In this explosive exposé of our health care system, Paul Jesilow, Henry N. Pontell, and Gilbert Geis uncover the dark side of physician practice. Using interviews with doctors and federal, state, and private officials and extensive investigation of case files, they tell the stories of doctors who profit from abortions on women who aren't pregnant, of needless surgery, overcharging for services, and excessive testing. How can doctors, recipients of a sacred trust and sworn to the Hippocratic Oath, violate Medicaid so egregiously? The authors trace patterns of abuse to the program's inauguration in the mid 1960s, when government authorities, not individual patients, were entrusted with responsibility for payments. Determining fees and regulating treatment also became the job of government agencies, thus limiting the doctors' traditional role. Physicians continue to disagree with Medicare and Medicaid policies that infringe on their autonomy and judgment. The medical profession has not accepted the gravity or extent of some members' illegal behavior, and individual doctors continue to blame violations on subordinates and patients. In the meantime, program guidelines have grown more confusing, hamstringing efforts to detect, apprehend, and prosecute Medicaid defrauders. Failure to institute a coherent policy for fraud control in the medical benefit program has allowed self-serving and greedy practitioners to violate the law with impunity. Prescription for Profit is a shocking revelation of abuse within a once-hallowed profession. It is a book that every doctor, and every patient, needs to read this year.

A book with historical scope and unsettling revelations, "Prescription for Profit" shows how the lure of huge profits has dramatically changed medical research. Marsa chronicles the extraordinary rise of the American pharmaceutical industry, from the mass production of penicillin during World War II to the heady postwar days when vast government grants helped scientists conquer polio and crack the genetic code. of photos.

Thanks to remarkable advances in modern health care attributable to science, engineering, and medicine, it is now possible to cure or manage illnesses that were long deemed untreatable. At the same time, however, the United States is facing the vexing challenge of a seemingly uncontrolled rise in the cost of health care. Total medical expenditures are rapidly approaching 20 percent of the gross domestic product and are crowding out other priorities of national importance. The use of increasingly expensive prescription drugs is a significant part of this problem, making the cost of biopharmaceuticals a serious national concern with broad political implications. Especially with the highly visible and very large price increases for prescription drugs that have occurred in recent years, finding a way to make prescription medicinesâ€"and health care at largeâ€"more affordable for everyone has become a socioeconomic imperative. Affordability is a complex function of factors, including not just the prices of the drugs themselves, but also the details of an individual's insurance coverage and the number of medical conditions that an individual or family confronts. Therefore, any solution to the affordability issue will require considering all of these factors together. The current high and increasing costs of prescription drugsâ€"coupled with the broader trends in overall health care costsâ€"is unsustainable to society as a whole. Making Medicines Affordable examines patient access to affordable and effective therapies, with emphasis on drug pricing, inflation in the cost of drugs, and insurance design. This report explores structural and policy factors influencing drug pricing, drug access programs, the emerging role of comparative effectiveness assessments in payment policies, changing finances of medical practice with regard to drug costs and reimbursement, and measures to prevent drug shortages and foster continued innovation in drug development. It makes recommendations for policy actions that could address drug price trends, improve patient access to affordable and effective treatments, and encourage innovations that address significant needs in health care.

The pharmaceutical industry has come under intense criticism in recent years. One poll found that 70% of the sample agreed that drug companies put profits ahead of people. Is this perception accurate? Have drug companies traded ethics for profits and placed people at risk? In Profits before People? Leonard J. Weber exposes pharmaceutical industry practices that have raised ethical concerns. Providing systematic ethical analysis and reflection, he discusses such practices as compensating physicians for serving as speakers or consultants, providing incentives to physicians to enroll patients as subjects in clinical research, and advertising prescription drugs to the public through the mass media. Weber's critique of the industry is stern. While acknowledging that new industry guidelines are promising, he finds much room for improvement in the way drug companies market their products. Yet Weber makes a strong case that profits and ethics can coexist and that they are not mutually exclusive. In an effort to understand the proper place of commerce in disseminating information about new drugs, the book aims to clarify basic responsibilities and to help identify sound ethical practices. It recognizes that ethics and law are not the same, that "having a right" is different from "doing the right thing," and that taking ethics seriously means recognizing that the law does not answer all questions about what is right. Weber points the way to more demanding standards and better practices that might begin to restore confidence in the drug industry.

Examines the pharmaceutical industry to expose how higher-priced drugs receive favorable treatment and patients are channeled toward the most expensive medicines.

The major pharmaceutical companies, according to John le Carré – who has based his novel The Constant Gardener on their depredations – “are engaged in the systematic corruption of the medical profession, country by country.” Jeffrey Robinson can back up that charge. In Prescription Games, Jeffrey Robinson exposes the yawning abyss between the claims to altruism made by pharmaceutical companies and the harsh reality of their everyday practice. When the industry claims that the enormous markup they charge for new drugs pays the cost of developing new ones, they don’t say that as much as 80 per cent of R&D money is actually directed at developing drugs designed to compete with existing brands, or at creating variations on drugs whose patents are about to expire – expenditures only the industry itself (and its shareholders) will benefit from. Within the industry, there are “blockbuster” drugs that create vast wealth for the companies that manufacture them. Most are designed to treat conditions that are endemic among prosperous, western populations that can afford them. But there are no blockbuster drugs to treat diseases like tuberculosis, cholera, and malaria that ravage the Third World, because Third World countries can’t afford the prices. People in Africa and Asia die from new strains of tuberculosis while people in Europe and North America are offered expensive treatments for obesity, hair loss, and sexual dysfunction. In this hard-hitting exposé, Robinson also examines the extension of patent protection, the end of generic drug competition in Canada, the Nancy Olivieri scandal (how a drug manufacturer fought to conceal research findings that would damage sales of its product), the illicit drug trade, and espionage among drug manufacturers.

In Prescription for the People, Fran Quigley diagnoses our inability to get medicines to the people who need them and then prescribes the cure. He delivers a clear and convincing argument for a complete shift in the global and U.S. approach to developing and providing essential medicines—and a primer on how to make that change happen. Globally, 10 million people die each year because they are unable to pay for medicines that would save them. The cost of prescription drugs is bankrupting families and putting a strain on state and federal budgets. Patients’ desperate need for affordable medicines clashes with the core business model of the powerful pharmaceutical industry, which maximizes profits whenever possible. It doesn’t have to be this way. Patients and activists are aiming to make all essential medicines affordable by reclaiming medicines as a public good and a human right, instead of a profit-making commodity. In this book, Quigley demystifies statistics and terminology, offers solutions to the problems that block universal access to medicines, and provides a road map for activists wanting to make those solutions a reality.