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As Congress pushes for Medicare to cover payment for anti-obesity drugs, Denmark — Ozempic maker Novo Nordisk’s home — has limited coverage of the drug after cost overruns “emptied all the money boxes in the entire public health system.”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention promises better tests are being developed, but the episode points to vulnerabilities in the country’s defense against emerging outbreaks.
Although Novo Nordisk and Lilly lump together the pharmacies that compound semaglutide and tirzepatide with internet cowboys selling fake drugs, there is a distinction. The FDA has offered Americans little clarity about the vast gray and black markets for the drugs.
Even with a stockpile of bird flu vaccinations, the federal government is not offering them to those at high risk. Along with testing and measures to prevent spread, vaccinations may protect people and stop the outbreak from becoming a pandemic.
If widely used, flu tests could be helpful now. In the meantime, the government needs to clear a path for H5N1 tests, researchers warn, to avoid the early missteps of the covid pandemic.
The spread of an avian flu virus in cattle has again brought public health attention to the potential for a global pandemic. Fighting it would depend, for now, on 1940s technology that makes vaccines from hens’ eggs.
The FDA told Amgen to test whether a quarter-dose of its lung cancer drug worked as well as the amount recommended on the product label. It did and with fewer side effects. But Amgen is sticking to the higher dose — which earns it an additional $180,000 a year per patient.
The FDA and some oncologists have resisted efforts to require a quick, cheap gene test that could prevent thousands of deaths from a bad reaction to a common cancer drug.
Price worries, bureaucratic obstacles, and “I’m-over-covid-itis” slow uptake of a drug that’s complicated to take but often effective.
A restructuring of the Medicare drug benefit has wiped out big drug bills for people who need expensive medicines. But the legal battle over drug negotiations means uncertainty over long-term savings.
When bankers and investors flocked to San Francisco for the largest gathering of health care industry investors, the buzz was all about artificial intelligence, the next hit weight-loss drug, and new opportunities to make money through nonprofit hospitals.
Stories of chronic pain, drug-hopping, and insurance meddling are all too common among patients with rheumatoid arthritis. Precision medicine offers new hope.
A rule taking effect Jan. 1 was intended to stop one set of abuses by pharmacy benefit managers, or PBMs, but some pharmacists say it’s enabling these price brokers to simply do new things unfairly.
Thousands of patients with autoimmune diseases who rely on Humira, with a list price of $6,600 a month, could get financial relief from new low-cost rivals. So far, the pharmacy benefit managers that control drug prices in America have not delivered on those savings.
As covid-19 hospitalizations tick upward with fall approaching, the CDC says it’s time for new boosters — and not only for those at highest risk of serious disease. Here are seven things you need to know.
Chances are, if you aren’t older, chronically ill, or obese, you don’t need a forthcoming covid vaccine to stay out of the hospital. But it probably wouldn’t hurt.
The Biden administration unveiled the first 10 drugs subject to price negotiations, taking a swipe at the pharmaceutical industry. But what does it mean for patients?
The annual cost of lecanemab treatment quadruples if the expense of brain scans to monitor for bleeds and other associated care is factored in. The full financial toll likely puts it beyond reach for low-income seniors at risk of Alzheimer’s, experts say.
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