Pharmaceuticals

A U.S. attorney has sued two nursing homes in Watsonville, Calif., alleging that they failed to provide the acceptable care they were paid for by the government.

No doctor would refuse to prescribe cholesterol-lowering statins to patients because they're overweight. But despite guidelines, some doctors aren't offering preventive drugs to those at risk for HIV.

A husband and wife who are doctors have been working on fact boxes for drugs that, like nutrition labels for foods, would more concisely convey a medicine's benefits and risks.

There's overmedicating and self-medicating, but some vets are "de-medicating." Prescribed multiple drugs to deal with PTSD and pain, they've stopped taking them — without authorization.

Drugmakers offer medicines at a bargain price to hospitals that treat large numbers of poor patients. Hospitals sometimes resell the drugs at full price and make hefty profits.

An Alameda County ordinance puts the responsibility for drug disposal squarely on the companies that made the medicines. States and the federal government have considered similar measures, but none has passed.

The first in a new class of drugs that can cure the viral infection that is the leading cause of liver failure and liver cancer is poised for a marketing green light from the Food and Drug Administration. More than 3 million Americans have hepatitis C, but most don't know it.

Paying doctors to prescribe particular drugs is illegal. But drugmakers pay some doctors to talk with their peers about prescription drugs. The speakers say they aren't influenced by the money they get for promoting the drugs. But data show many of them are top prescribers of the medicines.

Emergency contraceptives like Plan B and ella are effective at preventing pregnancy after unprotected sex. Claims that the pills are tantamount to abortion, however, aren't supported by science, say researchers. The only way the drugs work is by stopping a woman's body from ovulating.