Here it comes

The CDC expects us to hit the top of the flu-activity graph in the next month, and the end of February is expected to be the peak.

Walgreens pays feds

Walgreens will pay the feds $269 million to settle fraud claims. That’s $209.2 million for allegedly billing the government for insulin it gave to people who didn’t need it, and $60 million for not giving Medicaid price discounts it had offered.

Latest aspirin news

Pluses and minuses: A meta-analysis finds that, for people without cardiovascular disease, “the use of aspirin was associated with a lower risk of cardiovascular events and an increased risk of major bleeding.”

Electric Avenue … to pain treatment

One alternative to pain meds — neurostimulation (e.g., spinal cord stimulators) — is expected to be a $16 billion market within the next six years. That’s a growth of 15 percent per year, at least according to one research firm*.

* Bonus fact: The company that released the outlook is based in Selbyville, Del., home of the Mumford Sheet Metal Works, which in 1950 set the record for the world’s largest frying pan.

Artist’s conception

What the traffic will bear, right?

Insulin makers doubled their prices in just four years, from 2012 to 2016. There are no changes to the product, no R&D costs, no marketing.

Per the senior researcher of the report:

“Use is pretty flat, and the price changes are occurring in both older and newer products. That surprised me. The exact same products are costing double,” she said.

The Wild, The Innocent, and the K Street Shuffle

The pharmaceutical industry pumped a record $27.5 million into the Washington, D.C., economy in 2018.

Scarlet stickers

One of Florida’s potential answers to the opioid crisis: Require pharmacists to put red stickers on opioid bottles.

The warning stickers would be required to flag the addictive nature of opioids and the risks of overdoses. The stickers would have text large enough to be legible and would be placed on the caps of the bottles.

Elsewhere: “Portland is a total train wreck”

What happens when you live in a city where people don’t wanna vaccinate their kids? People get sick, people are hospitalized, an emergency is declared, and you make the news.