Timely. I'm reading "The Truth About the Drug Companies" by Marcia Angell. Per Wikipedia, Dr. Angell is "the first woman to serve as editor-in-chief of the New

Timely. I'm reading "The Truth About the Drug Companies" by Marcia Angell. Per Wikipedia, Dr. Angell is "the first woman to serve as editor-in-chief of the New England Journal of Medicine. She is currently a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts". So, a good person to write a book on the issue. Just one more example of how drug companies are taking their customers for a ride. Knowing that a drug has a finite patent life, a drug company will stagger the release of two drugs that are pharmacologically similar by patent-wise different. The drug company will introduce an "improved" drug (which we'll refer to as "nu") just as the old drug's (which we'll refer to as "pro", as in before) patent is about to expire. This is accompanied by pricing tactics such as raising the price of the "pro" drug above the "nu" drug so as to incentivize patients to switch, paying generic-producing companies not to make it, and giving hospitals preferential pricing on the "nu" drug so that it is prescribed at hospitals but then patients pay the higher rate when they go home. One of the most insidious effects of this strategy is that, the drug company is either purposely pricing people out of medicine they need or knowingly selling an inferior product for a decade or more. Highly recommend reading this book if interested on this subject: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2004/jul/15/the-truth-about-the-drug-companies/ http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2004/jul/15/the-tru...