Episode Details

Why do medications cost so much in the United States? You’ll get a radically different answer to this, depending on who you talk to. Some say it’s the lack of socialized medicine. Others say it’s the fault of greedy CEOs. But others say it’s caused by something else entirely—that global policies have worked to squeeze the prices so that people in some countries end up shouldering the costs for others. But is this really the case? Well, it’s undeniable that we pay a lot more for prescription drugs than people in other countries. Even among first-world, high-income countries, we pay a lot more. And this isn’t about socialized medicine or anything like that. It’s about what the companies themselves are charging us.