Is There a Right to Health Care?

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You can't tax everybody and pay for things that an aggregate don't work. Mel Flufen, this is a real drug, they took a drug from the 1960s and they added a little molecule to the side. They brought it to the market because they gave it in an uncontrolled study to people with myeloma. It's not a space where you should approve drugs based on uncontrolled studies.

Oncologist and epidemiologist Vinay Prasad argues that too many very expensive drugs get approved by the FDA that have very limited impact on the lives of patients. Prasad explains the incentives that distort the current system. The general problem, he explains to EconTalk host Russ Roberts, is the death of duty--too many players in the health care landscape and elsewhere stay quiet or do the wrong thing in order to serve themselves.