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Dogs, our sunny, selfless shadows, crave little more than a daily walk, a treat or two, and their human’s happiness. But increasingly, their own happiness is the topic of concern in veterinarian offices, dog parks, and internet forums. Prozac prescriptions for dogs are on the rise, veterinarians across the country acknowledge, along with a myriad of cheaper generic mood stabilizers sold for humans but applied to pets’ separation anxiety, socialization fears, biting habits, or other problematic behavior. That increase, experts told STAT, says more about the human mental health crisis in America — and the ready availability of inexpensive generic...

Pharmacies across the United States are reporting that they are having difficulty getting prescriptions to patients because of a cyberattack on a unit of UnitedHealth. The company said in a regulatory filing Thursday its Change Healthcare business, which processes prescriptions to insurance for tens of thousands of pharmacies nationwide, was compromised by hackers who gained access to some of its systems. The company became aware of the cyberattack Wednesday, and, in a separate statement, said it expected the attack to last at least throughout the day Thursday. The cyberattack prevented some pharmacies from processing prescriptions to insurance companies to receive...

The 60,000 patients diagnosed with ovarian cancer over the next three years could be out of luck for a treatment, thanks to Biden and congressional Democrats.Less than 18 months after Democrats rammed through a series of price controls on what Medicare pays for prescription drugs — the better to pay for Tesla subsidies and other green pork — and guess what has happened? Drugmakers are responding to the (bad) incentives Democrats created.Just before the holidays, Bloomberg reported on how many pharmaceutical companies have delayed bringing products to market to maximize the revenue they can generate before Medicare gets to “negotiate”...

I need some advice. I am 67 years old and in a little over a Month I will be having my right shoulder replaced. I am actively enrolled in Medical-Care for health care, but not in any prescription policies. However, I need to figure out which prescription policy would be best for me before I have the surgery. As of right now I have no current prescriptions for anything. Until I began having shoulder problems I have not even seen a general practitioner for over 10 years. Other than my shoulder problem I am healthy as an ox, or at...

Several years ago, I realized I could save hundreds of dollars on prescription drugs by not using my health insurance. Instead, I pay using cash and a drug discount program like GoodRx. I realized this savings because my insurer/PBM had an incentive to keep list prices high. In plain English, my insurer overcharged me for my prescriptions so it could collect big rebates from drug companies.

A new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shed some new light on the health habits of Americans. According to the report, 8.2% of adults between the ages of 18 and 64 taking prescription medications reported not taking their drugs as prescribed in order to cut costs — adding up to 9.2 million affected Americans. In 2021, out-of-pocket expenses on retail drugs rose to $63 billion — a major factor in many U.S. residents’ decision to stop taking their medications. Roughly 60% of U.S. adults 18 years old or older reported taking at least one prescription medication...

A little-noticed provision of the omnibus spending bill could give the agency power to ban off-label use of approved therapies.. Secreted within the 2023 omnibus appropriations bill—4,155 pages, spending $1.7 trillion—is a 19-line section that could change the way medicine is practiced. Physicians routinely prescribe drugs and employ medical devices that are approved and labeled by the Food and Drug Administration for a particular use. Yet sometimes physicians discern other beneficial uses for these technologies, which they prescribe for their patients without specific official sanction. The new legislation amends the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act, or FDCA, to give the...

Put together two environmentally conscious professionals — a product designer and a pharmacist by trade — and you wind up with biodegradable prescription bottles that are getting traction with consumers. Health sciences startup Parcel Health Inc. of Bellevue has been piloting biodegradable pill bottles at 10 drug stores in eight states, including Pennsylvania, replacing the ubiquitous dark orange plastic bottles used by pharmacists to dispense drugs for decades. Consumer reaction at a West View drug store where they have been introduced has been positive, said Kyle McCormick, founder of Blueberry Pharmacy. “Patients love it,” Mr. McCormick said. “It’s a pretty...

The latest version of Democrats’ $4 trillion Build Back Better reconciliation bill includes a provision to empower the government to set Medicare drug prices.Government price-setting of prescription drugs is zombie legislation that just won’t die. After briefly being excised due to opposition from moderate legislators, the latest version of congressional Democrats’ $4 trillion Build Back Better reconciliation bill includes a provision to allow the government to set Medicare drug prices. “Democrats announced they have sealed a deal [on] pharmaceutical drug costs for seniors,” announced the Associated Press last week. The consequences of prescription drug price-setting in terms of reduced access...

I am on a very expensive medication for my mast cell disorder. It was paid for almost fully by our health insurance. I just had a small co-pay for every order. Well, I was forced onto Medicare when I turned 65 and the prescription plan is killing us. The medication is almost full cost, but, I am assured, the bright side is that once I have spent $5,000 in prescription costs, everything is then *free*. The doctors have told me that like I'm supposed to be excited about spending 5K on drugs per year just to supposedly get free stuff...

