McKinsey taught Big Pharma how to price-gouge
This sounds like a blame shifting article. Sure McKinsey as a consulting company would advise its clients on how to do something &#x2F; anything while staying within legal fringes.<p>But it was the pharmacy companies that wanted to price gouge while avoiding any kind of scrutiny . So they roped in McKinsey for how to best do that without attracting any kind of government attention and McKinsey advised them on that.<p>The author blames McKinsey for gaming the system . But what is the system - it is just a list of laws and regulations written by Congress . If Congress finds any kind of gamification-it should change the laws accordingly.<p>The biggest reason for higher prices for drugs for Medicare was the prescription drug bill passed under the Bush administration that prevented the government from using its buying power to negotiate prices. I understand that affects only Medicare patients but that became the springboard for other opportunistic pricing employed by all drug companies.<p>Also the age old practice of buying the patents of an old drug and hiking the price by 10000% or more ( as employed by Daraprim (Martin Shakreli) or numerous other companies )was not Mckinsey’s brainchild but rather the demand from the drug companies that McKinsey helped to materialize.