Generic Prescription Drug Info

A Somerset GP is backing a national campaign to tackle the problem of antibiotic resistance. Dr Harry Yoxall, a GP in Taunton and Secretary to the Somerset Local Medical Committee, said: ‘Antibiotics don’t work on colds, most coughs, sore throats or even the flu. Using antibiotics unnecessarily will increase resistance to them and make it [...]

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Consumers are more likely to receive information about medications from magazine advertisements that include a “drug facts box,” rather than the brief summaries currently used, according to a study published on Tuesday in the Annals of Internal Medicine, USA Today reports. For the study, Steven Woloshin and colleagues at Dartmouth University, tested the effectiveness of [...]

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Expenditures for outpatient prescription analgesics commonly known as painkillers and medicines that treat aches and pains increased from $4.2 billion in 1996 to $13.2 billion in 2006, according to the latest News and Numbers from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. These medications include narcotic analgesics, non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, and Cox-2 inhibitors, among others.
AHRQ [...]

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Sens. Herb Kohl (D-Wis.) and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) on Tuesday announced that they have introduced a bill (S 369) to end agreements under which brand-name pharmaceutical companies pay generic pharmaceutical companies to delay the launch of generic versions of the medications, CQ HealthBeat reports. According to Kohl and Grassley, the number of such agreements has [...]

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Canada needs a national strategy to ensure broad access to prescription drugs, yet plans for a strategy have stalled. Compared with many other countries, Canada lags behind in prescription access and affordability, quality and safety of medication use. A commentary in CMAJ makes the case for reigniting a strategy to benefit Canadians.
“Canada has an [...]

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Walgreens (NYSE:WAG)(NASDAQ:WAG) had January sales of $5,220,500,000, an increase of 5.3 percent from $4,957,145,000 for the same month in 2008. Sales in comparable stores (those open at least a year) rose 0.4 percent, while comparable store front-end sales decreased 0.9 percent.
January pharmacy sales increased 5.0 percent, while comparable pharmacy sales increased 1.0 percent. Comparable [...]

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Medications that affect a person’s metabolism by helping to lower cholesterol, control diabetes and control weight - accounted for $38 billion of the $208.1 billion that American adults spent on medications in 2006, according to the latest News and Numbers from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ).
The estimate comes from an AHRQ [...]

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With counterfeit and adulterated medicines posing an increasing risk to patients in the United States and worldwide, the U.S. Pharmacopeial (USP) Convention today announces new standards for two widely used drug products that have been involved in episodes of adulteration resulting in patient deaths.
The release of these standards, for the blood thinner heparin and [...]

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Private health insurers that operate plans under the Medicare prescription drug benefit have overcharged beneficiaries and the program by several billion dollars since the program began in 2006, but CMS remains unaware of the total impact of the practice because of a failure to perform required audits, according to a report recently released by the [...]

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Some mail-order pharmacy owners have told the Obama administration that Medicare spending could be reduced and quality could be improved if more beneficiaries ordered their medications by mail, the Boston Globe reports.
Medicare could save $1 billion over a decade for every 1% of beneficiaries with chronic conditions who switch to a mail-service system, or [...]

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