You might find it interesting that — with the economy seemingly crumbling around us — one line of business is doing very well indeed: mail-order pharmacies.
Medco Health Solutions Inc., the nation’s largest pharmacy-benefits manager (PBM), posted a 32 percent rise in fourth-quarter profits today — largely on the growth in the number of prescriptions [...]

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Despite the best of efforts of Big Pharma and its paid lackeys to spread disinformation about the safety of Canadian pharmacies, it looks like Americans soon may finally be able to legally purchase drugs from Canada. At least, that will be the case if the Dorgan-Snowe Drug Importation Bill, scheduled to be reintroduced later [...]

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Scientific American has published an article examining the problem of high prescription drug costs as well as proposed solutions. Some salient stats referenced in the article:

American households annually spend more money on health care than on education and entertainment combined.
American households spend more than $200 billion on prescription drugs each year.
45 [...]

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I found this wonderful letter by Carrol L. Fry in the Kansas City Star and wanted to share it with all of you. It’s in response to a syndicated column by a typically out-of-touch Washington pundit.
I read George Will’s hand-wringing column about the imminent demise of Medicare (2/7, Opinion, “Obama willing, Congress weak on [...]

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Amy Klobuchar, the freshman U.S. Senator from Minnesota, has penned an opinion piece on “sudden and dramatic” price increases in prescription drugs that she argues are not only wrong, but in many cases illegal. Here’s an excerpt from Klobuchar’s article:
Two years ago, Jesse and Lisa Benson became the proud parents of twin girls, Anna [...]

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Harris Teeter, the North Carolina-based supermarket chain with 177 stores in the southeastern United States, has matched discount price programs at Wal-Mart, CVS, Target, Walgreens and Kroger, announcing that it is now offering customers a 90-day supply of over 300 generic drugs for $9.99.
Customers must purchase a $5 drug savings card, good for [...]

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As part of our visit to Consumer Reports headquarters last month to participate in the health blogger summit, we had an opportunity to tour the famous Consumer Reports labs — where they seemingly test every product under the sun, from cameras to stereos, home-gym equipment to washers and dryers. They even have food testers who [...]

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We’ve written here frequently about the “doughnut hole” in Medicare Part D. This is a coverage gap that, in 2009, requires seniors to begin paying full price for their prescription drugs if they exceed $2,700 in total drug costs.
Contrary to what many seniors believe, the $2,700 isn’t based on out-of-pocket expenditures, but [...]

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The AARP Bulletin recently recommended two sites for prescription drug coupons: OptimizeRx.com and InternetDrugCoupons.com.
Both of these sites’ seek out temporary price breaks from drug makers, as well as other discounts, and can save you up to 40 percent off the retail price of brand-name drugs. Other coupon sites we found in an Internet search [...]

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Computerworld posted an interesting story today on how fly-by-night advertising companies are working with spammers to place text-link ads (like the Google AdWords ads you see on the right-hand side of the page when you run a Google search) on the Web sites of bloggers.
One reason these companies are working to get their [...]

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