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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October 10th, 2019

Podcast 237: U.S. health spending — where is the outrage?

Running time: 18 minutes JAMA has just published an analysis of the latest findings regarding waste in the nation’s $3.5 trillion annual health “co-pay.” And with 25% of that — some eight hundred billion dollars — characterized as wasted, you’d think there would be stacks of competing cost-saving proposals to consider, especially regarding administrative costs. There aren’t. […]

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