THIS IS A GREAT BOOK. " One dirty little secret is that the exact same prescription drug in the United States is typically 40 or 50 percent less in Canada, in the United Kingdom, in France, in Germany and Australia — in every other country in the world because every other country in the world controls the price of monopoly drugs.

All drugs, if they have a patent, have been given a monopoly by the government and usually when the government gives someone a monopoly, it regulates the price — not so with prescription drugs in the United States.

On why the Affordable Care Act is "unsustainable"

I don't think ultimately any of those challenges are threats in the sense that it will be repealed. I think the big challenge ... is that there's going to come a point — it's going to be in the next few years — where something is going to snap. We cannot pay for this. ...

It is great that more people are getting health care, but we cannot continue to be a country where health care prices are 40, 50, 60 percent higher than they are in every other country where the health care results are as good, or better, than ours. It's unsustainable.

So the only ray of hope I have is that if Obamacare will force changes in the cost structure just because there are going to be so many more people buying health care that it will just have to change the cost structure. That was sort of the implicit expectation that Gov. [Mitt] Romney had in Massachusetts, which is if we enact this plan and give more people health care, then when they have it, we'll see that we have to do something about the cost and we'll get the political will together to do that. The question is: Does Washington today, tomorrow, next year, in five years, even in the face of daunting health care costs — will they ever be able to summon the political will to do something about it? "

- NPR Interview With The Author

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