Drug Patents and "Pay-For-Delay"--Drug Industry Payoffs That Need To End

I call your attention to a recent op-ed by a member of the Federal Trade Commission, Jon Leibowitz, in the Washington Post.Commissioner Leibowitz writes about the growing practice of "colluding with competitors to keep lower-cost generic alternatives to prescription drugs off the market."The Hatch-Waxman Act made it easier for generic drugs to enter the market once a name brand drug's patent has

Health Insurance Industry "Racing to Defuse a Growing Furor Over Retroactive Policy Cancellations"

That was the lead line in a Wall Street Journal story on the recent health insurance policy rescission controversy. The controversy is over a health insurance company's right to cancel a health insurance policy when the insured made a misstatement on the original application.Some insurers have held they can cancel a policy even when the misstatement was not material. For example, forgetting a

Give Cuomo and the Physicians What They Say They Want--Show the Patient Just What the Doc Is Accepting From Everyone Else

New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo says that health plans are using the "Prevailing Healthcare Charges System" to "defraud" consumers and "manipulate" the system.He points to the example of an insurer refusing to pay a physician's $200 bill--the insurer said that $77 was more appropriate.In an earlier post, I pointed out that an examination of my own family's health insurance "explanation of