Highlights of the important and interesting in the world of healthcare:
J&J to buy out Dutch vaccine maker. Johnson & Johnson has reached a deal to buy all the outstanding equity of Dutch vaccines maker Crucell that it doesn’t already own for about $2.43 billion — just as some major Crucell shareholders say the bid’s too low, according to FiercePharma.
Health reform nixes 3M retiree benefits. Retirees of 3M, maker of Post-It Notes and Scotch tape, will see their health insurance go away, courtesy of Obamacare, according to InsureBlog.
A Personalized Approach to Medication Nonadherence
At the Abarca Forward conference earlier this year, George Van Antwerp, managing director at Deloitte, discussed how social determinants of health and a personalized member experience can improve medication adherence and health outcomes.
Healthcare costs endanger public finances. “An improving economy should reduce near-term deficits, but our public finances are, nevertheless, on an unsustainable path in the longer term, reflecting in large part our aging population and the continual rise in health-care costs,” warned Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke in a Kaiser Health News report.
Bitter pill for Big Pharma? It looks like Genzyme will end up being acquired by Sanofi-Aventis. But the remaining U.S. biotech targets that are big enough to move the needle for Big Pharma — Celgene, Allergan and Biogen Idec — would make unappetizing acquisitions, according to the Wall Street Journal’s The Source blog.
U.S. promises $4 billion for AIDS. The United States will provide $4 billion over three years to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, reports ModernHealthcare.com. On Tuesday, the New York Times reported that the global fund had failed to reach even its lowest “austerity level” fund-raising target of $13 billion.
First, do no harm. A group of physicians will try to communicate the benefits and harm of therapies to both doctors and patients at a new website, TheNNT.com, which stands for The Number Needed to Treat, according to the Wall Street Journal’s Health blog.
