While working families and retirees on fixed incomes struggle to pay for life-saving prescription drugs whose costs have risen by more than 15 percent a year—five times the rate of inflation—pharmaceutical giants prosper.

In 2001, as the economy tumbled and corporate profits sank for the average Fortune 500 company, drug company profits skyrocketed by 33 percent. In the past decade, drug firms’ profits represented an 18.5 percent return on revenue or 5.6 times the median return (3.3 percent) of Fortune 500 companies.

Now, a new book exposes the range of sometimes shady advertising, pricing, lobbying and other tactics pharmaceutical giants use to create big profits at the expense of working families and senior citizens. 

Available at The Union Shop Online™ and in local bookstores May 6, The Big Fix: How the Pharmaceutical Industry Rips Off American Consumers, by Katharine Greider and published by Public Affairs, contrasts the hundreds of millions of dollars pocketed by pharmaceutical executives with the struggles of workers and retirees who often can’t pay for essential prescriptions—seniors such as Melva McCuddy and Vi Quirion.

Seriously ill with cancer, Quirion, 79, has had plenty of experience with the pharmaceutical industry. Drug companies “don’t care,” she says. “They’re not honest, and all they care about is money.”

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