Name: Drug wars
ISBN: 9781107168480

Drug wars

"While the shockingly high prices of prescription drugs continue to dominate the news, the strategies used by pharmaceutical companies to prevent generic competition are poorly understood, even by the lawmakers responsible for regulating them. In this groundbreaking work, Robin Feldman and Evan Frondorf illuminate the inner workings of the pharmaceutical market and show how drug companies twist health policy to achieve goals contrary to the public interest. In highly engaging prose, they offer specific examples of how generic competition has been stifled for years, with costs climbing into the billions and everyday consumers paying the price. Drug Wars is a guide to the current landscape, a roadmap for reform, and a warning of what is to come. It should be read by policymakers, academics, patients, and anyone else concerned with the soaring costs of prescription drugs"--Provided by publisher.

What Hacker News says

kothariaJul 2018

The pharmaceutical industry is usually given as the prime example of an industry where patent protection is necessary; however, this is far from obvious. See Robin Feldman's book Drug Wars (there is an interview with her about it here: http//www.econtalk.org/robin-feldman-on-drug-patents-generics-and-drug-wars/)

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pg_botMay 2018

I would suggest anyone who is interested in reducing drug prices listen to this econtalk episode with Robin Feldman[0]. They discuss her book "Drug Wars how big pharma raises prices and keeps generics off the market"[1]

In the episode they discuss all sorts of shenanigans that pharmaceutical companies pull. If you want real reform you need to look at weak patents, eliminating "reverse payments" to generic companies, and obstruction to bioequivalence testing. Drug companies routinely manipulate the current laws, specifically Hatch-Waxman in order to stifle competition from generics.

[0] http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2017/06/robin_feldman_o.htm...

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Drug-Wars-Pharma-Raises-Generics/dp/1...

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taconJan 2018

For a fantastic discussion about the Byzantine process for generic drug approval, I recommend a recent episode of EconTalk[0]. The guest wrote a book called "Drug Wars: How Big Pharma Raises Prices and Keeps Generics off the Market"[1]. When up to half a billion dollars of revenue is at stake, the drug companies have incredible incentives to delay or prevent generics coming to market. Believe or not, they often simply refuse to give a sample of the old drug to the generic company. No sample to compare, no FDA approval. It is illegal to dispense a drug without a prescription, and the sample is not for a patient, so it can take some maneuvers to get a legal sample. Or the drug company can change a tiny feature of the drug, re-patent the new drug, and then destroy/withhold all the old drug. No old drug sample, no FDA approval of an "identical" generic. The drug companies will contract with a generic company that never, actually gets to production (wink, wink). Those contracts are finally being understood by judges, so now they are going to a second level of contract obfuscation that is even harder to notice, but still keeps the generic off the market.

[0]http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2017/06/robin_feldman_o.htm...

[1]https://www.amazon.com/Drug-Wars-Pharma-Raises-Generics/dp/1...

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0x10101Aug 2017

Some of this insanity is covered nicely in the econlog podcast[1] on the book Drug Wars[2]. The NY Times always wants to throw all of the blame at insurers, but they are trying to save money. The generic system is a Kafakaesque set of regulations and processes.

[1] http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2017/06/robin_feldman_o.htm...

[2] https://www.amazon.com/Drug-Wars-Pharma-Raises-Generics-eboo...

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