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The Boston Globe Magazine yesterday ran a case study of one pharmaceutical company's efforts to keep generic alternatives to their expensive name-brand drug at bay, thus maintaining high prescription costs.

Through lawsuits, the makers of Prilosec have managed to keep the generics at bay while unleashing a half-a-billion-dollar marketing blitz to move people off Prilosec and onto Nexium, their costly, patent-protected new Purple Pill, which even their own studies show to be barely more effective than the original.