The Pain Brokers - by Elizabeth Chamblee Burch (Hardcover)

About the Book

"For decades, late-night television has blared a familiar refrain: 'If you or a loved one has been injured by X product...' But behind those ads lies a lesser-known world where elaborate scams revictimize the injured. Why else would thousands of women with health insurance take out loans with astronomical interest rates and fly to south Florida to have their pelvic mesh surgically removed at a chiropractor's clinic? [This book provides] a damning investigation of a scheme made possible by a medical and legal complex that too often views women's bodies as cash machines and fails to take their pain seriously. As Burch unfurls each level to the scheme, we meet an enthralling cast of characters, from a world class scam artist who reaped tens of millions of dollars at a south Florida call center, to the ultimate white shoe power lawyer who defended Big Pharma but became an unlikely hero, to a newly minted small-town Arkansas attorney who advocated for the unseen and unheard"--

Book Synopsis

Selling the Dream meets Empire of Pain in this shocking, never-told-before story of three women caught in a web of telemarketing scammers, shady doctors, and profit-hungry lawyers who turned fears surrounding a faulty medical device affecting millions of women into a goldmine.

For decades, late-night television has blared a familiar refrain: If you or a loved one has been injured by X product...

But behind those ads lies a lesser-known world where elaborate scams revictimize the injured. Why else would thousands of women with health insurance take out loans with astronomical interest rates and fly to south Florida to have their pelvic mesh surgically removed at a chiropractor's clinic?

The Pain Brokers, by law professor Elizabeth Burch, is a damning investigation of a scheme made possible by a medical and legal complex that too often views women's bodies as cash machines and fails to take their pain seriously.

As Burch unfurls each level to the scheme, we meet an enthralling cast of characters, from a world class scam artist who reaped tens of millions of dollars at a south Florida call center, to the ultimate white shoe power lawyer who defended Big Pharma but became an unlikely hero, to a newly minted small-town Arkansas attorney who advocated for the unseen and unheard. But at the center are three women, Jerri, Barb, and Sharon, whose lives were upended by the very procedure they were told would save them.

A page-turning, urgently necessary work of public service journalism, The Pain Brokers is not only a chilling exposé of a legal system gone awry, but a wake-up call to the ways in which it harms those it is meant to help.

Review Quotes

"As gripping and important as Patrick Radden Keefe's Empire of Pain and Gardiner Harris' No More Tears, The Pain Brokers is a righteous bolt of reportage worthy of acclaim."
--Booklist (starred review)

"Rigorous and horrifying, this real-life tale of greed run amok will leave readers reeling."
--Publishers Weekly

"It's hard to imagine how a single book could tell a story that's so infuriating, so riveting, so disappointing, and so inspiring all at once, but that's what Burch has pulled off in The Pain Brokers. Burch's book is a powerful and timely reminder that there's strength in numbers--and that we're all better off not only when we're looking out for each other, but when we're not afraid to call out the bad actors in our midst."
--Stephen Vladeck, New York Times bestselling author of The Shadow Docket

"In The Pain Brokers, Burch vividly brings to life the scandal on which she is America's leading voice--how plaintiff's lawyers and their allies turn the suffering of patients into profit mills."
--Barry Meier, Pulitzer Prize winner and author of Pain Killer

"Burch delivers a pulse-pounding legal thriller that hooks you from the start and leaves you gasping for air at the end. It's a devastating account of a wild scheme--orchestrated by greedy lawyers and con men--that preyed on vulnerable women and subjected them to unnecessary surgeries. Burch has done the nation a valuable public service by exposing a legal system rotten to the core."
--Eric Eyre, Pulitzer Prize winner and author of Death in Mud Lick

"Burch reports and tells the hell out of this story. In the process, she eviscerates a band of rogue operators, working at the fringes of the medical and legal professions, while reminding us that the best authors wield transformative power when they face down the ugliest truths."
--John T. Edge, author of House of Smoke

"Award-winning legal scholar and natural-born storyteller Burch presents a fabulous tale of scams run out of call centers, misguided patients flying cross-country for expensive surgeries they don't need, rogue lawyers and their medical sidekicks raking in easy money, and a couple of ethical lawyers trying to sort out the mess."
--Melissa Fay Greene, two-time National Book Award finalist and author of Praying for Sheetrock and The Underdogs

About the Author

Elizabeth Chamblee Burch is an award-winning scholar and the Fuller E. Callaway Chair of Law at the University of Georgia School of Law. A prolific author on mass tort lawsuits, she is also a frequent commentator in national news media such as NPR, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, USA TODAY, and the Los Angeles Times.