*By Bridgette Webb*
Drugmaker Merck announced earlier this month it will slash prices on several drugs by 10 percent or more.
But there is a catch: the price rollback will only affect some of the smaller products in its portfolioーlike Hepatitis C drug, Zepatier, which accounts for about 4 percent of the company's salesーand not top sellers like cancer treatment Keytruda.
"Their scope is relatively limited," said Peter Loftus, a Reporter for the Wall Street Journal, during an interview on Cheddar Monday. "If you think about the total sales that Merck generatesーit's a relatively small percentage."
Merck's announcement was met with praise from the Trump administration. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar claimed the drop in prices was spurred by Trump's latest crackdown on pharmaceutical companies.
Other big pharma names are following suit: Pfizer and Novartis announced they will freeze price increases for the rest of the year, earning them congratulatory tweets from the president.
Despite all of the price freezes and drops, Loftus says that patients may not actually see any real savings.
"I don't think you can say on a widespread basis, and really for the average drug or patient, that prices are coming down, there are still price increases."
For the full segment, [click here.]
(https://cheddar.com/videos/drugmakers-tout-lower-prices)
Drugmaker giant Eli Lilly CEO Dave Ricks said during a Senate Committee hearing that the company will not raise the price of insulin products.
New blood donations rules will allow sexually active gay and bisexual men in monogamous relationships to give in the FDA guidelines ease decades-old restrictions put in place to protect the blood supply from HIV.
A new study finds an experimental skin patch shows promise to treat toddlers who are highly allergic to peanuts.
Britain's fertility regulator on Wednesday confirmed the births of the U.K.'s first babies created using an experimental technique combining DNA from three people, an effort to prevent the children from inheriting rare genetic diseases.
Federal health advisers said Wednesday that a decades-old birth control pill should be sold without a prescription, paving the way for a likely U.S. approval of the first over-the-counter contraceptive medication.
Colette Morales, instructor at Core 95, joined Cheddar News to teach a few basic yoga poses aimed at strengthening multiple areas of the body simultaneously.
A group of nationally-recognized medical experts are suggesting women start getting breast cancer screening at 40 years old.
The Food and Drug Administration is kicking off a two-day meeting to consider whether to let people get birth control pills without a prescription, with a decision expected by the summer.
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