Prescription for the People: An Activist’s Guide to Making Medicine Affordable for All (The Culture and Politics of Health Care Work)

Explores the reasons behind high prescription drug costs and the consequences of those costs for individuals, drug companies, and governments.... Easy-to-read short chapters. Many references from top journals and government documents.

Prescription for the People details the human cost of market-driven medicine and illustrates how the global movement for health justice and access to medicine can shift the balance of power and make a powerful case for reclaiming medicines as public goods.

Prescription for the People is refreshing in its ability to clearly, concisely and convincingly lay out the arguments about the causes and impacts of the structural barriers to access to medicines. Quigley has a very clear-eyed vision of what we need to do, and I love the human stories that weave through his book.

Prescription for the People will become essential reading for understanding the global access to medicines movement and its teachings. Fran Quigley's reporting is rooted in the personal stories of individuals struggling to survive illnesses that can afflict any of us; churning against the machinations of treatment rationing. He expertly shrinks the rules and rationales of pharma economics and global trade to a concise and just book. Quigley celebrates smart resistance and shows how a social movement overcame the monopoly power of one of the world's most powerful industries, to save millions of lives and change the future. Prescription for the People will be among the first items I pull from our shelf to share with new and prospective colleagues the world over.

Fran Quigley's thoughtful and accessible new book reveals the hard truths about our corrupt prescription drug system. He shows an industry that claims to develop life-saving drugs but is content to let patients die if they can't afford them. He documents billions wasted on drug marketing and how little drug corporations spend on research and innovation. And he offers useful suggestions to fight back-to channel our anger and to stand up for ourselves, the people we love, and those all over the world who are dying because medicines are not affordable. As a cancer patient, I'd recommend this book to anyone eager to learn more about how to beat big pharma, the PBMs and a system that is failing millions of us.