In the News

There is so much information that is being published daily about the pharmaceutical industry and your right to safe and affordable prescription drugs. Take a look at the articles below. Make sure to take a moment and let us know your thoughts.

Did we miss something? If you have a great story or a lead on a local article, please contact us.

February 2, 2012
Los Angeles Times
By Noam N. Levey

In the first full year of the new healthcare law, 3.6 million people in the government Medicare program saved $2.1 billion on prescription drugs in 2011, the Obama administration announced Thursday.

The savings are one of the first tangible benefits of the sweeping overhaul that the president signed in March 2010.

The law's biggest changes, including the guarantee that all Americans can get health coverage even if they have a preexisting condition, do not go into effect until 2014. Read more

January 23, 2012
By GoozNews

Julie Grabow, an oncologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle, recently prescribed an exciting new therapy for a 60-year-old woman with metastatic breast cancer. Three-and-a-half years into her battle against the disease, the patient had already exhausted three different anti-estrogen therapies, each of which only put a temporary check on the spreading tumors.

The newly prescribed drug, Novartis’ Afinitor, is one of the recently approved targeted therapies that have generated a lot of excitement among cancer patients and oncologists in recent years. Drugs that target just the cancer cells promise the same or better results as toxic chemotherapy, but with far fewer side effects.

There was a catch, though. Like many of the latest cancer drugs, Novartis is charging exorbitant amounts for the treatment – in this case, $10,000 per month. Read more

January 19, 2012
New York Times
By Reuters

Johnson & Johnson said on Thursday that it would pay $158 million to settle a Texas lawsuit accusing the drug maker of improperly marketing its Risperdal antipsychotic drug to state residents on the Medicaid health program for the poor, including children.

The lawsuit accuses the company of pushing Risperdal as “appropriate and safe to treat a broad range of symptoms in populations and disease states for which it had no F.D.A.-approved indication, including in the child and adolescent population.” Read more

January 16, 2012
New York Times
By Robert Pear

To head off medical conflicts of interest, the Obama administration is poised to require drug companies to disclose the payments they make to doctors for research, consulting, speaking, travel and entertainment.

Many researchers have found evidence that such payments can influence doctors’ treatment decisions and contribute to higher costs by encouraging the use of more expensive drugs and medical devices. Read more

January 12, 2012
New York Times
By Reed Abelson and Natasha Singer

After more than two years of investigation, CVS Caremark agreed on Thursday to pay $5 million to settle charges by the Federal Trade Commission that the company had misrepresented the price of certain prescription drugs in one of its Medicare drug plans, causing many older consumers to pay significantly higher prices than advertised.

The settlement comes at a time of intensive government scrutiny of pharmacy benefits managers like CVS Caremark, companies that manage prescription drug plans for employers and insurers. The F.T.C. is currently reviewing the proposed mergerof the two main competitors to CVS Caremark: Medco Health and Express Scripts.

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