BioCentury This Week: On The Brink of Disunioun

When President Obama delivers the State of the Union address on Tuesday, he’ll be speaking to a polarized Congress where brinksmanship is the order of the day.  If lawmakers don’t act by March 1, budget sequestration will slash funding for biomedical research and oversight of the nation’s food and drug products. Continue reading

Decades of Progress with More to Come

Over four decades ago, President Richard Nixon signed the National Cancer Act and the “War on Cancer” was engaged.  Now as we look at the progress that has been made and the progress yet to come, executives from PhRMA share the recent results of a study released on over 5000 new drugs in the biopharma pipeline that are taking us forward in the war against cancer and other diseases.Continue reading

BioCentury this week looks at Medicare- 150 Ideas: Will Any of Them Work?

The nation is heading toward budget sequestration. For Medicare, this means a 2 percent spending cut.

But that’s just a down payment. Any serious attempt to tackle the U.S. deficit must curb the increase in Medicare and Medicaid spending.

Now, the Kaiser Family Foundation has issued a report listing 150 ideas to tackle the problem. The problem: Almost all of them would hurt someone — either by directly limiting access to healthcare, or reducing payments to hospitals, physicians or drug companiesContinue reading