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A big jump in prescription drug sales, particularly overseas, helped Johnson & Johnson swing to a large fourth-quarter profit after posting a huge loss a year ago, when it took a $13.6 billion charge related to the late-2017 U.S. tax overhaul. The world’s biggest maker of health care products also benefited from an effective tax rate of just 2.6 percent for the latest quarter, along with reduced spending on research and development. It topped Wall Street profit and revenue expectations. (Johnson, 1/22)

Johnson & Johnson said it expects its sales growth to slow in 2019, citing pricing pressures and generic-drug competition for its pharmaceutical division. The health-products company, whose financial results are considered a bellwether for many health sectors, said Tuesday it expects full-year sales of $80.4 billion to $81.2 billion. For 2018, J&J said its sales rose 6.7% to $81.6 billion. (Loftus and Chin, 1/22)

While the company often tops the targets it sets for itself, the 2019 goal pales in comparison to its projections a year ago for sales growth of almost 2 percent. “We still have more work to do and we are committed to continuing to build upon this momentum and return to above-market growth in 2020,” Chief Executive Officer Alex Gorsky said during a conference call with analysts. J&J has consumer, medical-device and pharmaceutical units that would be large health-care companies in their own right. It’s the first of the major medical-device and drug companies to report earnings, and offers investors a hint about how the rest of the industry may fare. (Griffin, 1/22)

Johnson & Johnson agreed to pay $120 million to resolve state attorneys generals’ claims of deceptive marketing in metal-on-metal hip implants some consumers said were defective. The settlement resolves claims J&J and its DePuy unit misled artificial-hip recipients about how long the devices would last and requires the companies to change the way they market the implants, according to New York Attorney General Letitia James. The state attorneys general alleged DePuy officials wrongly marketed the devices as having a five-year survival rate of more than 90 percent, when European health regulars found the rates were around 5 percent, according to James. (Feeley, 1/22)

David Cordani became CEO of one of the nation's largest health insurers at age 43 and remembers clearly that no one gave him a textbook explaining the role. The now 52-year-old executive has helped his company, Cigna Corp., grow and diversify as the health care sector grapples with perpetually rising costs. Revenue at Cigna has more than doubled since Cordani took over in late 2009, and the company recently closed a $52-billion acquisition of the pharmacy benefits manager Express Scripts. (Murphy, 1/22)

Call Cigna a health insurer, and CEO David Cordani will try to correct you. He doesn't consider the company a pharmacy benefit manager either, even though Cigna just spent roughly $52 billion on one of the country's biggest prescription processors, Express Scripts. (Murphy, 1/22)

Ascension is splitting the title of president and CEO of the organization and unifying its two-pronged structure, resulting in the departure of three top executives including Patricia Maryland, according to an internal memo obtained exclusively by Modern Healthcare. Joe Impicciche will serve in the new role of Ascension president, leaving Anthony Tersigni with only the CEO title. Dividing the organization limited collaboration and created "unintended hierarchy and silos," Tersigni wrote in the memo. (Kacik, 1/22)