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Podcast: Plain English with Derek Thompson
Episode: Why Do Americans Pay So Much for Drugs?
Description: On Monday, President Donald Trump signed an executive order telling drugmakers to slash the prices of their medicines. Once again, the president showed an amazing nose for interesting questions. Statistically, the U.S. accounts for 4 percent of the world’s population but nearly 50 percent of global pharmaceutical spending. Americans spend three to five times more on new branded drugs than people in Europe.
Why? And what's the matter with fixing this problem by just telling pharmaceutical companies that their prices are too damn high?
Today’s guest is Jason Abaluck, a health economist at Yale Univers...