drug companies Archives - Monitor Telegram

Canadian drug company under fire in U.K. after raising drug price 6,000%

November 22, 2017

Britain’s competition watchdog is accusing a Canadian drug company of making tens of millions of dollars by overcharging the British healthcare system and exploiting its patients.

Until this year, Concordia International was the U.K.’s only provider of liothyronine, a thyroid drug that’s primarily used to treat a condition caused by a deficiency of thyroid hormone. For British patients, such as Felicity Hart who had her thyroid removed in 2010, the tablets are literally a life-saver.

Canada is long overdue for a national registry of drug company payments to doctors

October 17, 2017

Ontario recently took a historic step as the first province in Canada to introduce legislation that would shine a light on interactions between drug companies and prescribers. The use of the term “historic” here is not hyperbole, since the extent of payments by the pharmaceutical industry to individual physicians in Canada has never been known.

Other countries, such as the United States and France, have been making such information public for a few years now. But Ontario’s bill would provide a wider scope of transparency by including payments to prescribers of all sorts — not just doctors — into the mix, and even including payments from medical device companies.

Potential changes concern pharma companies

October 2, 2017

Proposed changes to the way Canada puts a ceiling on patented drug prices have put pharmaceutical companies on alert, says an Ottawa intellectual property lawyer.

Earlier this summer, Health Canada released a consultation report entitled “Protecting Canadians from Excessive Drug Prices” that included a number of suggested amendments to the federal Patented Medicines Regulations, which are in turn used by the Patented Medicines Prices Review Board to determine the level at which a drug’s price crosses the threshold to become excessive.

Drug Giant Faced a Reckoning as China Took Aim at Bribery

November 7, 2016

Peter Humphrey was in the bathroom of his Shanghai apartment when the police kicked the door off its hinges and knocked him to the ground. Nearly two dozen officers stormed his home. They confiscated files, laptops and hard drives related to his work as a corporate investigator.

Mr. Humphrey and his wife, Yu Yingzeng, were taking to Building 803, a notoriously bleak criminal investigation center normally reserved for human smugglers, drug traffickers, and political activists. Sleep- deprived and hungry, he was transferred later that day to a detention house, placed in a cage and strapped to an iron chair. Outside, three officers sat on a podium and demanded answers.

Mr. Humphrey knew the reason for the harsh interrogation. He and Ms. Yu had been working for GlaxoSmithKline, the British pharmaceutical maker under investigation in China for fraud and bribery.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/02/business/international/china-rules-glaxo-bribes-sex-tape-whistleblower-cautionary-tale.html