pharmaceutical companies

By AARP Executive Vice President Debra Whitman, Ph.D. and AARP Director of Health Services Research Leigh Purvis

We hear a lot about how older Americans have difficulties with their prescription medications. That makes it all the more disturbing when a pharmaceutical company takes advantage of them by promoting a drug as safe and effective for a certain condition - like, say, dementia - when in fact it may not be.

If you owned the bestselling prescription drug of all time and its patent was about to expire, how would you prepare for competition from generic drugs?

By Ankita Rao, Kaiser Health News Blog

By Alvin Tran of Kaiser Health News

Weight gain, fatigue, loss of athletic prowess? "It could be Low-T," says Abbott Laboratories. That would be low testosterone -- a "once-natural part of getting old that has become a target for medical treatment," as the Associated Press puts it. Abbott is one of several U.S drug companiesmarketing testosterone gels, patches or injections to men over 40.

Pharma Giants Flaunt Rules: Several of the largest American pharmaceutical companies have repeatedly defrauded Medicare, Medicaid and patients over the past decade. But because these drugmakers"”including Pfizer and Merck"”are the only ones making critical medicines in the U.S., the federal government must continue to do business with them.