Download or read book Prescription for Profit written by Paul Jesilow and published by University of California Presson Demand. This book was released on 1993 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A sound, well written, and highly interesting examination of how Medicaid . . . has given far too many physicians an opportunity to 'mop up' fraudulently, for their own financial gain, some of the $61 billion annual cost of the program."--Marshall B. Clinard, author of "The Abuse of Corporate Power" "A searching analysis of a problem that is of enormous concern to every nation. It is a lively, insightful treatment of the Medicaid malady, using the best diagnostics available to contemporary criminology."--John Braithwaite, Australian National University
Download or read book Prescription for Profits written by Linda Marsa and published by Scribner Book Company. This book was released on 1997 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A book with historical scope and unsettling revelations, "Prescription for Profit" shows how the lure of huge profits has dramatically changed medical research. Marsa chronicles the extraordinary rise of the American pharmaceutical industry, from the mass production of penicillin during World War II to the heady postwar days when vast government grants helped scientists conquer polio and crack the genetic code. of photos.
Download or read book Making Medicines Affordable written by National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2018-03-01 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thanks to remarkable advances in modern health care attributable to science, engineering, and medicine, it is now possible to cure or manage illnesses that were long deemed untreatable. At the same time, however, the United States is facing the vexing challenge of a seemingly uncontrolled rise in the cost of health care. Total medical expenditures are rapidly approaching 20 percent of the gross domestic product and are crowding out other priorities of national importance. The use of increasingly expensive prescription drugs is a significant part of this problem, making the cost of biopharmaceuticals a serious national concern with broad political implications. Especially with the highly visible and very large price increases for prescription drugs that have occurred in recent years, finding a way to make prescription medicinesâ€"and health care at largeâ€"more affordable for everyone has become a socioeconomic imperative. Affordability is a complex function of factors, including not just the prices of the drugs themselves, but also the details of an individual's insurance coverage and the number of medical conditions that an individual or family confronts. Therefore, any solution to the affordability issue will require considering all of these factors together. The current high and increasing costs of prescription drugsâ€"coupled with the broader trends in overall health care costsâ€"is unsustainable to society as a whole. Making Medicines Affordable examines patient access to affordable and effective therapies, with emphasis on drug pricing, inflation in the cost of drugs, and insurance design. This report explores structural and policy factors influencing drug pricing, drug access programs, the emerging role of comparative effectiveness assessments in payment policies, changing finances of medical practice with regard to drug costs and reimbursement, and measures to prevent drug shortages and foster continued innovation in drug development. It makes recommendations for policy actions that could address drug price trends, improve patient access to affordable and effective treatments, and encourage innovations that address significant needs in health care.
Download or read book Prescription for the People written by Fran Quigley and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2017-11-15 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Prescription for the People, Fran Quigley diagnoses our inability to get medicines to the people who need them and then prescribes the cure. He delivers a clear and convincing argument for a complete shift in the global and U.S. approach to developing and providing essential medicines—and a primer on how to make that change happen. Globally, 10 million people die each year because they are unable to pay for medicines that would save them. The cost of prescription drugs is bankrupting families and putting a strain on state and federal budgets. Patients’ desperate need for affordable medicines clashes with the core business model of the powerful pharmaceutical industry, which maximizes profits whenever possible. It doesn’t have to be this way. Patients and activists are aiming to make all essential medicines affordable by reclaiming medicines as a public good and a human right, instead of a profit-making commodity. In this book, Quigley demystifies statistics and terminology, offers solutions to the problems that block universal access to medicines, and provides a road map for activists wanting to make those solutions a reality.
