Sydney Lupkin
Sydney Lupkin is the pharmaceuticals correspondent for NPR.
She was most recently a correspondent at Kaiser Health News, where she covered drug prices and specialized in data reporting for its enterprise team. She's reported on how tainted drugs can reach consumers, how companies take advantage of rare disease drug rules and how FDA-approved generics often don't make it to market. She's also tracked pharmaceutical dollars to patient advocacy groups and members of Congress. Her work has won the National Press Club's Joan M. Friedenberg Online Journalism Award, the National Institute for Health Care Management's Digital Media Award and a health reporting award from the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing.
Lupkin graduated from Boston University. She's also worked for ABC News, VICE News, MedPage Today and The Bay Citizen. Her internship and part-time work includes stints at ProPublica, The Boston Globe, The Boston Herald, The New England Center for Investigative Reporting and WCVB.
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The Biden Administration has proposed a rule to require private health insurance to cover over-the-counter birth control pills, spermicide, condoms and plan B.
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After Hurricane Helene flooded an IV fluid factory in North Carolina, the government and industry are trying to mitigate shortages. -
Remnants of Hurricane Helene shut down a North Carolina factory that supplies critical IV fluids to hospitals across the country. There's no timeline for when production will resume at the facility. -
A factory that makes IV fluids was shut down by damage from the remnants of Hurricane Helene that ripped through North Carolina. The facility could be down for months and could lead to shortages.
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A medicine that sidesteps the brain's dopamine receptors to reach different targets represents a new approach to schizophrenia treatment. The Food and Drug Administration approved it Thursday. -
The Food and Drug Administration, as expected, approved KarXT, the first new type of drug for schizophrenia in decades. It appears to be effective, but its main advantage is milder side effects.
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The Federal Trade Commission said pharmacy benefit managers created a "perverse drug rebate system" that artificially inflated the cost of insulin. -
The drug companies behind blockbuster weight loss and diabetes treatments have signaled that supply problems could soon be over, but many patients still have trouble getting the medicines. -
Drug manufacturers have declared obesity drugs to be "available,” but patients are still struggling to fill prescriptions.
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For six of the 10 drugs that Medicare negotiated to lower prices, the net prices aren't any better than the ones insurers already get. But there may be a change in patients' choices of medicines.
