The United States spends an excess of $1.5 trillion annually on health care—a vast amount compared to other wealthy countries—yet the amount of time that Americans live in good health ranks just 68th in the world. At the heart of the problem is Big Pharma, which funds most clinical trials and therefore controls the research agenda, withholds the real data from those trials as corporate secrets, and shapes most of the information relied upon by healthcare professionals.
Today on The Dhru Purohit Podcast, I talk about Dr. John Abramson and his book, Sickening: How Big Pharma Broke American Health Care and How We Can Repair It. I share the inside story of how Big Pharma’s relentless pursuit of ever-higher profits corrupts medical knowledge by misleading doctors, misdirecting American health care, and harming our health. Dr. Abramson’s work shines a light on the dark underbelly of American health care and presents a path toward genuine reform.
Dr. Abramson has been on the faculty of Harvard Medical School for 25 years, where he teaches healthcare policy. He also served as a family physician for 22 years, during which time he was named a “top doctor” six times in local, state, and national surveys. He served as an unpaid consultant to the FBI and Department of Justice, including in a case that resulted in the largest criminal fine in US history. In addition to many academic articles and op-eds in The New York Times and other publications, he is the author of Overdo$ed America: The Broken Promise of American Medicine. Dr. Abramson has appeared on The Today Show, CNN’s American Morning, NPR’s All Things Considered, CBS Evening News, NBC’s Nightly News, The Dr. Oz Show, and elsewhere.
Also mentioned in this episode:
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Try This: Three Super Crazy Facts about Big Pharma
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Sickening: How Big Pharma Broke American Health Care and How We Can Repair It
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A Deep Dive on the Fraud, Deception, and Misdirection of Big Pharma with Dr. John Abramson
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