Eli Lilly & Co. said it and other drugmakers will ask the Trump administration to pause drug-price negotiations, even as Biden-appointed officials prepare a new list of medicines that should be targeted. "They need to fix it" before negotiating down the price of more drugs, Lilly CEO Dave Ricks said on the sidelines of the JPMorgan Healthcare Conference, referring to the Inflation Reduction Act.
The pharmaceutical industry's biggest investment conference drew protesters in San Francisco Monday with signs reading "delay, deny, depose," words prosecutors said were written on shell casings found at the scene of a health insurance executive's killing last month. Across the street from the entrance of the Westin St. Francis in San Francisco where the JPMorgan Healthcare conference was being held, some two dozen protesters chanted "healthcare is a human right" and said drugmakers share blame with insurers for high costs and lack of access to care.
Johnson & Johnson will spend more than $14 billion to delve further into the treatment of central nervous system disorders by purchasing Intra-Cellular Therapies. The healthcare giant said Monday that it will pay $132 in cash for each share of Intra-Cellular. That represents a 39% premium to Intra-Cellular's closing price of $94.87 on Friday. Shares of both companies climbed Monday after announcing the deal. Intra-Cellular Therapies Inc. makes Caplyta, a once-daily pill for treating adults with schizophrenia and depression tied to bipolar disorder. The drug brought in $175 million in last year's third quarter as total prescriptions increased 38%.
With adult obesity rates falling last year for the first time in more than a decade, drugs such as Ozempic and Zepbound are already reshaping Americans' waistlines. Now, they're poised to reshape the entire economy, too.
As weight loss drugs like Ozempic continue to rise in popularity, economists are looking at their potential to disrupt the market. We asked a doctor turned business analyst which industries he thinks could see the most impact.
The Department of Justice announced a lawsuit on Wednesday accusing pharmacy chain CVS of filling illegal opioid prescriptions and billing federal health insurance programs, contributing to a nationwide epidemic of opioid addiction and overdose. The newly unsealed complaint in Providence, Rhode Island, federal court alleges that, from October 2013 to the present, CVS violated the federal Controlled Substances Act by filling prescriptions for dangerous quantities of opioids and dangerous combinations of drugs. It said the company regularly filled prescriptions from doctors running so-called pill mills, dispensing large quantities of opioids without legitimate medical reason. The Justice Department said the violations were driven by company-mandated performance metrics that led to red flags being ignored, and that in some cases patients died of overdoses shortly after filling illegal prescriptions. "We have cooperated with the DOJ's investigation for more than four years, and we strongly disagree with the allegations and false narrative within this complaint," CVS said in a statement. CVS agreed in 2022 to pay close to $5 billion over 10 years to settle thousands of similar claims by state, local and Native American tribal governments. It did not admit wrongdoing under the deal, which was one of a series of nationwide settlements by pharmacies, drugmakers and distributors totaling about $46 billion.