Finance & Business World

Spending on prescription drugs in the U.S. was nearly flat in 2011 at $320 billion, held down by senior citizens and others reducing use of medicines and other health care and by greater use of cheaper generic pills.

Last year, spending on prescription drugs rose just 0.5 percent after adjusting for inflation and population growth, according to data firm IMS Health. Without those adjustments, spending increased 3.7 percent last year. The volume of prescriptions filled fell about 1 percent.

That continues a trend of restrained spending that began in 2007, when prescription spending dipped 0.2 percent. Before then, IMS generally reported annual increases of several percent. But since the Great Recession started, prescription spending has fallen or risen only slightly each year except for 2009.

IMS said Wednesday that it appears patients are still rationing their health care, with visits to doctors down 4.7 percent and hospital admissions down 0.1 percent. However, emergency room visits jumped 7.4 percent, a sign some people aren’t seeking care until they are very sick.

“We think we’ve reached a tipping point, where people are thinking they’re paying too much and they’re changing their behavior,” said Michael Kleinrock, head of research development at the IMS Institute for Healthcare Informatics.

Fewer visits to doctors and other health care providers results in fewer prescriptions, which holds down spending in the short term. But that doesn’t bode well for future health care costs, because many of the medicines people are doing without are taken for years to prevent heart attacks and other expensive complications of chronic conditions such as heart disease and diabetes, Kleinrock said.

“The ultimate result is that we will have more sick people driving health care costs” down the road, he said.

People 65 and older cut back on the number of prescriptions filled by 3.1 percent last year, particularly for medicines for high blood pressure. That was despite a 10 percent decline in average prescription co-payments under the Medicare Part D program, to $23.31, due to bigger discounts when patients hit the so-called doughnut hole coverage gap.

Only one group increased prescription use last year. People 19 to 25, now able to stay on their parents’ health insurance plans under a provision of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, boosted their use by 2 percent. That was led by more use of antidepressants and attention deficit disorder drugs.

Kleinrock noted the company’s data indicate both people with and without insurance are having trouble paying for medicines and other health care, and so are limiting or postponing treatments. For instance, insured patients spent $1.8 billion less out of pocket last year, at a total of $49 billion.

Meanwhile, use of inexpensive generic medicines continues to climb, hitting 80 percent of all prescriptions filled last year.

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Payrolls in the U.S. probably increased by more than 200,000 workers in March for a fourth consecutive month as companies became more optimistic about the outlook for growth, economists said before a report this week.

Employment rose by 205,000 after climbing by 227,000 in February, according to the median projection of 54 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News. The last time hiring advanced at a similar pace and period was in late 1999-early 2000. The jobless rate probably held at a three-year low of 8.3 percent.

The pickup in hiring has boosted consumer confidence to a four-year high, raising the odds that gains in household spending, which accounts for 70 percent of the economy, can be sustained. The improvement in the job market may also help Americans weather the rising cost of gasoline, which Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said posed a risk to growth.

Nike is suing rival Reebok for selling New York Jets uniforms and other Jets apparel with the name of its new quarterback Tim Tebow on them.

Nike (, Fortune 500) says it is the only company authorized and licensed to use Tim Tebow’s name on clothing. Reebok, a unit of German sporting equipment and apparel-maker adidas (), did not respond to requests for comment.

Tebow was traded from the Denver Broncos to the Jets on March 21, creating a media frenzy and a huge spike in demand for Tebow-related Jets apparel in the New York market.

But the trade came during a rare month when no company has the rights to sell licensed NFL apparel with both the team’s name or logo and a player’s name on it.

That’s because the rights deals are in the process of switching from Reebok to Nike. Two different agreements cover licensing: one for players’ names, which switched over on March 1; and one for the NFL teams, which goes into effect on April 1.

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"There’s generally nothing going on this time a year," said Matt Powell, analyst with SportsScanINFO, which tracks sales of licensed apparel. "A dead zone like this normally wouldn’t matter in March, unless there’s Tebow-mania."

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To sell a piece of licensed apparel with both a team’s name and a players’ name, a company needs a rights agreement with both the National Football League and either the licensing arm of the NFL Players Association or the player himself cash advance america.

Nike’s suit says that it already has such a deal with Tebow, as well as with the union. But the NFL’s own 10-year licensing deal doesn’t change from Reebok to Nike until Sunday, April 1.

So right now Reebok can sell uniforms and other apparel with team name and logo, but not with a player’s name, unless it has a deal with that player, according to Nike’s suit. But Nike can’t sell any apparel featuring any team names or logos until this Sunday.

Tebow’s uniform was the second most popular of any NFL player last season, according to Nike’s suit. And according to SportsScanINFO, demand for Jets apparel soared last week after the trade was announced.

Tebow’s Super Bowl appearance

"Reebok has sought to take advantage of this unique, short-lived opportunity by supplying, without authorization or license, Tebow-identified New York Jets apparel to retailers in New York and elsewhere around the country," said the suit.

NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy said the league does not have a comment on the suit.

Nike’s suit, which was filed in federal court in New York, seeks to block Reebok from further sales, de story any existing Tebow-Jets apparel not yet sold, and compensate Nike with triple damages based on Reebok’s sales of the Tebow-Jets items. 

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Central bankers at a Federal Reserve conference in Washington rekindled a debate over the best criteria for altering interest rates, pitting simple rules against complex models that estimate growth and inflation.

Lars Svensson, a deputy governor for Sweden

Stock futures are mixed Wednesday after a rocky start to the week, with the latest housing report expected to show previously occupied home sales are reaching a clip not seen in two years.

