We speculated last week that the big health insurance companies and their PBMs (pharmacy benefit managers) may soon attempt to force employees toward mail-order drugs. It’s certainly a real possibility after the PBM Express Scripts began providing mail-order delivery as a default option for employer-based health plans. As I predicted then: 1. Soon, all other [...]

[Read more →]

President Obama’s economic stimulus plan includes funding for “comparative effectiveness research,” which would study various prescription drugs, along with medical treatments and devices, to determine which perform best for the least amount of money. As the Washington Post describes the program: What’s best for insomnia — Lunesta, at about $6 a pill, or Zolpidem, at [...]

[Read more →]

We wrote recently about the rapidly growing business of mail-order pharmacies run by the pharmacy benefit managers (PBM) who work with employer-based insurance providers. It’s been a trend with no small hint of irony. You see, when Canadian mail-order pharmacies came on the scene in the ’90s, representatives of Big Insurance and Big Pharma trashed [...]

[Read more →]

Dr. Sanjay Gupta recently sat in for Larry King and had former president Bill Clinton as his guest. Clinton had some interesting things to say about the problem of high drug costs — driving home the point that our current system of corporate welfare for Big Pharma just isn’t working. Here are some excerpts of [...]

[Read more →]

We are sometimes asked why we include a number of U.S.-based pharmacies in the eDrugSearch.com pharmacy directory, since prescription drugs are so much cheaper at Canadian pharmacies. One of the main reasons is that U.S. pharmacies often sell generic drugs at lower prices than their Canadian counterparts. A new study by the Fraser Institute, “Canada’s [...]

[Read more →]

Despite celebrity endorsements courtesy of Photoshop (above), and a real endorsement by eDrugSearch.com and others, Pfizer whistleblower Dr. Peter Rost came up short in his bid to become the next FDA commissioner. President Obama on Saturday announced the selection of Dr. Margaret Hamburg for the top food and drug post. We knew Peter was a [...]

[Read more →]

Rite Aid is a $24 billion company operating more than 5,000 drugstores in 31 states, making it the third-largest pharmacy chain in the United States. But unless this overpriced retailer receives some bailout money from heaven (’cause it’s sure not coming from Washington), the year 2009 may be its last. Motley Fool has just put [...]

[Read more →]

We announced today that the Healthcare 100 now includes more than 1,000 health and medical blogs submitted by bloggers worldwide. For those of you not familiar with the Healthcare 100, it is a directory, search engine and ranking system designed to assist individuals who are seeking health information from blogs. Since we started the Healthcare [...]

[Read more →]

Earlier this year, I was privileged to participate in a health blogger summit convened by Consumer Reports at its New York headquarters. One of the topics discussed at the event — in fact, the one that generated the most controversy — was online health ratings systems. Many in attendance — including doctors and consumer advocates [...]

[Read more →]

As anticipated, bills to finally legalize the purchase of Canadian drugs by U.S. consumers were introduced in both houses of Congress this week. Here’s a news release excerpt on the Senate bill: U.S. Senators Byron Dorgan (D-ND), Olympia Snowe (R-ME), John McCain (R-AZ), and Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) introduced critical drug importation legislation today that will [...]

[Read more →]