| Feds at It Again, Seize Canadian Drugs in Miami
Instead of searching for Osama Bin Laden the Bush administration seems determined to keep Canada Drugs out of the hands of Seniors who cannot afford to pay American prices. 37 packages of medicine from Canada shipped to Florida were seized last week. This comes after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said they would stop the practice of seizing drugs that would be used for personal use. Democratic U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson was not pleased when he heard the news. He lashed out at the Bush administration and says senior citizens deserve to buy cheaper medications to save money and preserve their health. FDA-approved drugs such as Lipitor for cholesterol, and Nexium for acid reflux were part of the seizure by the federal agents. It really is disturbing that the powers that be in this country are letting this happen.
Surf The Web And Save On Prescriptions
(AP) KEY LARGO, Fla. It's not often you save several hundred dollars on medicine by surfing the Web, but David Melvin did, CBS News correspondent Wyatt Andrews reports. "Tremendous savings," he says. Melvin was on the Consumer Reports' Best Buy Drugs site and saw that his cholesterol medicine, Pravachol, was three times more expensive than a plain generic, Lovastatin, a drug the Web site was calling its "best buy." "When I saw the difference in pricing and what I could save, an "oh my God' is right," Melvin says. He also saw that Nexium, the hugely popular prescription drug he was taking for acid reflux, was not the best buy it was Prilosec OTC, sold over the counter. His doctor agreed to the changes, and when Melvin added his savings last year, it was more than $600 on two drugs. "I can have the same kind of effectiveness for a heck of a lot less money," Melvin says.
Schering-Plough's turnaround is moving on apace
Schering-Plough is celebrating what its chief executive Fred Hassan describes as the continuance of "an extraordinary transformation" as the company posted a strong set of financials that were again driven by its cholesterol franchise.
Net income for the fourth quarter rose 75% to $182 million, or $0.12 per share, and the company noted that those figures include an unfavourable impact of $0.04 per share related to the streamlining its manufacturing operations and a charge of $0.01 per share related to the licensing of the over-the-counter heartburn treatment Zegerid (omeprazole/sodium bicarbonate).
Adjusted net sales were up 18.1% to $3.20 billion, which includes the contribution of Merck & Co/S-P joint venture products Zetia (ezetimibe) and Vytorin (ezetimibe and simvastatin).
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