By host Tom Ashbrook

America’s health care costs are breaking budgets all over, but the tab for pharmaceuticals just keeps rising.

In 1980, Americans spent $12 billion on prescription drugs. Now it’s more like $200 billion. More than any other country — and yet we don’t live longer than others.

Reporter Melody Petersen asked what’s going on. What she found was shocking conflicts of interest. Medical professionals co-opted by drug companies for shady research and non-stop marketing. It looks like a scandal of pushers.

This hour, On Point: Our daily meds, and a nation hooked on prescription drugs.

Guests:

Melody Petersen, an award-winning former reporter for The New York Times and The San Jose Mercury News, she’s the author of “Our Daily Meds: How the Pharmaceutical Companies Transformed Themselves Into Slick Marketing Machines and Hooked the Nation on Prescription Drugs.”;
Daniel Carlat, M.D., professor of psychiatry at Tufts University School of Medicine and editor-in-chief of The Carlat Psychiatry Report.