6/24/2015 Two reports released on Tuesday highlight the persistence of Medicare fraud, especially involving the Part D prescription drug program. The reports follow the largest Healthcare Fraud takedown in history last week, as officials charged 46 doctors and pharmacy owners, as well as nearly 200 others for Medicare fraud. This includes the arrest of 44
6/24/2015 For the first time in nearly 40 years, significant reforms to the 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) may finally take place as the House of Representatives passed a bill on Tuesday by a 398-1 vote on HR 2576, offering major changes to the law. The passage comes as a Senate panel advanced another
6/18/2015 The House of Representatives will vote Thursday to repeal two controversial provisions to the Affordable Care Act (ACA), better known as Obamacare. Amidst a considerable degree of bipartisan support, Ways and Means Committee chairman, Paul Ryan (R-WI) successfully advanced measures to a vote earlier this month to cut the unpopular 2.3 percent tax on
6/16/2015 It appears that the wave of high-level consolidations in the business world has now carried over to the nation’s top health insurers. United Healthcare, by far the industry leader, has approached Aetna, the U.S.’s third-largest health insurer, this week in early discussions of a merger. Anthem, the country’s second-leading health plan provider has also
6/9/2015 A new class of cholesterol drugs will undergo a preliminary review this week from a Food and Drug Administration (FDA) advisory panel. The drugs, Amgen’s Evolocumab and Alirocumab from Sanofi SA and partner, Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, block a protein called PCSK9, which can prevent the liver from eliminating bad cholesterol. Early studies show the drugs
6/5/2015 An FDA advisory committee voted 18-6 on Thursday, April 4th to recommend the approval of the drug, flibanserin, a medicine designed to increase the sexual desire in women. Known colloquially as “female Viagra,” two prior attempts at moving the drug through the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) process had been rejected. Drug developer Boehringer
5/29/2015 Despite the ongoing FBI investigation of Johnson & Johnson’s manufacturing division, Ethicon, and a strong Food and Drug Administration (FDA) warning issued last year, power morcellators are still legal. The device grinds up tissue mass, and is then removed through a series of small incisions. The device, which is used to provide minimally invasive
5/26/2015 Perhaps no industry besides investment banks has been hit as hard by the federal court system than tobacco over the past several years. A pair of recent appeals rulings, however, indicates a substantial turn in the industry’s decades-long financial flogging. On Friday, the D.C. Court of Appeals delivered a mixed-ruling, in which some
5/19/2015 The Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) May 15th warning of potential ketoacidosis among Type II diabetes patients who use a new class of oral treatments known as SGLT2 inhibitors should not be completely surprising. The first such medicine approved by the FDA in March, 2013 was Invokana (canagliflozin), manufactured by Janssen Pharmaceuticals in conjunction
5/18/15 The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a warning on its website on Friday, May 15th regarding a popular oral type II diabetes class of medications known as SGLT2 inhibitors. The FDA warned that the increasingly popular class of drugs, which help blood sugar to be secreted in urine, has led to ketoacidosis,