STATE HOUSE NEWS SERVICE GOV. MAURA HEALEY and the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center announced $24.4 million in tax incentive awards Tuesday that they expect will help 43 life sciences companies create nearly 1,600 new jobs, and officials teased more “exciting” life sciences news around the corner as the BIO International Convention lands in Boston next […]
Pharmaceuticals
Posted inEconomy
Boncore resigns abruptly at MassBIO
STATE HOUSE NEWS SERVICE Former state senator Joe Boncore is stepping down as CEO of the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council by the end of the year and his second-in-command, Kendalle Burlin O’Connell, will take over atop the influential organization. MassBIO announced the leadership change Friday and said that Boncore plans to “open a consulting practice and […]
Posted inOpinion
Mass. needs to respond to insulin cost crunch
COSIMA MOSHER was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes in January 2019 at the age of 11. After two days in the hospital, she realized her life would never be the same. Her mother, Heather, recounted that one minute they were celebrating the New Year and the next she was in the intensive care unit watching […]
Posted inGambling
Budget notes: Beacon Hill assuming Encore will open on time
THE MASSACHUSETTS GAMING Commission is currently meeting in private, trying to decide whether Wynn Resorts should be allowed to retain its casino license and open on time in June. But budget officials on Beacon Hill are acting as if the decision has already been made. A fiscal 2020 budget proposal put out by the House […]
Posted inOpinion
State shouldn’t define pharmaceutical ‘value’
THERE’S A REASON that Americans get access to new cancer medicines two years earlier, on average, than patients in Europe: prices in the United States respond to medical needs and market demands, not public commissions using inflexible formulas. Unfortunately, Gov. Charlie Baker’s budget proposal fails to take this into consideration and could put cutting-edge treatments […]
Posted inOpinion
Cost of drugs in the US is an outrage
THE HIGH COST OF PHARMACEUTICALS in the United States is an embarrassment. Americans don’t consume more prescription medications than their counterparts in other developed countries but, on a per capita basis, we spend almost twice as much. The traditional rationale for this disparity is that we are more innovative and must pay up for pharmaceutical […]
Posted inOpinion
Drug costs at pharmacies lack transparency
AS A PRACTICING PHYSICIAN, nearly every time I write a prescription, I have to ask myself: “Will this patient be able to afford this at the beginning of the calendar year when they have not yet met their deductible? Will they be able to afford this medicine in the middle of the calendar year when […]
Posted inOpinion
Cost barriers rise for patients
THERE SEEMS TO be a new story each day about how patients across the country are being treated unfairly by their health insurance company. Chances are, you or someone you love has been through something like this. These are patients who have done the right thing, worked hard, paid their premiums, and expected that when […]
Posted inOpinion
Taxpayers clean up Big Pharma’s mess
LAST YEAR, the United States saw a 13 percent increase in drug overdose deaths, from an estimated 60,147 lives lost in 2016, to an estimated 67,944 in 2017. For perspective, that is enough to completely fill Gillette Stadium, with an overflow of 2,066 individuals. Here in Massachusetts, we experienced a slight decrease in opioid related […]
Posted inHealth Care
Big Pharma hides costs with bait and switch
THE ADS FOR high-end prescription drugs seem ubiquitous. Invokana, Xarelto, Abilify, and Humira are just a few names familiar to anyone with a television. The drugs are some of the stars of the more than $5 billion in direct-to-consumer advertising the pharmaceutical industry does each year to convince patients to ask their doctors to prescribe […]