prescription drugs

Kansas is one of the worst in the nation when it comes to drug-induced deaths for teens and young adults. Heidi Tomassi’s son is an overdose survivor and she’s sharing their story with Olathe kids in hopes it might change the approach to drug awareness.

Pharmacists often say their businesses can’t survive under the reimbursement rates set by pharmacy benefit managers, the middlemen. Sometimes, they pay more for drugs than they’re allowed to charge customers.

Kansas City pharmacists walked off the job last September to protest working conditions and brought widespread attention to the troubled retail pharmacy business. The industry is battling economic pressures, changed buying habits and labor shortages.

Kansas City plasma donors help the United States fuel a pharmaceutical industry worth $35 billion. Many donors have lower incomes and rely on on selling their plasma to make ends meet.

Pharmacy manufacturers, who are playing defense on similar bills across the country, want Missouri Gov. Mike Parson to veto the legislation because the discounted prescriptions are often sold to patients at full retail price.

Opioid settlement payouts will be made to thousands of communities across the country over 18 years. Payouts in the Kansas City metropolitan area so far have ranged from $2.4 million to Kansas City, Missouri, to Kansas City to $4,500 to Westwood, Kansas.

Missouri's prescription drug monitoring database went online last week. Health workers will now need to enter patient information into a statewide database when they dispense opioids and other controlled substances.

With demand high for new COVID vaccines, some CVS pharmacies around the Kansas City area weren't able to give out shots because of a pharmacist walkout. Organizers are demanding better working conditions and said that extremely limited staffing puts CVS pharmacists and patients at risk.

Both Kansas and Missouri have seen the number of overdose deaths attributed to synthetic opioids like fentanyl increase dramatically in the last several years. The U.S.'s drug czar urged people to carry Naloxone to counteract opioid overdoses in a visit to the Midwest last week.

Health insurers and medical providers are at odds over who's responsible for the supply of expensive infusion drugs to treat lupus and cancer.

One of America's richest companies, which helps manage prescription drugs in the Kansas Medicaid program and settled with the state for $27.6 million over misconduct, has made hefty campaign donations to candidates in the Midwest and beyond.

Earlier this week, the Food and Drug Administration officially declared a nationwide shortage of the prescription drug Adderall.