Big Pharma

Perspective: Amid skyrocketing drug prices, it’s understandable that patients desperately need help affording medicine, especially when their health is on the line. But these programs create a mirage that perpetuates our health care system’s reckless spending.

A diabetes diagnosis is not always related to a person’s weight or overall health, especially for those with Type 1 diabetes, who are dependent on insulin treatment for life.

Drug manufacturers invested in Russia’s pharmaceutical industry contend international humanitarian law requires they continue manufacturing and selling their products there, even while condemning the Ukraine invasion.

The number of pharmacies dispensing 340B discounted drugs soared to more than 31,000 this year. Drugmakers struck back by halting some discounts. Hospitals say they are losing millions of dollars — and cutting back services to patients — as a result.

The pharmaceutical and medical device business will keep the J&J name while the division that sells Band-Aids and Listerine will go it alone.

Judge Colleen McMahon was expected to halt work on the controversial settlement that would give immunity from opioid lawsuits to the Sackler family. Instead she allowed work on the plan to go ahead.

Four big drug companies would pay out $26 billion to dozens of states over the next 17 years.

Massachusetts and New York are among the states agreeing to end the fight to halt a controversial Purdue Pharma bankruptcy plan. The deal shelters members of the Sackler family from opioid lawsuits.

More than 100 bills have been introduced in 42 states this year to regulate these companies, which serve as conduits for drug manufacturers, health insurers and pharmacies.

The New York attorney general says Johnson & Johnson has agreed to pay $230 million to settle claims that the pharmaceutical giant helped fuel the opioid crisis.