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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September 6th, 2019

Podcast 232: Basic organic chem and drug pricing

You surely remember “O-chem” — those late-night undergraduate hours spent grappling with benzene rings and alkanes and all the rest. Well, it turns out that drug makers were paying close attention to things like racemic mixtures and enantiomers. The manufacturers usually release their products as racemic mixtures and then, when patents are about to expire, […]

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