Pharmaceuticals

A bill passed by the California Legislature requires drugmakers to give 60 days' notice before raising a drug's price by 16 percent or more over two years, and to justify the price increase.

Mavyret, recently approved by the Food And Drug Administration, can cure hepatitis C in eight weeks, at a cost of $26,400. Though still expensive, that's well below the price of other options.

Industry says it costs about $2.7 billion to bring a cancer drug to market. But oncologists who ran the numbers put the average closer to $650 million. Drugs are priced way too high, the doctors say.

The blood thinner warfarin, which prevents blood clots, owes its existence to some cows who got very sick after eating spoiled hay — and to a chemist who spent years trying to figure out why.

The pharmaceutical company Alkermes is trying to increase the number of people taking Vivitrol for their opioid addiction by marketing the drug to judges, who have the power to influence treatment.

Compensation in recent years for the CEOs of the largest U.S. health care companies has far outstripped the wage growth of nearly all Americans, an investigation by the news site Axios has found.

The innovative drug Ocrevus looks as if it could be a game-changer for people with MS. But it's very, very expensive. And as with any new medication, the long-term safety risks are unknown.

More than 70 drugs approved by the FDA from 2001 to 2010 ran into safety concerns that prompted withdrawals from the market, "black box" warnings or other actions.

An inexpensive drug could dramatically reduce the number of deaths of mothers from bleeding after childbirth in low- and middle-income countries around the world.

An organization campaigning against foreign drug imports has deep connections to the lobbying group PhRMA, which includes Eli Lilly, Pfizer and Bayer, an analysis by Kaiser Health News reveals.

Researchers use intermediate endpoints like how a drug lowers cholesterol to get a quick sense of whether the drug might improve health. But those shortcuts often don't show true benefits and harms.

Gottlieb is seen as a mainstream pick for an agency that oversees a quarter of the U.S. economy, including pharmaceuticals, medical devices, food, cosmetics and other areas of human and animal health.