The Big Fix: How the Pharmaceutical Industry Rips Off American Consumers

The Big Fix opens with feisty 77 year old Melva McCuddy from Ohio struggling to find more than $6000 a year to pay for her multiple medications. We learn that she travels across the United States border to Canada, where her breast cancer drug, tamoxifen, is eight times cheaper than in her local pharmacy. Then we meet her son and grandson, both with medical troubles of their own, and discover that the family has three generations without any insurance cover for pharmaceuticals, and three generations forced to rely on handouts from their doctors. ‘The worst thing,’ Melva told the audience at the book's launch in Washington DC this month, ‘is being forced to beg doctors for free samples’.