And You Thought Pharma Was Opaque
• Chapter Seventeen: American Exceptionalism
• Chapter Eighteen: A Stomach-Churning Story
• Chapter Nineteen: Views of an Archaeologist
• Chapter Twenty: All Roads Lead to Washington
• Chapter Twenty-One: Future Shock Already Happened
• Photographs
• Afterword
• Postscript
• Acknowledgments
• About the Authors
• Endnotes
• Index
• Copyright