Clinical Conversations

February 4th, 2022

Podcast 281: Drug Costs — What’s “The Right Price” for prescription pharmaceuticals?

Why can’t the U.S. control prescription drug pricing as they do in the U.K., where per-capita spending is less than half our level? In a capitalist democracy, many parties — the drug companies, medical associations, consumer groups — get to lobby their points of view. Is the problem intractable, or just an exercise in chaos? Our three […]

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July 10th, 2016

Podcast 204: Medical marijuana’s effect on Medicare prescriptions

[Note: a transcript of this interview will be added in a few days’ time.] Our guest has strong indirect evidence that medical marijuana has been replacing “standard” drugs in states where it is legal. In doing so, the substitution is saving the Medicare system modest amounts of money. Their evidence, published in Health Affairs, comes from an […]

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