Prescription Drug | featured news

Total U.S. spending on prescription medicines declined last year, a first in more than half a century. The dip was 1 percent, to $325.8 billion — a 3.5 percent drop after accounting for population growth and economic expansion, according to the IMS Institute for Healthcare Informatics.

While guns have been a common denominator in mass slayings at schools by teens, there’s another familiar element that seems increasingly to be minimized. Some 90 percent of school shootings over more than a decade have been linked to a widely prescribed type of antidepressant called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors or SSRIs, according to British psychiatrist Dr. David Healy, a founder of RxISK.org, an independent website for researching and reporting on prescription drugs.

Here's one program candidates aren't likely to mess with: The Medicare prescription drug plan. A new poll sponsored by a health care group shows that 90% of seniors are satisfied with the program known as Medicare Part D, and approval has constantly risen since the plan came on line in 2006.

Drug retailer Walgreen Co is buying a 45 percent stake in European health and beauty group Alliance Boots for $6.7 billion in cash and stock, creating the world's biggest buyer of prescription drugs.

Heart-wrenching cries echo through the halls of the neonatal intensive care unit at East Tennessee Children's Hospital. Nearly half of the newborn babies in the hospital's NICU are suffering from prescription drug withdrawal.

More than 70 percent of people who abuse prescription pain relievers obtain the drugs from friends or relatives, usually with permission and for free, according to a government study to be released on Wednesday.

Los Angeles County coroner's officials said Monday they have not established a link between prescription drugs and the death of Whitney Houston, adding such a determination could only come after toxicology tests are completed.

Advocates for unfettered access to the “morning-after pill” Plan B One-Step took their case to President Obama’s chief science adviser Friday, asking him to find out the basis for the administration’s controversial decision last month to continue requiring that young girls get the drug only by prescription.

Americans are popping more antidepressants than ever before, and non-psychiatrists are increasingly willing to prescribe the drugs to patients ...

The cost of prescription medicines used by millions of people every day is about to plummet....