It’s no secret that big pharma is big business. Americans spend hundreds of billions on prescription medications every year, with that figure projected to keep growing. And now a new report shows that the top-selling brand-name prescription drugs in the U.S. earn more than $60 billion a year for their manufacturers, with the biggest money-maker topping $13 billion per year in sales on its own. [More]
billions and billions
Latest Obamacare Repeal Bill Would Gut Medicaid For Dozens Of States; Opposition Rising Inside Senate
By 9.22.17
The last-ditch proposal to effectively repeal the Affordable Care Act remains deeply unpopular, even while Senate Republicans try to rally the votes to make it happen. And in the midst of all that politicking, a new federal analysis shows that several of the states whose Senators’ votes leadership is trying to curry could be badly hurt by the bill. [More]
How Much Do Video Game Companies Make Off DLC And Add-Ons? Around $5B A Year
By 4.19.17
The typical price tag for a full-fledged console or PC video game is around $60, but rare is the game that doesn’t also include an array of add-ons — everything from additional game content to new characters to outfits to in-game currency. It’s become such a popular practice that this “extra” stuff is now larger than some entire industries. [More]
Yahoo Confirms Another Major Data Breach; More Than 1 Billion Users Affected
By 12.15.16
Remember how, just three months ago, Yahoo had to admit that data for more than 500 million of its users had been compromised in 2014? It seems ridiculous to refer to something that hit 500 million people as the “smaller” of anything, but it turns out that was only the second overwhelmingly huge data breach Yahoo suffered in recent years. This week, it’s admitting a previous, even larger intrusion that hit more than a billion — yes, with a B — user accounts. [More]
Court: Uber Would Owe Drivers $852 Million More As Tipped Employees
By 5.10.16
How much is at stake in the choice of ride-hailing services Uber and Lyft to keep their drivers as independent contractors instead of making them employees? To understand why the car-summoning app is glad to pay drivers as much as $100 million in a class action settlement, look at the numbers: the company calculates that it would owe drivers $429 million, while drivers’ attorneys estimate that drivers would receive $730 million in expenses, and $122 million in tips. [More]
Facebook-Owned WhatsApp Crosses 900 Million User Mark
By 9.4.15
Facebook is having a good run this summer of taking over the world one app at a time. Hot on the heels of last week’s announcement that the big blue network now has more than 1 billion daily users, the company is now crowing about a user milestone they’ve reached on one of their two big messaging platforms, WhatsApp. [More]