At least four state pharmacy boards have taken steps to limit prescriptions of potential coronavirus treatments touted by U.S. President Donald Trump that are in short supply as demand has surged with the rapid spread of the outbreak.

The box of prescription drugs had been forgotten in a back closet of a retail pharmacy for so long that some of the pills predated the 1969 moon landing. Most were 30 to 40 years past their expiration dates — possibly toxic, probably worthless. But to Lee Cantrell, who helps run the California Poison Control System, the cache was an opportunity to answer an enduring question about the actual shelf life of drugs: Could these drugs from the bell-bottom era still be potent? Cantrell called Roy Gerona, a University of California, San Francisco researcher who specializes in analyzing chemicals. Gerona...

I received letter from Xerox yesterday (10/09/2018) informing me they are canceling my retirement benefits (and not just me but many other retirees too) which are; Medical, Dental, Prescription Drugs, and my Life Insurance. I worked for Xerox 31 years with the goal in mind that I would have these benefits after I retired. I did, but now, when I need them the most they take them away from me. I was a Senior Engineering Technician in Corporate Research & Technology, in Webster, NY. Let this be a WARNING to people who are considering employment there.

The nation’s largest non-profit advocate for people over 50 is praising the Trump Administration’s first steps to bring down the costs of prescription drugs. Leigh Purvis, Director of Health Service Research in the AARP Public Policy Institute said “American Patients First: The Trump Administration Blueprint to Lower Drug Prices and Reduce Out-of-Pocket Costs,” released May 11 by the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS), is a positive first step to controlling drug costs for everyone, but particularly the elderly. “This is clearly something that President Trump mentioned during the campaign that was something that was resonating with him....

What Can Happen When Doctors and Pharmacists Do Not Track Their Patient's Prescriptions copy The Iowa Prescription Monitoring Program (PMP) is designed to provide patient specific prescription data to individuals authorized by Iowa Code (IC) section 124.553(1)(a) and 657 Iowa Administrative Code (IAC) Chapter 37. A prescriber or pharmacist is authorized to request a Patient Rx History Report on an individual only if: (a.) The request is for the purpose of providing medical treatment or pharmaceutical services; and, (b.) The prescriber or pharmacist has a current practitioner-patient relationship or is initiating a practitioner-patient relationship with the individual named in the...

How serious is President Trump about drug prices? Democratic Rep. Elijah Cummings tells me that Trump has called him three times to follow up on their conversation at the White House earlier this month. And Trump's not just talking about letting Medicare negotiate drug prices, Cummings says. It's even worse for Republicans — because Trump is also talking about importing cheaper drugs from other countries. Why it matters: Trump has said many times he wants to do something about drug prices, and has terrified both the pharmaceutical industry and free-market Republicans with his talk of doing more price negotiations. They...

Democratic lawmakers introduced a proposal to place a fee on opioid prescriptions with the revenue going to combat rampant painkiller and heroin addiction across the U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy and Sen. Richard Blumenthal from Connecticut, a state hit hard by increases in drug overdoses, are calling for a one-cent per-milligram tax to be added to prescriptions for opiate-based painkillers.

The typical retiree's monthly Social Security check will get only $3.92 bigger next year. That amounts to an increase of just 0.3% -- the smallest ever put in place to help cover higher prices. That's still an improvement from this year, when the lack of inflation kept benefits from increasing at all. The average retiree's monthly benefit is currently $1,305.30. "Over the last five years, Social Security COLA's have remained small or nonexistent," said AARP. "Every cent can matter to beneficiaries and their families. After last year's zero COLA, this year's announcement doesn't offer much help to the millions of...

A 7-year-old girl in McKeesport, Pennsylvania got on the bus and went to school as normal Monday morning, but on the way home she told her bus driver she hadn’t been able to wake her parents. The bus driver alerted police who responded to the home. From the Washington Post: Inside the home, authorities found the bodies of Christopher Dilly, 26, and Jessica Lally, 25, dead of suspected drug overdoses, according to police.Also inside the home were three other children — 5, 3 and nine months old. Courney Lally, the deceased woman’s sister, had tried to alert authorities to the...

Some consumers who order medication from safe international pharmacies are finding themselves unable to use their VISA credit cards. We hope that doesn’t interfere with their ability to access safe and affordable medication. What’s going on? Essentially, in taking actions to stop rogue online pharmacies from selling medication, VISA’s online pharmacy policy ends up discriminating against consumers seeking affordable medication from safe international online pharmacies. It appears that VISA has adopted the online pharmacy worldview of LegitScript, a verification service that categorizes safe international online pharmacies as “unapproved” (but not “rogue”) and teams up with big pharmaceutical companies and U.S....