Why Do Americans Pay So Much for Drugs?

Why Do Americans Pay So Much for Drugs?

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 University. We talk about why Americans pay so much for new drugs but, ironically, pay so little for old drugs. We unpack trade-offs between low prices and innovation. And finally, we consider several ways we can have our cake and eat it too: more miracle drugs and more affordability. Because, after all, what is this whole conversation about besides the obvious: How do we design a world in which imperfect people working at imperfect companies nonetheless collaborate to build therapies that save and extend our lives with products we can actually afford? If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Jason Abaluck Producer: Devon Baroldi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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America in the Age of Diagnosis

America in the Age of Diagnosis

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Trumponomics Explained, Part 2: The Enshittification of American Power

Trumponomics Explained, Part 2: The Enshittification of American Power

In the second of our two-episode series on Donald Trump, economics, and power, we talk to Henry Farrell, a professor of political science at Johns Hopkins. Farrell has written extensively on how the U...

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What Is Trumponomics? Part 1: How Donald Trump Is Breaking American Capitalism

What Is Trumponomics? Part 1: How Donald Trump Is Breaking American Capitalism

Today is the first of two interviews this week trying to answer this question: What is Trumponomics? From the 1980s to the 2010s, it was generally assumed that Republicans and Democrats had settled d...

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The Healthiest "Super-Agers" Have One Thing in Common, According to a 25-Year Study

The Healthiest "Super-Agers" Have One Thing in Common, According to a 25-Year Study

Memory is the glue of life. Without it, our focus softens, our experience of the world blurs, and our identities melt away. But as people age, their memory declines. Many billions of dollars have been...

27 Elo 202541min

Plain History: How the Transcontinental Railroads Built the Modern World

Plain History: How the Transcontinental Railroads Built the Modern World

Today’s pod is about the economic story of the moment. It’s about new technology that supporters claim will transform the U.S. economy, an infrastructure build-out unlike anything in living memory tha...

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The Modern World Is Changing America’s Personality For the Worse

The Modern World Is Changing America’s Personality For the Worse

According to analysis by Financial Times writer John Burn-Murdoch, something extraordinary has happened to Americans’ personalities in the last decade. Longitudinal tests indicate that we’ve collectiv...

13 Elo 202547min

Will AI Usher In the End of Deep Thinking?

Will AI Usher In the End of Deep Thinking?

Last week, the Bureau of Economic Analysis published the latest GDP report. It contained a startling detail. Spending on artificial intelligence added more to the U.S. economy than consumer spending l...

6 Elo 202558min

The New Geography of Housing in America

The New Geography of Housing in America

Subscribe to Derek’s new Substack. In 1991, the median age of first-time homebuyers was 28. Now it’s 38, an all-time high. In 1981, the median age of all homebuyers was 36. Today, it’s 56—another all...

30 Heinä 202542min

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