In a surprise reversal, the maker of the powerful painkiller OxyContin said Saturday that it will stop promoting opioid drugs to doctors.
Manufacturer Purdue bowed to a key demand of lawsuits that blame the Connecticut-based company for helping trigger the opioid epidemic.
The company’s statement said it eliminated more than half its sales staff this week and will no longer send sales representatives to doctors’ offices to discuss opioid drugs.
Its remaining sales staff of about 200 will focus on other medications.
“The genie is already out of the bottle,” said Dr. Andrew Kolodny, director of opioid policy research at Brandeis University and an advocate for stronger regulation of opioid drug companies. “Millions of Americans are now opioid-addicted because the campaign that Purdue and other opioid manufacturers used to increase prescribing worked well. ” – READ MORE
[divider][/divider]The Trump administration is gearing up for a battle with the pharmaceutical industry this year to attack one of the most pervasive problems within the American health care system: skyrocketing drug prices.
President Donald Trump signaled the upcoming campaign in his first State of the Union Address last month, claiming that one of his key priorities as president going forward is working to lower the costs of drugs.
“One of my greatest priorities is to reduce the price of prescription drugs. In many other countries, these drugs cost far less than what we pay in the United States. That is why I have directed my administration to make fixing the injustice of high drug prices one of our top priorities. Prices will come down,” the president said.
White House Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney and newly-confirmed Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar sat down with a small group of reporters Thursday morning to exclusively preview the White House’s Fiscal Year 2019 budget and how the administration plans to make good on the president’s commitment to tamper down drug prices.
Azar said the administration is framing the issue through two key questions: “How can we try to start flipping some of those incentives in the system geared towards higher prices? How do we find pockets of our programs where we maybe don’t negotiate enough or have people negotiating on our behalf to get as good of a deal?” – READ MORE
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