People in the United States pay the highest prices for pharmaceuticals, and Big Pharma spends hundreds of millions of dollars every year on lobbying to keep it that way. The United States is also experiencing a growing shortage of medications from antibiotics to cancer treatments and more despite being a wealthy country. Clearing the FOG speaks with Dana Brown of the Democracy Collaborative to understand what is behind the high prices and shortages. She also describes solutions to these crises and how states across the country are taking action to directly confront the stranglehold the pharmaceutical industry has over our lives.
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Dana Brown is the director of health and economy at The Democracy Collaborative, where her research focuses on health and care systems, the pharmaceutical sector, and economic transformation for health and well-being. Brown is the author of “Medicine For All: The Case for a Public Option in the Pharmaceutical Industry (Democracy Collaborative, 2019).” Her work has also appeared in outlets such as STAT News, The Hill, The Guardian, The New Republic, and In These Times.
Previously, she was the director of The Next System Project, which The Democracy Collaborative launched in 2015 as a platform for exposing the systemic failures of our current economic system and presenting alternatives.
Brown holds a BA from Cornell University, an MA from the Universidad del Salvador (Argentina), and is currently pursuing an MS in public health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.