Story Archives of 'prescription drugs'

Last year, 168 people died from drug overdoses in the state – many from prescription pain killers. But for those who don’t have prescriptions – narcotics can still easily be bought on the internet through rogue pharmacies.

NHPR’s Dianne Finch reports that state senators are considering a House-backed bill that aims to crack down on the practice.

Author Charles Barber says that Americans obsessed with the quick fix are abusing antidepressant drugs more than ever - and he has the numbers to back his claim up. Psychotropic drugs from Ritalin to Prozac are now the number one category of dispensed medicine in the country, with the U.S. accounting for two-thirds of the global antidepressant market. We’ll explore how we got here, and the consequences of a nation on antidepressants.

Guest

• Charles Barber, Lecturer in Psychiatry at the Yale University School of Medicine and author of “Comfortably Numb: How Psychiatry is Medicating a Nation”

Everybody around the state is struggling to keep up with the rising cost of healthcare.

So it shouldn’t be a surprise that the New Hampshire Department of Corrections is having problems too.

New Hampshire Public Radio’s Dan Gorenstein reports.

Connecticut Senator and Democratic presidential candidate Christopher Dodd just wrapped up a four-day visit to the state. While he was here, Dodd unveiled a education plan that includes universal pre-school and more federal support for community colleges.

Many of his campaign appearances were with small groups of voters. One was in Exeter, the town we focus on in our series, Primary Place.

Since house parties are the trademark of the New Hampshire primary, we thought we’d share an excerpt of Dodd response to voters’ questions.

We begin with one from a retired man who spends thousands of dollars every few months on prescription drugs.

When the prescription drug benefit to Medicare was rolled out earlier this year, there was a lot of confusion over how much it would cost, what plans would be available and how much of an impact the so called "donut hole" would have. Since then, many private companies have stepped forward to offer plans, the cost has been lower than expected and a majority of seniors seem to be happy with the Medicare Part-D program. With the signup deadline looming at the end of this month, we'll take a look at how well New Hampshire seniors are dealing with the changes to the prescription drug benefit, what federal officials have been doing at the national level to help them better understand the new program and what the overall reaction has been to Medicare Part-D now that the program has been up and running for almost a year.

Laura's guests are Tom Maher, Regional Director for Medicare Today, Regional Director for the Healthcare Leadership Council and Dr. Charlotte Yeh, Region One Administrator for the Massachusetts Health Quality Partners and Regional Administrator for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services in Region I, a Boston-based agency within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that administers Medicare and Medicaid.