America's soaring drug prices are suddenly getting lots of attention. For that, you can thank Martin Shkreli, the much-loathed CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals who recently raised the price of an anti-parasitic drug by 5,500 percent. Overnight, a single tablet went from $13.50 to $750, making an essential medicine unreachable for some.
Many people have wondered how Shkreli could do something like this. But to understand that story, you first have to understand how the US system of drug pricing actually works — and why it's so wildly different from other countries.
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