Americans pay two and a half times more for their prescription drugs than residents of any other nation on Earth. Though generic versions of popular compounds accounted for 84 percent of America’s annual sales volume in 2021, they only generated 12 percent of the actual dollars spent. The rest of the money pays for branded drugs — Lipitor, Zestril, Accuneb, Vicodin, Prozac — and we have the Reagan Administration in part to thank for that. In the excerpt below from Owning the Sun: A People’s History of Monopoly Medicine from Aspirin to COVID-19 Vaccines, a fascinating look at the long, infuriating history of public research being exploited for private profit, author Alexander Zaitchik recounts former President Reagan’s court-packing antics from the early 1980s that helped cement lucrative monopolies on name-brand drugs.
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Copyright © 2022 by Alexander Zaitchik,…
