FDA Adds Boldest Warning to Widely Used Opioid Painkillers
Washington — Federal health regulators will add their strongest warning labels to the most widely prescribed painkillers, part of a multi-pronged government campaign to stem an epidemic of abuse and death tied to drugs like Vicodin and Percocet. The Food and Drug Administration announced on Tuesday plans to add a boxed warning — the most serious type — to all immediate-release opioid painkillers, including some 175 branded and generic...
Consumer Confidential: Obama’s Budget Plan Would Allow Greater Scrutiny Of High Drug Prices
Buried deep within President Obama’s $4 trillion budget plan are a couple of health care proposals that could change everything for U.S. consumers. The fact that the drug industry wasted no time in dismissing the ideas — and that their Republican friends in Congress said they wouldn’t even look at them — should tell you something big was afoot. The Department of Health and Human Services broke out Obama’s health care proposals in a...
Drugmakers Earn Poor Reputation
Are you befuddled by the cost of prescription drugs? There may be a legitimate reason. “It’s certainly not an efficient market,” Jason Doctor, an associate professor of pharmaceutical and health economics at USC, said about prescription drug prices. “If it was, you would see only one price for each drug at drugstores, and you don’t.” Worse, folks believe that prices for many drugs, both name-brand and generic, keep going up. According...