Download or read book Prescription Games written by Jeffrey Robinson and published by McClelland & Stewart. This book was released on 2001 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The major pharmaceutical companies, according to John le Carré – who has based his novel The Constant Gardener on their depredations – “are engaged in the systematic corruption of the medical profession, country by country.” Jeffrey Robinson can back up that charge. In Prescription Games, Jeffrey Robinson exposes the yawning abyss between the claims to altruism made by pharmaceutical companies and the harsh reality of their everyday practice. When the industry claims that the enormous markup they charge for new drugs pays the cost of developing new ones, they don’t say that as much as 80 per cent of R&D money is actually directed at developing drugs designed to compete with existing brands, or at creating variations on drugs whose patents are about to expire – expenditures only the industry itself (and its shareholders) will benefit from. Within the industry, there are “blockbuster” drugs that create vast wealth for the companies that manufacture them. Most are designed to treat conditions that are endemic among prosperous, western populations that can afford them. But there are no blockbuster drugs to treat diseases like tuberculosis, cholera, and malaria that ravage the Third World, because Third World countries can’t afford the prices. People in Africa and Asia die from new strains of tuberculosis while people in Europe and North America are offered expensive treatments for obesity, hair loss, and sexual dysfunction. In this hard-hitting exposé, Robinson also examines the extension of patent protection, the end of generic drug competition in Canada, the Nancy Olivieri scandal (how a drug manufacturer fought to conceal research findings that would damage sales of its product), the illicit drug trade, and espionage among drug manufacturers.
Download or read book Drugs Money and Secret Handshakes written by Robin Feldman and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-04-11 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Profits Before People written by Leonard J. Weber and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Includes information on advertising, conflicts of interest, cost of pharmaceuticals, direct to consumer advertising, advertising to patients, Pfizer, pricing of pharmaceuticals, profit motive, samples of pharmaceuticals, etc.
Download or read book Prescription for Profit written by Paul Jesilow and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2023-09-01 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this explosive exposé of our health care system, Paul Jesilow, Henry N. Pontell, and Gilbert Geis uncover the dark side of physician practice. Using interviews with doctors and federal, state, and private officials and extensive investigation of case files, they tell the stories of doctors who profit from abortions on women who aren't pregnant, of needless surgery, overcharging for services, and excessive testing. How can doctors, recipients of a sacred trust and sworn to the Hippocratic Oath, violate Medicaid so egregiously? The authors trace patterns of abuse to the program's inauguration in the mid 1960s, when government authorities, not individual patients, were entrusted with responsibility for payments. Determining fees and regulating treatment also became the job of government agencies, thus limiting the doctors' traditional role. Physicians continue to disagree with Medicare and Medicaid policies that infringe on their autonomy and judgment. The medical profession has not accepted the gravity or extent of some members' illegal behavior, and individual doctors continue to blame violations on subordinates and patients. In the meantime, program guidelines have grown more confusing, hamstringing efforts to detect, apprehend, and prosecute Medicaid defrauders. Failure to institute a coherent policy for fraud control in the medical benefit program has allowed self-serving and greedy practitioners to violate the law with impunity. Prescription for Profit is a shocking revelation of abuse within a once-hallowed profession. It is a book that every doctor, and every patient, needs to read this year.
Download or read book The Truth About the Drug Companies written by Marcia Angell and published by Random House Trade Paperbacks. This book was released on 2005-08-09 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During her two decades at The New England Journal of Medicine, Dr. Marcia Angell had a front-row seat on the appalling spectacle of the pharmaceutical industry. She watched drug companies stray from their original mission of discovering and manufacturing useful drugs and instead become vast marketing machines with unprecedented control over their own fortunes. She saw them gain nearly limitless influence over medical research, education, and how doctors do their jobs. She sympathized as the American public, particularly the elderly, struggled and increasingly failed to meet spiraling prescription drug prices. Now, in this bold, hard-hitting new book, Dr. Angell exposes the shocking truth of what the pharmaceutical industry has become–and argues for essential, long-overdue change. Currently Americans spend a staggering $200 billion each year on prescription drugs. As Dr. Angell powerfully demonstrates, claims that high drug prices are necessary to fund research and development are unfounded: The truth is that drug companies funnel the bulk of their resources into the marketing of products of dubious benefit. Meanwhile, as profits soar, the companies brazenly use their wealth and power to push their agenda through Congress, the FDA, and academic medical centers. Zeroing in on hugely successful drugs like AZT (the first drug to treat HIV/AIDS), Taxol (the best-selling cancer drug in history), and the blockbuster allergy drug Claritin, Dr. Angell demonstrates exactly how new products are brought to market. Drug companies, she shows, routinely rely on publicly funded institutions for their basic research; they rig clinical trials to make their products look better than they are; and they use their legions of lawyers to stretch out government-granted exclusive marketing rights for years. They also flood the market with copycat drugs that cost a lot more than the drugs they mimic but are no more effective. The American pharmaceutical industry needs to be saved, mainly from itself, and Dr. Angell proposes a program of vital reforms, which includes restoring impartiality to clinical research and severing the ties between drug companies and medical education. Written with fierce passion and substantiated with in-depth research, The Truth About the Drug Companies is a searing indictment of an industry that has spun out of control.
