Prescription Drugs

After making a tool that tracks how well drug testers follow U.S. law, researchers turned to an even bigger market for drug trials: the European Union.

• By Francie Diep

Testing prescription drugs on pregnant women is controversial. It's also utterly necessary if we care about the health of both mother and child.

• By Crystal Clark

The director of a new documentary about America's prescription drug epidemic talks Big Pharma and opens up about personal struggles with pill addiction.

• By Katie Kilkenny

Too often, doctors aren't using sound science when they prescribe a drug for unapproved uses, a new study finds.

• By Francie Diep

Medicare has increased oversight of its prescription drug program but many holes remain, allowing fraud and abuse to proliferate. Questionable practices were found at 1,400 pharmacies, which collectively billed Medicare $2.3 billion in 2014.

• By Charles Ornstein

Medicare’s spending on drugs to treat hepatitis C soared more than 15-fold from 2013 to 2014 as new breakthroughs came to the market, according to previously undisclosed federal data. The drugs cure the disease, but taxpayers are footing the bill.

• By Charles Ornstein

As states crack down hard on pain prescriptions, some are seeing a resurgence in abuse of the harder stuff.

• By Lauren Kirchner

Medicare gives itself the power to ban physicians if they prescribe medications in abusive ways.

• By Charles Ornstein

A new report finds that more than half of insurance companies in Medicare’s drug program haven’t reported fraud cases to the government. The findings echo an earlier investigation that found fraud flourishing in the program.

• By Charles Ornstein

As Medicare considers banning doctors who pose a “threat to the health or safety” of patients, it plans to consider an array of factors.

• By Tracy Weber and Charles Ornstein

The means—prescription drugs, access to firearms, bridges without prevention methods—play a much bigger role than any emotions or thought processes.

• By Cody C. Delistraty

Action follows ProPublica’s investigative series detailing inappropriate and wasteful prescribing and fraud in the nation’s biggest prescription drug program.

• By Tracy Weber and Charles Ornstein

Action comes after ProPublica uses the government’s own data to find patterns of dangerous prescribing, waste, and potential fraud in Medicare Part D.

• By Tracy Weber and Charles Ornstein

The federal government does little to stop schemers from stealing from Medicare Part D, the program that provides prescription drugs to more than 36 million seniors and disabled people.

• By Tracy Weber and Charles Ornstein

New research on the why and when of truckers abusing drugs.

• By Lauren Kirchner