DATE
Tuesday - February 8 2022

HOST
George Noory

GUESTS
Dr. John Abramson

A family physician for 22 years, Dr. John Abramson serves on the faculty at Harvard Medical School. In the first half, he discussed the tangled web of moneyed interests at the heart of the US healthcare system and how Big Pharma relentlessly pursues profits for its shareholders. While he believes in free markets, he noted that certain successful drugs allow pharmaceutical companies to hold a monopoly because they control the patent. Because of this, working people can be extorted over prescription prices, he continued. In the US, the healthcare industry and particularly Big Pharma, is very unregulated compared to other countries. "We've got to put the guardrails back on this industry," he advised.

One step toward regulation would be to instigate a "health technology assessment" made by an independent body, which analyzes new drugs and compares them to older ones, and recommends which ones are most effective or worth the price being charged. Abramson pointed out that new drugs that are often pushed on patients are staggeringly expensive, whereas older (and cheaper) formulations may work just as well. While he's highly critical of the drug companies in general, he thinks they got it right in developing the COVID vaccines on short notice when we faced an unprecedented threat. However, he added, "we didn't make sure the drug companies would do a reasonable job of vaccinating the poorer countries," which may lead to further virus variants that breed in those locations