Drug Wars: How Big Pharma Raises Prices and Keeps Generics off the Market

by Robin Feldman, Evan Frondorf

Overview

While the shockingly high prices of prescription drugs continue to dominate the news, the strategies used by pharmaceutical companies to prevent generic competition are poorly understood, even by the lawmakers responsible for regulating them. In this groundbreaking work, Robin Feldman and Evan Frondorf illuminate the inner workings of the pharmaceutical market and show how drug companies twist health policy to achieve goals contrary to the public interest. In highly engaging prose, they offer specific examples of how generic competition has been stifled for years, with costs climbing into the billions and everyday consumers paying the price. Drug Wars is a guide to the current landscape, a roadmap for reform, and a warning of what is to come. It should be read by policymakers, academics, patients, and anyone else concerned with the soaring costs of prescription drugs.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781316733707
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	06/09/2017
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Robin Feldman is an award-winning teacher and scholar who has published more than forty articles and books. Feldman has been cited by the White House, members of Congress, and numerous federal agencies, and she has testified before committees of the US House and Senate, as well as the California legislature. In 2016, Feldman was named as one of the Women Leaders in Law and Technology, the only academic to receive the honor.
Evan Frondorf's legal work with Robin Feldman has been published in journals at Harvard University, Massachusetts and Stanford University, California, including papers on patent demands and generic pharmaceuticals. He studied economics at Yale University, Connecticut and graduated Phi Beta Kappa and magna cum laude, and he was also named a Rhodes Scholar finalist in 2015. He is the current sportswriter for the Yale Alumni Magazine. At Yale, he was heavily involved in sports broadcasting and served as a deputy sports editor at the Yale Daily News.

Table of Contents

Introduction: big scandals, higher prices; 1. The winding road to generic entry; 2. 'Generation 1.0': the rise and fall of traditional pay-for-delay; 3. 'Generation 2.0': complicating pay-for-delay; 4. 'Generation 3.0': new tactics for active obstruction of generics; 5. 'Generation 3.0' continued: obstruction of regulatory pathways; 6. Empirical evidence of a citizen's pathway gone astray; Conclusion: a call for systematic reform.

Editorial Reviews

'An important book and a compelling read. The authors show how pharmaceutical companies have twisted a law designed to protect invention into a regulatory nightmare that only protects profits.' Mark A. Lemley, William H. Neukom Professor, Stanford Law School, California

'A fascinating and incisive study of the inner world of the pharmaceutical industry. A must-read for anyone interested in the relationship between drug pricing, regulation, and its impact on public health.' Sonia K. Katyal, Chancellor's Professor of Law, University of California, Berkeley

From the Publisher