Bioethics.net

April 19, 2017 9:00 am

Global coalition chips away at neglected tropical diseases (Nature)

Neglected tropical diseases affect roughly 1 billion people worldwide and kill about 534,000 each year, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). But drug companies and science agencies in rich countries tend to ignore these maladies because they almost exclusively afflict the world’s poorest people.

March 15, 2017 9:00 am

OxyContin Maker Purdue Pharma Hit With Unprecedented Lawsuit by Washington City (NBC News)

In January, the city filed a first-of-its-kind lawsuit against Purdue Pharma alleging the drug maker “supplied OxyContin to obviously suspicious physicians and pharmacies,” ultimately failing “to prevent the illegal diversion of OxyContin into the black market.”

While other suits against the company by states and municipalities have accused Purdue Pharma of deceptive marketing — allegedly playing up OxyContin’s effectiveness while playing down its addictiveness — Everett’s lawsuit is the first to claim the company knew its drugs were being diverted and did nothing to stop it.

February 17, 2017 9:00 am

An old drug gets a new price to fight a rare disease: $89,000 a year (Washington Post)

An old steroid treatment, long available outside the United States, received approval this week for a rare disease that afflicts about 15,000 Americans. Though not previously approved in the United States, the drug, deflazacort, has for years been available to patients suffering from the devastating and fatal disease Duchenne muscular dystrophy; families can import it from abroad for about $1,200 per year on average. The new list price for the drug? $89,000 a year.

January 24, 2017 9:00 am

With executive order, Trump tosses a ‘bomb’ into fragile health insurance markets (Washington Post)

The practical implications of Trump’s action on Friday are harder to decipher. Its language instructs all federal agencies to “waive, defer, grant ­exemptions from or delay” any part of the law that imposes a financial or regulatory burden on those affected by it. That would cover consumers, doctors, hospitals and other providers, as well as insurers and drug companies.

December 20, 2016 9:00 am

OxyContin goes global — “We’re only just getting started” (LA Times)

Former U.S. Food and Drug Administration commissioner David A. Kessler has called the failure to recognize the dangers of painkillers one of the biggest mistakes in modern medicine.

November 10, 2016 10:52 am

U.S. watchdog told Medicare, Medicaid that EpiPen was misclassified in 2009: senator (Reuters)

The internal watchdog at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services warned the office tasked with administering federal health insurance programs that Mylan NV’s EpiPen was improperly classified as a generic drug in 2009, Senator Charles Grassley said on Tuesday.

November 9, 2016 8:00 am

Why the FDA wants to know how much Nutella you scoop out of the jar (Washington Post)

October 28, 2016 8:00 am

Big pharma is gearing up to defend drug prices (Washington Post)

The skyrocketing costs of prescription drugs has been noticeably absent from discussion in the presidential debates — even as bipartisan anger about price gouging has united Congress. But the trade group for the pharmaceutical industry, PhRMA, is gearing up to defend drug prices after the election, seeking an additional $100 million in annual dues from its members, according to a report from Politico.

October 3, 2016 8:00 am

Furor Over Drug Prices Puts Patient Advocacy Groups in Bind (NY Times)

Public anger over the cost of drugs has burned hot for a year, coursing through social media, popping up on the presidential campaign, and erupting in a series of congressional hearings, including one last week over the rising price of the allergy treatment EpiPen.

September 16, 2016 8:00 am

Employees Are Paying A Bigger Chunk Of Health Insurance Costs (NPR)

High deductible health plans are the new normal.  Just over half of employees this year have a health insurance policy with a deductible of at least $1,000, according to a survey of employers from the Kaiser Family Foundation.