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Looks like the issue of affordable prescription drugs, already swept under the rug once this session, will be put back on the table in Congress this week. From the Washington Post:
Rep. Chris Van Hollen is preparing legislation that would allow states to make prescription drugs more affordable for low- and moderate-income Americans, a challenge [...]

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Maggie Mahar, author of Money-Driven Medicine: The Real Reason Health Care Costs So Much, argues at TPMCafe that our “me”-oriented healthcare system makes it difficult to permit terminal patients to purchase potentially life-saving drugs that have not yet been approved by the FDA.
Writes Mahar:
A recent study shows that fully 42% of the products that [...]

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From Forbes.com:
The U.S. Congress is poised to pass a bill that would give the U.S. Food and Drug Administration the authority to regulate tobacco. But experts are divided on whether the bill will have significant impact on tobacco use, a habit that kills some 436,000 Americans a year — nearly one in five deaths annually.
Identical [...]

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Glaxo pulled a rabbit out of the hat in its earnings report today with a little misdirection. Per MarketWatch:
GlaxoSmithKline on Wednesday took some of the attention away from disappointing sales of diabetes drugs by announcing it was lifting its stock buyback authorization to 12 billion pounds ($24.7 billion).
Experts expected to see Glaxo report a [...]

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We’re delighted to unveil a cool new widget that allows you to proudly display your place in the Healthcare 100. Check it out here.
I’ve had problems with blog widgets with long load times in the past — so I asked my programmer to see what he could do to make the new Healthcare [...]

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From the AP:
Purdue Pharma L.P., the maker of OxyContin, and three of its executives were ordered Friday to pay a $634.5 million fine for misleading the public about the painkiller’s risk of addiction … U.S. District Judge James Jones levied the fine on Purdue, its top lawyer and former president and former chief medical officer [...]

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From Ezra Klein, political blogger and frequent commentator on healthcare reform:
I just called UCI Medical Center where most of my health records are stored to see if I could get a copy to take back to DC and transfer to my doctor there. No humans answer the phone, of course, I have to leave a [...]

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Here’s a fascinating — and troubling — read from Glenn Sacks:
According to the Washington Post, 10% percent of 10-year-old American boys are on Ritalin or similar drugs. From my experience as a teacher I can tell you that there are some kids for whom the drugs are useful–I’ve seen it firsthand. On the other hand, [...]

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On the eve of the International AIDS Society conference in Sydney, Australia, the Brisbane Times tells the sad tale of how Big Pharma has used its influence over U.S. politicians to fight attempts by Thailand to provide low-cost AIDS drugs to its people:
The world’s largest pharmaceutical companies are working to prevent developing countries from reducing [...]

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