Download or read book Bad Pharma written by Ben Goldacre and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2014-04 with total page 479 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published in 2012, revised edition published in 2013, by Fourth Estate, Great Britain; Published in the United States in 2012, revised edition also, by Faber and Faber, Inc.
Download or read book Pharma written by Gerald Posner and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2020-03-10 with total page 816 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Award-winning journalist and New York Times bestselling author Gerald Posner reveals the heroes and villains of the trillion-dollar-a-year pharmaceutical industry and delivers “a withering and encyclopedic indictment of a drug industry that often seems to prioritize profits over patients (The New York Times Book Review). Pharmaceutical breakthroughs such as antibiotics and vaccines rank among some of the greatest advancements in human history. Yet exorbitant prices for life-saving drugs, safety recalls affecting tens of millions of Americans, and soaring rates of addiction and overdose on prescription opioids have caused many to lose faith in drug companies. Now, Americans are demanding a national reckoning with a monolithic industry. “Gerald’s dogged reporting, sets Pharma apart from all books on this subject” (The Washington Standard) as we are introduced to brilliant scientists, incorruptible government regulators, and brave whistleblowers facing off against company executives often blinded by greed. A business that profits from treating ills can create far deadlier problems than it cures. Addictive products are part of the industry’s DNA, from the days when corner drugstores sold morphine, heroin, and cocaine, to the past two decades of dangerously overprescribed opioids. Pharma also uncovers the real story of the Sacklers, the family that became one of America’s wealthiest from the success of OxyContin, their blockbuster narcotic painkiller at the center of the opioid crisis. Relying on thousands of pages of government and corporate archives, dozens of hours of interviews with insiders, and previously classified FBI files, Posner exposes the secrets of the Sacklers’ rise to power—revelations that have long been buried under a byzantine web of interlocking companies with ever-changing names and hidden owners. The unexpected twists and turns of the Sackler family saga are told against the startling chronicle of a powerful industry that sits at the intersection of public health and profits. “Explosively, even addictively, readable” (Booklist, starred review), Pharma reveals how and why American drug companies have put earnings ahead of patients.
Download or read book Our Daily Meds written by Melody Petersen and published by Sarah Crichton Books. This book was released on 2010-07-01 with total page 450 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the last thirty years, the big pharmaceutical companies have transformed themselves into marketing machines selling dangerous medicines as if they were Coca-Cola or Cadillacs. They pitch drugs with video games and soft cuddly toys for children; promote them in churches and subways, at NASCAR races and state fairs. They've become experts at promoting fear of disease, just so they can sell us hope. No question: drugs can save lives. But the relentless marketing that has enriched corporate executives and sent stock prices soaring has come with a dark side. Prescription pills taken as directed by physicians are estimated to kill one American every five minutes. And that figure doesn't reflect the damage done as the overmedicated take to the roads. Our Daily Meds connects the dots for the first time to show how corporate salesmanship has triumphed over science inside the biggest pharmaceutical companies and, in turn, how this promotion driven industry has taken over the practice of medicine and is changing American life. It is an ageless story of the battle between good and evil, with potentially life-changing consequences for everyone, not just the 65 percent of Americans who unscrew a prescription cap every day. An industry with the promise to help so many is now leaving a legacy of needless harm.
Download or read book The Pharmacy Rip Off List written by David Stanley and published by Createspace Independent Pub. This book was released on 2013-03-24 with total page 166 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The frustration of watching for over 20 years as rip offs disguised under a prescription label went out the pharmacy door has built up like lava under Krakatoa and I'm finally calling it.... Pharmaceutical manufacturers never hesitate to tell you prescription prices are so high because of the staggering costs involved in researching and developing new medicines. The truth is though, that while it does cost big bucks to bring a truly innovative product to market, pharmacy shelves are also stocked with blatant rip offs. Tiny manipulations of prescription strengths that make them no more effective but incredibly more expensive. Combination pills of meds that have been available separately for years treated as if they were a new product. A topical foam that contains the same product as a cream but is priced over a hundred dollars more. A glaucoma medicine that is repackaged with a little brush and sold, for more money, as an eyelash thickener. Even, in some cases, medicines that are less effective or even more dangerous than cheaper alternatives, but are promoted as the next new breakthrough. My plan with this book is to help empower you to become a smarter health care consumer by arming you with facts the pharmaceutical industry doesn't want you to know. Remember, your goal as a patient is to get better, while the goal of the drug company is to collect each and every last dollar it can. Sometimes those goals coincide, but many times they do not, so it can pay handsomely to do some research before getting that prescription filled. I wrote this book to give you an idea what could be at stake. Good luck.
