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Two of the most innovative pharmaceutical corporations in the world have their headquarters on opposite banks of the Rhine as it flows through Basel, Switzerland. Ranked No. 2 and 4 in total worldwide sales, Roche (RHHBY) makes Herceptin and other important cancer treatments while Novartis (NVS) recently brought to market the immune therapy Kymriah and the gene therapy Zolgensma. Sanofi (SNY) (7) is in Paris, Glaxo Smith Kline (6) and AstraZeneca (AZN) (14) are in London, and Takeda (TAK) (20) is based in Osaka. (Peter B. Bach, 10/11)

As House Democrats press on with their impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump, it is essential that their party remains mindful of the promises and policies they campaigned on in 2018. Though the impeachment inquiry will continue to dominate the media cycle and Washington politics for months to come, congressional Democrats would be wise to remain focused on legislative priorities and accomplishments because, simply put, these will be the issues that Americans take to the ballot box in 2020. (Douglas Schoen, 10/13)

In the not-too-distant future that we could be facing — one with rampant, uncontrollable, multidrug-resistant microbes — a seemingly inconsequential infection could have the power to kill. Being admitted to a hospital may do more harm than good, as hospital-acquired infections become incurable. Modern medical procedures, such as organ transplants, chemotherapy, and even surgery, might no longer be possible. For many patients and physicians, this future is already a reality.If an individual in the U.S. is infected with a drug-resistant strain of Acinetobacter — a species of bacteria my company is working on that is widely found in hospitals and that has one of the highest rates of resistance to antibiotics — there is a 50% chance he or she will die. (Manos Perros, 10/15)

Being an enormously profitable industry leader doesn't mean what it used to. Johnson & Johnson and UnitedHealthGroup Inc., the world’s biggest health-care company and health insurer, respectively, reported third-quarter earnings results Tuesday morning that should thrill investors. Both managed to beat Wall Street earnings estimates and boosted full-year profit guidance above expectations as they generated a combined $80 billion in sales. (Max Nisen, 10/15)

Next week is expected to kick off yet another round in Massachusetts’ continuing battle to control health care costs, a prime driver of the state budget and family budgets alike. This time, health regulators are taking a hard look at drug costs — an overdue target for scrutiny if there ever was one — but already Big Pharma and the local biotech industry are pushing back. Total health care spending in Massachusetts rose 3.1 percent to $60.9 billion in 2018, outpacing inflation (2.9 percent) and wage growth (2.8 percent), according to the latest report of the Center for Health Information and Analysis (CHIA) released last week. That was $2.1 billion more than the previous year. (10/16)

Today in our country, nearly one in four Americans either go without their prescriptions or skip doses because they cannot afford prescriptions medicines. The drug corporations are bringing in record profits — making billions while collecting huge tax breaks under President Trump’s 2017 tax law. Eli Lilly, one of the largest manufacturers of insulin, for instance, paid no federal taxes last year despite raking in $598 million. Meanwhile, families are being forced to choose between paying for rent or food and filling their child’s prescription. (Jennifer Butler, 10/14)

A recent press release from the Food and Drug Administration titled “Reorganization of the Office of New Drugs with Corresponding Changes to the Office of Translational Sciences and the Office of Pharmaceutical Quality,” may have sounded like another bland and boring exercise in regulatory rhetoric. But it actually signals a revolutionary shift in regulatory velocity. Changes in the FDA’s Office of New Drugs (OND) will create enhanced review zones that cross disease areas and divisions to maximize access to more focused and innovative areas of regulatory expertise. ...The rationale is to make the FDA more efficient and help it better understand the diseases that are the aim of treatment by the drugs being evaluated for approval. (Peter J. Pitts, 10/14)

Outrage about the rising prices of prescription drugs has put cancer drugs in the spotlight. But there’s an important question that needs to be asked: What is the best pricing metric to use for them? Economists like us spend a lot of time worrying about this in a more general context. When the government computes its consumer price index, for example, it thinks about the quality of the goods that households purchase. (Alice Chen and Dana Goldman, 10/14)