Drugmakers' copay coupons let patients skip deductibles and kept brand-drug prices high
A coupon cuts the patient's bill, but the pharmacy benefit manager credits the full amount, so insurers lose their price signal.
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300 RECENT CASES · REGULARLY UPDATEDA museum ended GoldenEye screencheating by zooming each quadrant onto its own TV
Centre for Computing History used two video scalers to give each N64 player a full screen, with no cartridge or console changes.
Read the caseCommunity Tablet pulls a solar screen roadshow by donkey to teach Mozambique's villages
Dayn Amade swapped giving tablets to villagers for a donkey-drawn screen show with music, a quiz and prizes, paid for by NGOs.
Read the caseLos Altos Hills residents co-own their last-mile fiber after Comcast quoted $210,000
Neighbours own the street fiber and home drops; a contractor designs, permits and runs it; volunteers recruit the next street.
Read the caseHouston's street-to-home model paid landlords bonuses from private donations
Mandy Chapman Semple used flexible private dollars to give landlords bonuses and fees, then housed an entire tent encampment at once.
Read the caseChrome made public websites ask permission before reaching into visitors' home networks
Private Network Access adds a CORS preflight, phased from log-only in Chrome 98 to mandatory, to stop routers being hijacked.
Read the caseCharmin spent five years and 30 patents on wavy perforations to end the incomplete tear
P&G says scalloped edges tear cleanly against the paper's grain and sideways pulls; retooling six factories took most of the time.
Read the caseBennett Ridge neighbours pooled their lots into a grazing co-op to hire sheep and goats
Small Sonoma lots were too tiny for grazers, so neighbours pooled 22 properties and hired flocks that cut flame heights from 20 to 5 feet.
Read the caseBeneStream moved low-paid workers into Medicaid, shifting employers' insurance costs
The ACA penalised firms only when workers bought exchange cover, so a startup steered them into Medicaid, which carries no penalty.
Read the caseBART shaved its train wheels into a slight taper to cut its screeching
Bombardier's models showed fixed-axle wheels drag on curves; a two-millimetre taper cuts noise, rail damage and wheel wear.
Read the caseAtomic Orchard funds affordable Portland rents by halving its investors' dividend to 4%
Guerrilla Development skipped subsidies: investors accept 4% not 8%, and about $200,000 a year cuts rents on 12 of 49 units.
Read the caseAmazon wrote stock warrants into supplier contracts so it shares the gains it creates
Amazon asks suppliers to give it the right to buy their stock; its holdings reached $2.8B in warrants, up fivefold in three years.
Read the caseAjinomoto Foods built a dense, rolled noodle so frozen ramen survives two cookings
Instant noodles are porous so they hydrate fast; Ajinomoto made the opposite, a dense laminated noodle that holds up to freezing and microwaving.
Read the caseTesla ran a hidden second floor making its own parts to ship 50 changes a week
Fremont's unseen mezzanine built batteries, drives and even fuses in-house — the point was iteration speed, and it unlocked Ludicrous Mode.
Read the caseKroc made franchisees conform — McDonald’s inspections turned the brand into the product
Hamburger University, 27-page inspector reports and a 4% gross levy: franchisees bought not a name but a guarantee everyone else followed the same rules.
Read the caseMAME's Caps0ff dissolved chip lids and read arcade ROMs under a microscope
When DRM blocks electrical dumping, the preservationists decap the chip with acid and transcribe the visible 1s and 0s — 88 volunteers, 15 hours, one chip.
Read the caseA Minnesota town got 24/7 groceries back with a $75-membership self-serve store
Two newcomers reopened Evansville's grocery as a three-day-staffed store; members unlock the door with an app and scan their own goods around the clock.
Read the caseA botnet hid its backup server's address in the bitcoin blockchain itself
Satoshi values in a wallet's last two transactions encode the fallback C2 IP — a takedown-proof note in a ledger nobody can delete or censor.
Read the caseValve's shader precache made a $400 Deck run Elden Ring smoother than $3,000 PCs
Elden Ring's PC port stuttered on top-end hardware, so Valve served pre-compiled shaders to every Steam Deck — its Linux layer makes every game eligible.
Read the caseOne stamp, 192 countries: the UPU final-mile pact China's parcels exploited
The Universal Postal Union's split-the-check settlement made global mail work — and let a $5.69 mug cross the Pacific cheaper than local delivery.
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