Overview

In the warped world of prescription drug pricing, generic drugs can cost more than branded ones, old drugs can be relaunched at astronomical prices, and low-cost options are shut out of the market. In Drugs, Money and Secret Handshakes, Robin Feldman shines a light into the dark corners of the pharmaceutical industry to expose a web of shadowy deals in which higher-priced drugs receive favorable treatment and patients are channeled toward the most expensive medicines. At the center of this web are the highly secretive middle players who establish coverage levels for patients and negotiate with drug companies. By offering lucrative payments to these middle players (as well as to doctors and hospitals), drug companies ensure that inexpensive drugs never gain traction. This system of perverse incentives has delivered the kind of exorbitant drug prices - and profits - that everyone loves except for those who pay the bills.

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9781009432948

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Reviews

''Everyone has a limit. Every budget has an endpoint' cannot apply to an industry that is consistently anti-competitive and monopolistic. Feldman offers potential solutions and exposes the limits inherent in each. Consumers who find this salient will be motivated to investigate further and alleviate their information gaps.' S. M. Mohammed, Choice 'In this lucid and supremely upsetting book, Robin Feldman lays bare the multilayered, perverse incentives that reward pharmaceutical companies for hiking their branded drug prices into the stratosphere. Both houses of Congress should be locked in a room until they've read this book and enacted the remedies she proposes. Prosecutors should read it carefully, too.' Roger Parloff, Legal Journalist 'This is the book the pharmaceutical industry does not want you to read. Feldman is like a detective, teasing out drug-industry secrets and helping the reader navigate the Alice-in-Wonderland world of drug prices.' David Kessler, Former Commissioner, United States Food and Drug Administration

Author Information

Robin Feldman is the Arthur J. Goldberg Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of California Hastings. She is an award-winning scholar whose work has been called 'absolutely remarkable' and a 'must read'. Feldman has published four books and more than fifty articles, and she has been cited by the White House and members of Congress. In 2017, she participated in the GAO's report to Congress on Artificial Intelligence and in an Army Cyber Institute threatcasting exercise on weaponization of data.

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