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The Nevada Senate, after emotional floor debate, approved a bill...allowing terminally ill patients to request life-ending medication from their physicians...Senate Bill 261 passed on an 11-10 vote and now goes to the Assembly...Supporters said it would provide the sick and dying the right to end their suffering at a time of their own choosing...Sen. Ben Kieckhefer, R-Reno, was a sponsor of the bill but voted against it. Kieckhefer said he became "increasingly uncomfortable" with the bill and what he called a "significant lack of clarity."..."I don’t necessarily trust doctors to tell me when I’m going to die,"...He also shared concerns raised by critics that the sick, frail and disabled could be pressured to end their lives by family members or caregivers...Under the measure, mentally competent patients over the age of 18 could request a prescription for life-ending drugs. Two doctors would have to confirm the terminal diagnosis and a life expectancy of six months of less. Doctors, pharmacists and health care facilities would not have to participate...

Prosecutors have worked their way to the top of Insys Therapeutics. After arresting a series of lower-level workers, the Justice Department...hauled in former CEO Michael Babich…Federal authorities alleged that Babich and five other former Insys executives and managers “led a nationwide conspiracy” to bribe doctors to boost scripts for the company’s powerful and addictive painkiller Subsys...indictment...detailed a scheme that Babich and the others allegedly set up with 10 healthcare practitioners in Alabama, Michigan, Texas, Arkansas and elsewhere. The Insys execs pushed sales staff to offer hundreds of thousands of dollars in “bribes and kickbacks” to doctors to increase their Subsys scripts...According to the DOJ, Babich faces charges of conspiracy to commit racketeering, conspiracy to commit wire and mail fraud and conspiracy to violate the Anti-Kickback Law...

Doctors in states that track painkiller prescriptions were nearly one-third less likely to offer patients dangerously addicting opioids, a new study found...The launch of drug-monitoring programs in 24 states led to an immediate 30 percent drop in prescriptions for Schedule II opioids, the most addictive, in patients with pain complaints...We are moving in the direction of raising awareness about overprescribing these drugs...But we still have a lot to do in terms of changing the culture and practice of painkiller prescriptions...Drug-monitoring databases may make doctors think twice before prescribing pain medications for a variety of reasons in addition to uncovering "doctor shopping" by patients...Knowing that they’re being watched may serve as a deterrent, and the programs may generally increase awareness of the dangers of prescribing opioids...

U.S. doctors and hospitals throw out almost $3 billion in unused cancer drugs each year because the medicines come in supersized single-use packages and excess medicine must be discarded for safety reasons, a recent paper suggests...Researchers focused on 20 expensive medicines that are given by injection or intravenous drip and require doses adjusted based on the patient’s body size. Often, the packages contain much more medicine than patients need, and the leftovers wind up in the trash...The waste is driving up the cost of their care and it is money that they are spending that provides them no benefit...It also drives up the cost for their insurance, which leads to higher premiums, which costs them more money too...Patients and insurers pay drug manufacturers about $1.8 billion a year for medicines that are thrown away...Biologic medicines often lack preservatives and have a higher risk of contamination than other drugs, and leftovers from single-use vials are thrown out because using them could give patients infections...One of the clearest solutions to this waste is to have more dosing options available...That would require drug makers to sell the medicines in a variety of package sizes.

Novartis is embroiled in a soap opera in Greece, complete with bribery allegations and a suicide threat. Now the plot is thickening. The country’s chief corruption prosecutor, Eleni Raikou, has resigned—and she’s blaming the Swiss pharma giant’s legal issues for her decision...Raikou...sending a letter to Greece’s Supreme Court claiming she was targeted by "unofficial power centres" over her investigation of Novartis...Greek authorities raided Novartis’ offices...after one of the company’s local managers reportedly made a suicide threat...The executive was one of the employees the authorities were interviewing...The probe began after media reports appeared alleging that Novartis had paid bribes to local "functionaries,"…Raikou’s resignation letter said that the bribery probe turned up "substantial and crucial evidence" that doctors and some politicians in Greece had received €28 million ($30.4 million) worth of bribes from a Novartis bank account...some of the evidence was linked to the prosecution of a local businessman and former minister of defense Yiannos Papantoniou...

