The Rifaximin Racket: A Case Study in Legalized Price-Gouging

How a 40-Year-Old Drug Became a $2,000 Symbol of America’s Rigged Healthcare Market

Drugs like rifaximin can show the problems within U.S. healthcare more clearly than most. Developed in Italy in the beginning of the 1980s as a minimally absorbed antibiotic, rifaximin is used to manage health problems like hepatic encephalopathy and irritable bowel syndrome with diarrhea (IBS-D). It has been sold for many decades, costs very little in …