The Jordan Harbinger Show

Dr. John Abramson (@drjohnabramson) is a physician, lecturer of health care policy at Harvard Medical School, and author of Overdosed America: The Broken Promise of American Medicine. His latest book is Sickening: How Big Pharma Broke American Health Care and How We Can Repair It. What We Discuss with Dr. John Abramson: Despite spending an excess $1.6 trillion on healthcare per year compared to other wealthy countries, the amount of time that Americans live in good health ranks a lowly 68th in the world. The pharmaceutical industry, aka Big Pharma, is more focused on making money for its shareholders than maintaining or improving the health of those who rely on its products. Big Pharma funds most clinical trials, controls the research agenda, withholds real data from those trials as corporate secrets, and shapes most of the information relied upon by health care professionals. The US and New Zealand are the only two countries in the world that allow pharmaceutical companies to advertise. The difference: