01/01/2026
Policymakers — including President Trump — talk a lot about the high prices Americans pay for prescription drugs. While it's true that we pay big bucks for brand-name drugs, the bulk of the medicines we take are actually cheap copycats known as generics.
The U.S. generally pays much less than other wealthy countries for generic medicines, which now fill nine out of every ten prescriptions.
But will these affordable, high-quality copies continue to be there when we need them?
That's the question that drove “Race to the Bottom,” our three-part series about how America's heavy reliance on cheap generic drugs has begun to backfire.
Our dependence on these drugs has only grown since this series first aired in 2024, so over the next three weeks, we’re giving this reporting another look.
In this first episode, we take you behind the scenes of the bipartisan deal-making that gave birth to America’s modern generic drug market in the 1980s. It’s a fascinating tale of big ideas, arm-twisting and colorful characters.
Take a listen:
Forty years ago this month, President Ronald Reagan signed groundbreaking, bipartisan legislation that gave birth to a new drug industry. In part one of Race to the Bottom, we get an inside look at the choices made back then that help explain the wild success and also the troubles we see today with....
