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Biotech / Medical : PFE (Pfizer) How high will it go? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LWolf who wrote (3694)	6/24/1998 12:29:00 AM
From: Anthony Wong	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 9523

Laura and all, the Motley Fool's Evening News' take on the price drop: Pfizer (NYSE:PFE - news) fell $1 3/8 to $110 1/8 on news that another major health management company has decided it won't pay for the drug company's hot-selling impotence pill Viagra under its regular coverage. Last week, Kaiser Permanente, which has 9.1 million members, said it would stop coverage of Viagra but that employers would be able to buy supplemental coverage for Viagra as well as other drugs for sexual dysfunction. Now, according to The Wall Street Journal, Aetna Inc.'s (NYSE:AET - news) Aetna/U.S. Healthcare managed care unit, which has 13.7 million members, won't cover Viagra but will give employers the option of paying more to cover the drug, like it does for coverage of birth control pills. These decisions not to cover Viagra may embolden other large insurers that are still pondering whether they will cover the drug to lower the axe on Viagra. PacifiCare Health Systems (Nasdaq:PHSYA - news) , Humana (NYSE:HUM - news) , and Prudential HealthCare, a unit of Prudential Insurance, all have installed interim policies that don't allow coverage. Cigna Corp.'s (NYSE:CI - news) Cigna HealthCare now covers up to six pills a month, while United HealthCare allows for as many as eight a month.

To: LWolf who wrote (3694)	6/25/1998 12:22:00 PM
From: Anthony Wong	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 9523

Pfizer to Sell Impotence Drug Viagra in Switzerland From Monday Bloomberg News June 25, 1998, 1:09 a.m. PT Zurich, June 25 (Bloomberg) -- Pfizer (Schweiz) AG, a Swiss unit of the New York-based drugmaker Pfizer Inc., said it will begin selling its impotency treatment Viagra in Switzerland Monday, Neue Zuercher Zeitung reported, citing SDA news agency. Pfizer said Viagra should be treated like any other drug prescribed by doctors, and the cost of the drug should therefore be covered by health insurance. This week Switzerland became the first European country, and the third nation in the world, to allow Viagra to be sold. More than 1 million Viagra prescriptions were written in the U.S. within weeks of its launch in May, while in Switzerland pharmacies began dispensing Viagra on ''emergency'' prescriptions before the drug got official approval. (Neue Zuercher Zeitung, 6/25, 16, or www.nzz.ch) --Tavia Grant in the Zurich newsroom (41-1) 224 4111/ab