Tag: Prescription Drug

August 30, 2023

For people with cystic fibrosis, like Sabrina Walker, Trikafta has been a life-changer. Before she started taking the drug, she would wind up in the hospital for weeks at a time until antibiotics could eliminate the infections in her lungs. […]

October 15, 2019

Prescription drug price controls are gaining momentum nationally and also at the state level. Nationally, lowering drug prices using government levers is an area in which there appears to be at least some degree of bipartisan agreement. A form of […]

October 14, 2019

Drugmakers fought hard against California’s groundbreaking drug price transparency law, passed in 2017. Now, state health officials have released their first report on the price hikes those drug companies sought to shield. Pharmaceutical companies raised the “wholesale acquisition cost” of […]

March 26, 2019

Although opioids exhibit impressive analgesic effects against both chronic and acute pain, the increased prescription rate of this class of drugs has been accompanied by an increase in opioid-related mortality. Legislators believe that the passage of cannabis access laws will […]

March 6, 2019

Americans are increasingly in favor of more federal regulation to rein in drug prices, including letting the government negotiate directly with drugmakers for the Medicare program, according to a new survey from the Kaiser Family Foundation. Yet the poll also […]

March 4, 2019

The media has constructed a straw man of sorts when repeating the mantra of the “relentless rise of prescription drug prices.” That growth has not been so relentless in recent years. This is due in large part to the increased […]

July 13, 2018

Among Medicaid recipients taking prescription opioids, high opioid doses and concurrent treatment with benzodiazepine sedatives are among the key, potentially modifiable risk factors for fatal overdose, reports a study in the August issue of Medical Care. The journal is published […]

May 23, 2018

Makers of brand-name drugs called out by the Trump administration for potentially stalling generic competition have hiked their prices by double-digit percentages since 2012 and cost Medicare and Medicaid nearly $12 billion in 2016, a Kaiser Health News analysis has […]

May 16, 2018

A few months ago, Kourtnaye Sturgeon helped save someone’s life. She was driving in downtown Indianapolis when she saw people gathered around a car on the side of the road. Sturgeon pulled over, and a man told her there was […]

December 28, 2017

For non-elderly Americans on disability, local prescribing of opioid pain medications is significantly related to county-level economic factors like unemployment and income level, reports a study in the January issue of Medical Care, published by Wolters Kluwer. About half of […]

November 30, 2017

As President Donald Trump talked tax reform on Capitol Hill Tuesday, Arkansas patient advocate Andrea Taylor was also meeting with lawmakers and asking them to save a corporate tax credit for rare disease drug companies. Taking the credit away, Taylor […]

November 29, 2017

A cross-section of opioid prescribers that typically do not prescribe large volumes of opioids, including primary care physicians, surgeons and non-physician health care providers, frequently prescribe opioids to high-risk patients, according to a new study by researchers at the Johns […]

November 7, 2017

Preliminary research presented today at APHA’s 2017 Annual Meeting and Expo examined the trend in hospitalizations from opioid poisonings in West Virginia, a state heavily impacted by the current opioid overdose crisis. Researchers with West Virginia University used data from […]