Download or read book Pain Management and the Opioid Epidemic written by National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2017-09-28 with total page 483 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drug overdose, driven largely by overdose related to the use of opioids, is now the leading cause of unintentional injury death in the United States. The ongoing opioid crisis lies at the intersection of two public health challenges: reducing the burden of suffering from pain and containing the rising toll of the harms that can arise from the use of opioid medications. Chronic pain and opioid use disorder both represent complex human conditions affecting millions of Americans and causing untold disability and loss of function. In the context of the growing opioid problem, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) launched an Opioids Action Plan in early 2016. As part of this plan, the FDA asked the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine to convene a committee to update the state of the science on pain research, care, and education and to identify actions the FDA and others can take to respond to the opioid epidemic, with a particular focus on informing FDA's development of a formal method for incorporating individual and societal considerations into its risk-benefit framework for opioid approval and monitoring.
Download or read book Sick Money written by Billy Kenber and published by Canongate Books. This book was released on 2021-10-07 with total page 553 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: THE PHARMACEUTICAL INDUSTRY IS BROKEN From the American hedge fund manager who drastically hiked the price of an AIDS pill to the children’s cancer drugs left intentionally to expire in a Spanish warehouse, the signs of this dysfunction are all around. A system built to drive innovation and improve patient care has been distorted to maximise profits. In Sick Money, the investigative journalist who exposed a billion-pound British price-hiking scandal goes inside the global battle over high drug prices. From secret deals to patients forced to turn to the black market, Billy Kenber reveals how medicines have become nothing more than financial assets. He offers a diagnosis of an industry in crisis - and a prescription for how it could be fixed.
Download or read book The 800 Million Pill written by Merrill Goozner and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2005-10-10 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Goozner shows how drug innovation is driven by dedicated scientists intent on finding cures for diseases, not by pharmaceutical firms, whose bottom line often takes precedence over the advance of medicine. Stories of a university biochemist who spent twenty years searching for single blood protein that later became the best-selling biotech drug in the world, a government employee who discovered the causes for dozens of crippling genetic disorders, and the Department of Energy-funded research that made the Human Genome Project possible - these accounts illustrate how medical breakthroughs actually take place.".
Download or read book Bottle of Lies written by Katherine Eban and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2020-06-23 with total page 523 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * New York Times Notable Book * Best Book of the Year: New York Public Library, Kirkus Reviews, Science Friday With a new postscript by the author From an award-winning journalist, an explosive narrative investigation of the generic drug boom that reveals fraud and life-threatening dangers on a global scale—The Jungle for pharmaceuticals Many have hailed the widespread use of generic drugs as one of the most important public-health developments of the twenty-first century. Today, almost 90 percent of our pharmaceutical market is comprised of generics, the majority of which are manufactured overseas. We have been reassured by our doctors, our pharmacists and our regulators that generic drugs are identical to their brand-name counterparts, just less expensive. But is this really true? Katherine Eban’s Bottle of Lies exposes the deceit behind generic-drug manufacturing—and the attendant risks for global health. Drawing on exclusive accounts from whistleblowers and regulators, as well as thousands of pages of confidential FDA documents, Eban reveals an industry where fraud is rampant, companies routinely falsify data, and executives circumvent almost every principle of safe manufacturing to minimize cost and maximize profit, confident in their ability to fool inspectors. Meanwhile, patients unwittingly consume medicine with unpredictable and dangerous effects. The story of generic drugs is truly global. It connects middle America to China, India, sub-Saharan Africa and Brazil, and represents the ultimate litmus test of globalization: what are the risks of moving drug manufacturing offshore, and are they worth the savings? A decade-long investigation with international sweep, high-stakes brinkmanship and big money at its core, Bottle of Lies reveals how the world’s greatest public-health innovation has become one of its most astonishing swindles.
