Walgreens is an American company that operates the second-largest pharmacy store chain in the United States, behind CVS Health. It specializes in filling prescriptions, health and wellness products, health information, and photo services. It was founded in Chicago in 1901, and is headquartered in the Chicago suburb of Deerfield, Illinois. On December 31, 2014, Walgreens and Switzerland-based Alliance Boots merged to form a new holding company, Walgreens Boots Alliance. Walgreens became a subsidiary of the new company, which retained its Deerfield headquarters and trades on the Nasdaq under the symbol WBA.
McKesson Europe AG, with its headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany, is a leading international wholesale and retail company and provider of logistics and services in the pharmaceutical and healthcare sectors. The company had around 37,000 employees at the end of the 2019 financial year and is represented in 13 countries in Europe. In the 2019 financial year the company achieved a turnover of EUR 21.18 billion. The majority shareholder of the company is the US-based McKesson Corporation, which holds a share of 77.01%. The remaining 22.99% of shares are available on the open market. Kevin Kettler, a US citizen, has been Chairman of McKesson Europe since 1 November 2018.
Gilead Sciences, Inc. is an American biopharmaceutical company headquartered in Foster City, California that focuses on researching and developing antiviral drugs used in the treatment of HIV/AIDS, hepatitis B, hepatitis C, influenza, and COVID-19, including ledipasvir/sofosbuvir and sofosbuvir. Gilead is a member of the NASDAQ Biotechnology Index and the S&P 500.
Cencora, Inc., formerly known as AmerisourceBergen, is an American drug wholesale company and a contract research organization that was formed by the merger of Bergen Brunswig and AmeriSource in 2001.
Alliance Boots was a multinational pharmacy-led health and beauty group with corporate headquarters in Bern, Switzerland and operational headquarters in Nottingham and Weybridge, United Kingdom.
LloydsPharmacy was the trading name of Lloyds Pharmacy Ltd, a British pharmacy company, which was formed by a merger in 1998 and by 2021 was the second-largest community pharmacy company in the UK. The company, which was owned by McKesson Corporation from 2014 and Aurelius Group from 2022, ceased trading in November 2023 and later entered voluntary liquidation. Some stores were closed and the remaining 1,054 were sold to new owners.
Sigma Healthcare Limited is an Australian, ASX-listed company with a focus on the pharmacy industry. The company has pharmacy operations in retail, wholesale and distribution. From its head office in Clayton, Victoria, Sigma manages over 1,200 branded and independent pharmacies. Sigma Healthcare owns Australian retail pharmacy brands: Amcal, Discount Drug Stores and Guardian Pharmacy. The company also has a presence in the hospital pharmacy services, contract logistics, dose administration aids and other healthcare service adjacencies.
In the United States, Medicare fraud is the claiming of Medicare health care reimbursement to which the claimant is not entitled. There are many different types of Medicare fraud, all of which have the same goal: to collect money from the Medicare program illegitimately.
First Databank (FDB) is a major provider of drug and medical device databases that help inform healthcare professionals to make decisions. FDB partners with information system developers to deliver useful medication- and medical device-related information to clinicians, business associates, and patients. FDB is part of Hearst and the Hearst Health network.
AIDS Drug Assistance Programs are a set of programs in all 50-states in the United States that provide Food and Drug Administration-approved HIV treatment drugs to low income patients in the U.S.
Medication costs, also known as drug costs are a common health care cost for many people and health care systems. Prescription costs are the costs to the end consumer. Medication costs are influenced by multiple factors such as patents, stakeholder influence, and marketing expenses. A number of countries including Canada, parts of Europe, and Brazil use external reference pricing as a means to compare drug prices and to determine a base price for a particular medication. Other countries use pharmacoeconomics, which looks at the cost/benefit of a product in terms of quality of life, alternative treatments, and cost reduction or avoidance in other parts of the health care system. Structures like the UK's National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence and to a lesser extent Canada's Common Drug Review evaluate products in this way.
A counterfeit medication or a counterfeit drug is a medication or pharmaceutical item which is produced and sold with the intent to deceptively represent its origin, authenticity, or effectiveness. A counterfeit drug may contain inappropriate quantities of active ingredients, or none, may be improperly processed within the body, may contain ingredients that are not on the label, or may be supplied with inaccurate or fake packaging and labeling. Counterfeit drugs are related to pharma fraud. Drug manufacturers and distributors are increasingly investing in countermeasures, such as traceability and authentication technologies, to try to minimise the impact of counterfeit drugs. Antibiotics with insufficient quantities of an active ingredient add to the problem of antibiotic resistance.
Bayer AG is a German multinational pharmaceutical and biotechnology company and is one of the largest pharmaceutical companies and biomedical companies in the world. Headquartered in Leverkusen, Bayer's areas of business include: pharmaceuticals, consumer healthcare products, agricultural chemicals, seeds and biotechnology products. The company is a component of the EURO STOXX 50 stock market index.
Elevance Health, Inc. is an American health insurance provider. Prior to June 2022, Elevance Health was named Anthem, Inc. The company's services include medical, pharmaceutical, dental, behavioral health, long-term care, and disability plans through affiliated companies such as Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield, Anthem Blue Cross in California, Wellpoint, and Carelon. It is the largest for-profit managed health care company in the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association. As of 2022, the company had 46.8 million members within its affiliated companies' health plans.
Pharmaceutical fraud is when pharmaceutical companies engage in illegal, fraudulent activities to the detriment of patients and/or insurers. Examples include counterfeit drugs that do not contain the active ingredient, false claims in packaging and marketing, suppression of negative information regarding the efficacy or safety of the drug, and violating pricing regulations.
Elvitegravir/cobicistat/emtricitabine/tenofovir, sold under the brand name Stribild, also known as the Quadpill, is a fixed-dose combination antiretroviral medication for the treatment of HIV/AIDS. Elvitegravir, emtricitabine and tenofovir disoproxil directly suppress viral reproduction. Cobicistat increases the effectiveness of the combination by inhibiting the liver and gut wall enzymes that metabolize elvitegravir. It is taken by mouth. It is manufactured by Gilead Sciences.
Specialty drugs or specialty pharmaceuticals are a recent designation of pharmaceuticals classified as high-cost, high complexity and/or high touch. Specialty drugs are often biologics—"drugs derived from living cells" that are injectable or infused. They are used to treat complex or rare chronic conditions such as cancer, rheumatoid arthritis, hemophilia, H.I.V. psoriasis, inflammatory bowel disease and hepatitis C. In 1990 there were 10 specialty drugs on the market, around five years later nearly 30, by 2008 200, and by 2015 300.
PillPack, Inc. is an American online pharmacy which is a subsidiary of Amazon. It is based in Manchester, New Hampshire, United States. The company was founded in 2013.
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, telehealth adoption was gradually increasing. With the outbreak of COVID-19 in early 2020, healthcare professionals reduced in-person visits to minimize exposure. Telehealth has since remained widely utilized in healthcare services.
US$341 Million (FY 2009) [2]