Big Pharma is legally keeping life-saving drugs expensive — and that’s killing people around the world. In this episode we unpack how pharmaceutical companies use patent tricks like “evergreening,” patent thickets, and pay-for-delay deals to stretch monopolies for years, keeping generics off the market and prices sky-high. Listen through to the end to hear concrete wins (like India’s Section 3(d)) and clear actions you can take to make medicines affordable.

🎯 Key Insights You'll Gain
- 🧾 How patent manipulation works: Understand secondary patenting, patent thickets, and pay-for-delay agreements — the legal tactics that delay generics and maintain monopoly pricing for years.
- 💸 Real-world cost impact: Why drug prices can fall 80–90% after generics arrive, and how delays translate into millions of preventable deaths and catastrophic health costs for families and governments.
- 🌍 Global injustice explained: How developing countries bear the worst outcomes — patients choosing between medicine and food — and why this isn’t just a foreign problem but affects healthcare costs everywhere.
- ⚖️ Policy solutions that work: Learn from India’s Section 3(d), compulsory licensing under TRIPS flexibilities, and examples from Brazil and Thailand — proven tools governments can use to restore access.
- ✊ What you can do next: Practical steps listeners can take — support reform groups, pressure politicians for patent and pricing reform (e.g., Medicare negotiation, ban pay-for-delay), and back transparent licensing and tiered pricing.

Why this matters to you
- If you or someone you know struggles with rising prescription bills, these patent strategies are a direct cause.
- Taxpayers already fund much drug research; yet high prices persist — learn how that public investment gets leveraged into private monopolies.
- Public pressure and policy change have worked before and can work again — this episode shows where to focus your energy.

Topics and names to search for after listening
- Evergreening, secondary patenting, patent thicket, pay-for-delay
- Section 3(d) (India), TRIPS flexibilities, compulsory licensing
- Humira example (patent extension & price effects), tiered pricing, voluntary licensing

Tune in to get the facts, feel the moral urgency, and walk away with concrete ways to push for medicines that are affordable for everyone.

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