Deal Assures Market for Anemia Drug
By ANDREW POLLACK
Moving to protect a lucrative monopoly against impending competition, Amgen has reached an agreement that will preserve its status as the main supplier of anemia drugs to one of the nation’s two large kidney dialysis chains.
The dialysis chain, DaVita, agreed that Amgen’s drug, Epogen, will account for at least 90 percent of its purchases of that type of anemia drug through the end of 2018. DaVita will get discounts and rebates on the drug, Amgen said in a regulatory filing Friday morning.
F.D.A. Revokes Approval of Avastin for Use as Breast Cancer Drug
By ANDREW POLLACK
The commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration on Friday revoked the approval of the drug Avastin as a treatment for breast cancer, ruling on an emotional issue that pitted the hopes of some desperate patients against the statistics of clinical trials.
The commissioner, Dr. Margaret A. Hamburg, said that clinical trials had shown that the drug was not helping breast cancer patients to live longer or to meaningfully control their tumors, but did expose them to potentially serious side effects like severe high blood pressureand hemorrhaging.
Sunday Dialogue: Judging the Health Law
Readers react to a letter saying the health reform law is reasonable and needed, and should be upheld by the Supreme Court.
In 2012, both Obama and Romney would bear the burdens of health-care reform
By Paul Starr,
If former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney and President Obama face off in the 2012 presidential campaign, America will witness the singular spectacle of two candidates getting very little love — and plenty of hate — for the same signature achievement: reforming health care.Both overcame long odds to pass legislation, Romney in Massachusetts, Obama at the national level. Even the specifics of their reform laws are similar — both include subsidies for private insurance, the establishment of insurance exchanges and a mandate for individuals to maintain a minimum level of coverage. Each man expected to reap credit for his effort. But neither has gotten any political mileage out of it — in fact, both may have lost more ground than they picked up.
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