On the surface, it may sometimes look like drug companies are doing good things with their money and trying to improve the society that consumes their products. Nestle, a candy company based in Switzerland, is partnering with a drug company to provide its food engineering expertise in a joint effort to make medicines taste good. […]
Tag: pharma
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Big Pharma Greed: Dirty Drug Patents
Moderna is a drug company that’s been very secretive about what product they’re developing. The startup claims to be working on a new class of drugs that manipulate antibodies into producing drugs via therapeutic proteins (Vardi, 2016). It wasn’t until Acuitas filed a lawsuit in British Columbia that Moderna revealed exactly what they’re working on. […]
With all of the settlements that Big Pharma has to pay, one might conclude that the industry is not stable enough to support itself; however, drug companies are experiencing growth and are commonly found on the Fortune 500 List (Law, 2006). According AlterNet, “Pharmaceutical companies have been hit with $14.8 billion in wrongdoing settlements in […]
The pharmacy field is constantly changing and is a career that is currently in high demand. More pharmacy schools are being built and hold the responsibility of training the pharmacists of the future. Due to accreditation standards set by the Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education (ACPE), programs are expected to have their students complete Introductory […]
Good leadership starts at the hiring process. Organizations need employees that independently lead but also follow their managers. In order for managers to hire leader-worthy employees, the hiring process should be reexamined, modified, and improved (O’Connor, 2013). O’Connor (2013) says that “process change comes from the bottom-up, but culture change moves from the top-down” (p. […]
“I would prefer to spend time discussing briefly our greatest need in hospital pharmacy – leadership” (Francke, 1955). The need to discuss pharmacy leadership is still relevant today. There is a great lack of leadership that still exists in the pharmacy profession. Leadership comprises capacity, goals, and efficacy. Hospital organizations are unique because they are […]
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Drug Prices: The Solution
If the system isn’t entertaining a solution to decrease drug costs, a solution can be implemented to decrease medical costs which will decrease prescription costs. Dr. Barbara McAneny, CEO of the New Mexico Cancer Center, has demonstrated that it’s possible to decrease costs while improving patient care. Appropriately prioritizing care via comprehensive triage and treatment […]
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Drug Prices: Blame Regulation
Some argue that it was too much regulation, not too little regulation that has caused the FDA to reject competing drugs due to existing patents. In a sense, this is good so that pharmaceutical companies can recoup R&D costs to create new drugs. On the other hand, the patients need to be able to afford […]
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Drug Prices: Blame the PBM
Some critics of industry prices think the high prices are due to pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs). PBMs are essentially the middleman between the pharmacy and the drug manufacturer. However, as Tim Wentworth, a CEO from Express Scripts states, “Drug makers set prices, and we [the PBM] exist to bring them down” (Weinberg & Langreth, 2017). […]
Looking back in time, it’s mind-boggling to think about how Big Pharma pricing became so far out of control. Insulin therapy, presently in mainstream high supply and demand, used to be a cutting-edge treatment that was difficult to create. The three person team that created a way to generate insulin recognized the need for this […]
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Drug Prices: Epi-Pen
A very recent point of contention is the price of Epi-Pens® (Mylan). Epi-Pens® save the lives of people who experience anaphylactic shocks. Due to numerous petitions, Mylan claims that they dropped the price of the Epi-Pen®. But in reality, Mylan simply offered a $300 savings card to underinsured consumers (“The Other 98%”, 2017). Everyone else, […]
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Drug Prices: Trends
The world’s most expensive drug, as of 2016, is Soliris® (Alexion Pharmaceuticals) being priced at $409,500 a year per patient. The disease that this drug treats only affects 8,000 Americans, but the drug maker generated $295 million in one year for that one drug (Herper, 2010). Turing Pharmaceuticals raised the price of an anti-infection drug […]
Substance abuse disorders were always undertreated. Although there has been an improvement in treatment due to increased education and research, there is still more that can be done. Only 10% of substance abuse patients receive specialized treatment (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2016). Over 40% of patients with a substance abuse disorder also […]
The prescribing of fentanyl is highly regulated by the FDA as it’s a scheduled II drug. This means that it’s rather addictive and subject to abuse. Some pharmaceutical companies are seeking to enter this market by formulating the drug in different forms of administration (ie: spray, injection, oral, etc.). Michael Babich from Insys Therapeutics was […]
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American Opioid Epidemic: Action Taken
In 2017, the FDA restricted the manufacturing of Schedule II Opiates by 25%. Obviously the FDA has a critical role in controlling the manufacturing quotas of Schedule I and II substances. When setting quotas, the institution did their due diligence in reviewing: Estimates of the legitimate medical need Estimates of retail consumption based on prescriptions […]
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American Opioid Epidemic: The Start
The American Opioid Epidemic was a major topic of discussion of the twenty-first century. Opioid pain medication was being prescribed left-and-right. Initially, prescribers were being coached to prescribe more pain medication as pain was being greatly undertreated in patients. This was demonstrated in James Campbell’s presidential address of the American Pain Society where he stated […]
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Drug Approvals: Value-based Contracting
Value-based contracting helps hold Big Pharma accountable. If the drug shows a lack of clinical effectiveness and/or results in unreported side effects, the manufacture owes the plan sponsor two-thirds of the drug’s cost. Rishi Manchanda, the Chief Medical Officer (CMO) of The Wonderful Company, believes that the sequel to the triple aim is the quadruple […]
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Drug Approvals: Biosimilar Drugs
Biosimilar drugs are identical copies of a product that has an expired patent. They are expected to increase competition and reduce drug prices. Europe, Canada, Japan, and Australia have sold dozens of biosimilar drugs for ten years. In the US, prices are expected to drop by 35%. In addition, $80 billion in sales will lose […]
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Drug Approvals
Big Pharma is a dynamic and complex industry. Just a few of the stakeholders include researchers, drug companies, pharmacies, governmental agencies, health plans, doctors, and patients. Agencies such as the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), National Institutes of Health (NIH), Department of Health, and the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) have much influence on the pharmaceutical […]
Views on antibiotics have changed over the years. It used to be that the standard was to have doctors prescribe antibiotics for the littlest ailments. Now, doctors are to be more cautious when prescribing antibiotics and only prescribe them if it’s absolutely necessary. For antibiotics, it’s beneficial for pharmaceutical companies to limit the drug’s effectiveness […]
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Big Pharma Corruption: Placebos
Placebos are commonly viewed as fraud among the general public. Some news stories have said that some drugs that were sold as prescriptions were just milk and sugar. Although it is wrong to sell placebos in place of real drugs, placebos have a great deal of importance in pharmaceutical research. Placebos can make a control […]
The sneaky relationship between researchers and drug companies taint the trials and therefore put the patient in danger. Borison and Diamond, two psychiatrists from the Medical College of Georgia, are in jail because of endangering the safety of multiple patients by tainting trials of over twenty drugs in order to receive hundreds of thousands of […]
Over the past five years, debates about designer drugs have been growing. This new sector’s main focus is to genetically alter drugs so that they are custom for the individual patient. Although in theory this sounds like a health-improving technology, the failure of the multiple companies to agree on a destination and move forward is […]
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Big Pharma Corruption
Big Pharma, the name we collectively attach to all of the drug companies, has been under scrutiny for the past few decades. The government, healthcare institutions, and drug companies collaborate together to supposedly provide us with the finest drugs for our consumption to maintain or improve our health. Peter Coy puts it perfectly, Big Pharma […]