MEwens
Lipitor Benefit Changes: Pharmacy-benefit manager Express Scripts will move brand-name Lipitor to the third tier of its national drug formulary from the second tier as of Feb. 1, increasing co-pays for some patients and emphasizing Pfizer’s challenge of holding on to sales of the drug, the WSJ reports. The generic versions of Lipitor […]
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MEwens
Paying More for Primary Care: Beginning in the summer, WellPoint will increase reimbursement for primary-care services — offering those physicians a fee increase of around 10% with the chance of additional payments that could bolster what they receive for covered patients by as much as 50% — in an attempt to lower acute-care […]
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MEwens
Seeking More Data: The FDA wants more information about an experimental diabetes drug from Bristol-Myers Squibb and AstraZeneca before considering it for approval, Dow Jones Newswires reports. The companies said the agency wants more clinical data in order to better assess the risks and benefits of dapagliflozin, which is a new type of […]
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MEwens
Orange Juice Worries: Coca-Cola said it found an unapproved fungicide in some of it and its competitors’ orange juice imported from Brazil, though it wouldn’t identify the brands, the WSJ reports. Coke makes Simply Orange and Minute Maid. The FDA is testing OJ from supermarket shelves for the fungicide, but the EPA said […]
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MEwens
By Sten Stovall
Investment prospects for Europes big drug makers look set to improve dramatically from mid-2012, despite the gloomy backdrop facing the sector as the year begins.
In 2012, the $50 billion-plus “global wave” of lost revenues from patent expirations on major blockbuster medicines finally hits the entire pharmaceuticals sector. Tightened government health-care budgets […]
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MEwens
Vioxx Settlement: The U.S. Justice Department said Merck agreed to pay $950 million and plead guilty to a criminal misdemeanor charge to resolve allegations that the company promoted its now-defunct pain drug Vioxx for rheumatoid arthritis before the FDA approved it for that use, the WSJ reports. Merck had reserved that amount last […]
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MEwens
New data released Monday by the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) underscore a call by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton earlier this month to harness new science to curb the global HIV/AIDS pandemic.
The number of people living with HIV continues to grow, yet tools to control the pandemic are now at […]
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MEwens
Progress on Heart-Failure Hospitalizations: Research published in the Journal of the American Medical Association shows an almost 30% drop in hospital admissions for Medicare patients with heart failure between 1999 and 2008, the WSJ reports. Experts attributed the improvement — which resulted in an estimated $4.1 billion in Medicare savings — to better […]
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MEwens
The British government has pledged about $31 million to help eradicate guinea worm disease, a donation that public-health experts say will bring them close to finishing the job.
A quarter century ago, the crippling parasitic infection afflicted 3.5 million people a year in more than 20 countries. This year, there are expected to be just […]
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MEwens
When a Pfizer sales representative came to his hospital last year pitching the pain drug Lyrica, Dr. Hiroshi Nishino pressed for details — he wanted to know just how the drug works on a molecular level.
“I’d want to try a new drug with a different mechanism of action because” that might give it an […]
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