A dozen doctors hold a hunger strike in the corridors of an Andean city hospital. In another provincial city, hundreds of protesting medics suspend appointments...With eight out of 10 medicines now scarce, according to the main pharmacy group, protesting doctors are demanding that President Nicolas Maduro's socialist government declare a national health crisis and allow foreign humanitarian aid...In June, Pino (Christian Pino, a surgeon at the Merida hospital) read a list of doctors' demands in Venezuela's National Assembly before the opposition-led legislature declared a state of medical emergency and approved channels for foreign humanitarian aid...But the...Supreme Court shot down the assembly's proposal. Government officials deny Venezuela is facing a humanitarian crisis and say there is no need for humanitarian assistance...Idabelias Arias, the head of the emergency ward at a pediatric hospital in Barquisimeto..."Doctors are doing war medicine here."

Valeant Pharmaceuticals International Inc, which has acknowledged mistakes in its drug pricing practices amid U.S. congressional probes, said on Thursday it has formed a new committee to oversee pricing of the company's drugs...The Patient Access and Pricing Committee will initially be chaired by Joseph Papa, Valeant's new chairman and chief executive officer... the committee will review the pricing of Nitropress, Isuprel, Cuprimine and Syprine...Valeant raised the price of Isuprel by about 720 percent and Nitropress by 310 percent...Prices of the other two drugs, used to treat a genetic disorder that causes copper to build up in the body's organs, were raised by 5,878 percent and 3,162 percent, respectively...This new committee will take a disciplined approach to reviewing the company's pricing of drugs, and will consider the impact on patients, doctors, and our health care industry partners...

Federal authorities are stepping up investigations at Department of Veterans Affairs medical centers due to a sharp increase in opioid theft, missing prescriptions or unauthorized drug use by VA employees since 2009…Doctors, nurses or pharmacy staff at federal hospitals — the vast majority within the VA system — siphoned away controlled substances for their own use or street sales, or drugs intended for patients simply disappeared...Aggravating the problem is that some VA hospitals have been lax in tracking drug supplies...Reported incidents of drug losses or theft at federal hospitals jumped from 272 in 2009 to 2,926 in 2015, before dipping to 2,457 last year, according to DEA data...The GAO review...found the most missed inspections at VA's hospital in Washington, D.C...Monthly checks were missed there more than 40 percent of the time, mostly in critical patient care areas, such as the operating room and intensive care units…Responding to the findings, the House Veterans Affairs Committee planned a hearing on the inspection issue. Its chairman, Rep. Phil Roe, a physician, said failing to follow protocol is serious and "should not be tolerated within VA."

Doctors who received even one free meal from a pharmaceutical salesperson were more likely than others to prescribe the drug being promoted, even when a generic equivalent was available, according to a new study...Each year in the U.S., $73 billion is spent on brand name drugs for which there is an equivalent generic available, and patients pay for $24 billion of that amount themselves...The brand name drugs and the generics are "so similar that there’s no benefit," from using the brand name versions...doctors who received even one sponsored meal from one of the pharmaceutical companies were more likely to prescribe the target drug over a generic alternative, compared to doctors who did not receive sponsored meals. As the number of meals and meal value increased, relative prescribing rates also increased...It’s not clear from this study whether receiving meals caused doctors to change their prescribing patterns, but "humans are very responsive to gifts...

Global brand consultant Interbrand, author of the annual Best Global Brands list, has turned its attention to pharma. InterbrandHealth looked specifically at the pharma category and sifted through 25 companies to get the "Best Pharma Brands," a baseline top 10 in the industry.

1. Pfizer - ranked highest at almost $20 billion ($19.99 billion) in brand value
2. Roche Group - at $15.47 billion
3. Merck & Co. - at $13.88 billion
4. Janssen at $13.87 billion
5. Novartis at $13.5 billion
6. Amgen at $13.46 billion
7. Gilead Sciences at $13.36 billion
8. Novo Nordisk at $10.21 billion
9. AstraZeneca at $8.12 billion
10. GlaxoSmithKline at $6.78 billion

Interbrand looked at three factors in determining the dollar figure for the brands: financial analysis, brand strength and role of brand. The third factor measures brand influence and how likely customers are to recommend it--in this case, how likely are doctors and healthcare providers to recommend or prescribe the brand's drugs.