Impotence remedies Viagra, Cialis and Levitra have been associated with a sudden loss of hearing in some patients, the FDA said today. Whoa! Wasn’t it worrying enough when the agency warned two years ago that drugs have been associated with sudden loss of vision in some patients?Somebody at FDA caught wind of a case report [...]
Most Americans say employers shouldn’t have the right to require that their workers participate in programs to stop smoking or shed pounds, says a poll by The Wall Street Journal Online/Harris Interactive.More and more companies are adopting stricter wellness policies to keep health-care costs in line. But the moves are meeting resistance.Sixty-five percent of respondents [...]
When Pfizer dropped the bomb on Exubera today, the Health Blog was curious about the reaction from Pfizer’s partner Nektar Therapeutics. We went to the company’s Web site bright and early this morning and were perplexed when we found no mention of the setback for the drug that helped put Nektar on the map.This afternoon [...]
Hillary Clinton is talking health today with a bunch of journalists including the WSJ’s Laura Meckler. Click here to watch the video feed.Look for Clinton to use the word “choice” or “choose” a lot. She calls her proposal the “American Health Choices Plan.” Some Washington wags have suggested the name shows the lessons/scars of the [...]
Inhaled insulin is dead. Long live inhaled insulin?Pfizer took a $2.8 billion write-down today when it admitted defeat and cancelled Exubera, its inhaled insulin that hardly anybody bought. Stock of Pfizer’s Exubera partner, Nektar, fell more than 15% (see chart).Pfizer hoped Exubera would be a popular alternative for those diabetics who don’t like to use [...]
New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo rattled the cages of some more insurers over their controversial programs to rate doctors. The AG fired off letters to Empire Blue Cross Blue Shield, Preferred Care and HIP Health Plan of New York/GHI. Cuomo (pictured) says the programs are “potentially deceptive” and “driven by financial motives and not [...]
The House will probably fail today in its attempt to override President Bush’s veto on a bill to expand the State Children’s Health Insurance Program. Here are a couple things likely to come next.The Democrats haven’t been eager to bend on the bill, but they could agree to put stricter income caps on children who [...]
“Perhaps the timing caught some of you by surprise because we didn’t engage in the drama of a public horse race for succession that some of our competitors have been involved in,” Wyeth CEO and short-timer Robert Essner told analysts this morning during an earnings call. He was comparing his company’sdecision to name Bernard [...]
The management shuffle at Novartis continued today, as the company put a private equity guy it hired a few months ago in charge of its prescription drug unit.Joe Jimenez, who left Blackstone in April to run Novartis’s consumer healthcare division, will now be in charge of revamping the company’s prescription business, the WSJ reports. He’ll [...]
The pain keeps getting worse at Boston Scientific, which said yesterday that it would lay off 2,300 people, or 8% of its work force. The company didn’t say exactly who would be laid off, but more details are expected tomorrow, when the company announces third-quarter earnings.Deep cuts have been expected for a while, and the [...]
