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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As more people try weight-loss drugs like Wegovy, some skip the brand name and buy compounded semaglutide from online pharmacies. But some of these may not follow state and federal standards. -
After a 2022 law lifted the ban on Medicare negotiating drug prices, the government is in talks to lower prices on 10 medicines that cost the program billions of dollars a year. How's it going?
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As more people turn to blockbuster drugs like Wegovy to shed weight, many are considering cheaper alternatives from specialized pharmacies that make custom batches of medicines.
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When Thorsten Siess was in graduate school, he came up with the idea for a heart device that's now been used in hundreds of thousands of patients around the world. -
New medications like Wegovy are changing the way people lose weight and manage obesity, but many Medicaid beneficiaries can't get them. -
Medicaid is required to cover almost all drugs, but Congress specifically excluded those for weight loss. Even so, 16 states now cover Wegovy. Others are considering it, but it could strain budgets.
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Drug company reps commonly visit doctors to talk about new medications. A team of economists wanted to know if that helps patients live longer. They found that for cancer patients, the answer is no. -
A economic research study shows that oncologists' prescribing habits change after they've been visited by pharmaceutical sales reps — and it also shows the changes do not extend patients' lives.
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Without the injectable, patients are always hungry, causing blood sugar and behavioral problems, and other complications. The problem has consumed UF Health pediatric endocrinologist Dr. Jennifer Miller. -
Most of the largest pharmaceutical companies report losing money in the United States, despite the majority of their sales coming from Americans. The result is lower U.S. taxes for the companies.
