�鶹Ů��

To patrons of the Rum Boogie Cafe in Memphis, he’s Mick, a skilled guitarist with a bushy white beard who favors fedoras and sings soulful tunes about fishing and drinking. To Americans outraged by pharmaceutical prices, he just might be the guy to blame. (Langreth and Tracer, 5/2)

Stephen Ubl took over reins of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America last September just as public outrage over high drug prices was hitting its peak. A nimble inside-the-Beltway operative, Ubl came to PhRMA from the Advanced Medical Technology Association, the medical-device makers' trade group, where he won a two-year reprieve from the Affordable Care Act's device tax. He recently sat down for an interview with Modern Healthcare editor Merrill Goozner. (4/30)

As Joe Papa begins the difficult task this week of reviving Valeant Pharmaceuticals, he may want to start by repairing relations with hospitals. The drug maker angered many hospital officials early last year by suddenly boosting prices for a pair of important heart drugs for which few good alternatives are available. On the day that Valeant bought the drugs — Nitropress and Isuprel — from another drug maker, prices rose by 525 percent and 212 percent, respectively. (Silverman, 5/2)

The No. 1 health policy challenge facing the next administration — of either party — may well be the cost of drugs, according to a top administration health official. "If we don't address this problem in the next four or five years, and prescription drug costs grow as they've been growing, this will be one of the top three issues for my successor, if not the No. 1 issue," Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services acting administrator Andy Slavitt said in an exclusive interview. (Diamond, 4/28)

Americans frequently rail against the soaring costs of prescription drugs and demand that drug costs somehow be reined in. Just last week, members of the Senate Special Committee on Aging berated several top executives of the Valeant Pharmaceutical company for driving up the prices of two blood pressure and heart drugs, Nitropress and Isuprel, by 212 percent and 525 percent, respectively. (Pianin, 5/1)

Ramona Sequeira was explaining why she reorganized divisions within her company when she said, "The functional organization that we had was suboptimizing our business and our ability to adapt and respond." (Sachdev, 4/29)

Mylan NV anticipates lower prices this year on the generic drugs that make up the majority of its revenue, even as it shifts its business to be less reliant on the inexpensive copycat medicines by buying Swedish drugmaker Meda AB. “We continue to see nothing out of the ordinary to change our generic pricing assumptions of low- to mid-single digit erosion for the full year,” Chief Executive Officer Heather Bresch said in a statement as the company reported first-quarter earnings Tuesday. (Fourcade, 5/3)

In his final full year as Celgene CEO, Bob Hugin took a bit of a pay cut from 2014. But his compensation still racked up to $22.5 million, among the highest in biopharma, as the cancer-focused company continued to outclass its bigger rivals on revenue and earnings growth. Hugin’s base salary inched up in 2015 to just over $1.4 million, after Hugin nabbed a raise in March, but his cash bonus dropped a bit. (Staton, 5/2)