Dow Jones industrial average futures rose 7 points to 13,115 and the broader Standard & Poor’s 500 futures rose 0.2 points to 1,400.2. But Nasdaq 100 futures slipped 1.25 points to 2,734.25.

Stocks closed lower Tuesday for only the second time in two weeks as China hinted at a slowdown.

European markets rallied early after a similar sell-off Tuesday as worries fade about the debt crisis, at least for now.

In Europe, Germany’s DAX rose 0.2 percent to 7,065 while the CAC-40 in France was 0.3 percent higher at 3,542. The FTSE 100 index of leading British shares was up 0.1 percent at 5,897 ahead of the government’s annual budget.

Asian markets, however, remain unsettled by the latest signs of a slowdown in the Chinese economy.

The Nikkei 225 index in Japan, which counts China as its most important trading partner, fell 0.6 percent to 10,086.49, while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng shed 0.2 percent to 20,856.63. China’s main Shanghai index recovered 0.1 percent to close to 2,378 paperless payday loans.20, having dropped sharply in the previous session.

U.S. traders appeared more optimistic 30 minutes before the opening bell and ahead of the latest housing data, which is expected a half hour after the market opens.

There has been some good news in each of the housing reports released during the first two days of the week, and more of the same is expected Wednesday.

The National Association of Realtors releases its report on February home re-sales, and economists expect that sales increased to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.6 million last month, according to a FactSet survey.

Shares of homebuilders rose in premarket trading. Hovnanian Enterprises Inc. rose 4 percent to $2.89. Lennar Corp., PulteGroup Inc., and KB Home rose as well.

The tech sector may get a boost after Oracle Corp. reported late Tuesday that sales of new software licenses accelerated in the third quarter, suggesting that the broader economy is healing. Oracle shares were up 2 percent at $30.70 in premarket trading.

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The Senate voted Wednesday to overhaul transportation programs and keep aid flowing to thousands of construction projects while strengthening highway and auto safety.

The 74-22 vote stepped up pressure for quick action by House because the government’s power to collect about $110 million a day in federal gasoline and diesel taxes, the main source of revenue for highway and transit programs, is set to expire March 31. If a final bill isn’t on the president’s desk by then, Congress would have to approve a temporary extension to avoid a shutdown of the programs, including the furlough of Federal Highway Administration employees and the layoff of construction workers.

The White House praised senators for trying to address these critical national needs and expressed hope the House “will move swiftly” and follow suit.

The Senate’s measure would spend $109 billion over about two years and preserve or create an estimated 2.8 million jobs. It would increase the amount of money available for states by raising current spending levels to take into account inflation over the past several years. That’s still far short of the dollars that two congressional commissions have said are needed to maintain aging highways, bridges and rail systems while expanding the nation’s transportation network to accommodate population growth between now and 2050.

The measure would reduce the number of federal transportation programs by roughly two-thirds in an effort to eliminate duplication. Senators preserved bicycle, pedestrian, safe routes to schools and rails-to-trails programs, targeted for elimination by Republicans, under a compromise that means they would have to compete with other programs for money.

For transit commuters, the bill would extend, back to Jan. 1, a tax break that allows the deduction of up to $240 a month tax-free from their paychecks for expenses incurred traveling to work. That had expired at the end of 2011.

On the safety front, the bill would require stricter federal oversight of the long-distance and tour bus industries through deadlines for buses to have seat belts, stronger roofs, anti-ejection windows and rollover crash avoidance systems. The bus industry carries about 750 million passengers a year, roughly the same as the domestic airline industry.

Other safety provisions include requiring that automakers provide rear seat-belt reminder systems to get children and other backseat passengers to buckle up, and testing child safety seats in frontal and side impact crashes.

The bill would let Washington reward states with extra safety money if they require graduated licenses for teenage drivers, permit police to pull over and ticket drivers for seat-belt and booster-seat violations, and mandate that convicted drunken drivers use ignition-lock devices.

Safety advocates criticized the broad exemptions from federal commercial driver’s licensing, vehicle inspection and other safety requirements for agricultural trucks operating with 150 miles of their farms. Farm lobbies said the rules hinder farmers’ ability to get their products to market.

States would have greater discretion over how to spend federal aid. But the bill would mean new requirements aimed at preventing waste and ensuring that national goals are met.

A credit assistance program championed by Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa that helps leverage private investment for transportation projects of national and regional significance would grow by tenfold to $1 billion. In the past, the program has generated as much as $30 in private capital for every $1 in aid.

Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., co-author of the measure, said the bill “”probably will go down as one of the most significant pieces of legislation this year.”

One thing the bill would not do is resolve how to keep the federal Highway Trust Fund solvent beyond next year.

The largest sources of money for the fund, which pays for highway and transit programs, are federal fuel taxes: 18.4 cents a gallon for gasoline and 24.4 cents a gallon for diesel. Revenue from those taxes has declined since the economic downturn in 2008 and because the fuel efficiency of cars and trucks is increasing.

The bill would pay for highway programs through a combination of fuel taxes, cuts to other federal programs and tax changes, but also would drain the trust fund. Some senators have criticized provisions that are supposed to pay for transportation programs since they would raise about $10 billion over 10 years, but spend it in the first two years.

Efforts by House Republican leaders to pass their own, five-year bill without concessions to Democrats have fallen apart in recent weeks. The House returns next week from a weeklong recess.

Pointing to the large bipartisan vote in favor of the bill, Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., urged House Republicans to consider passing the Senate measure as it is “to avert any crisis.”

“Why would they want to reinvent the wheel?” Boxer asked.

Michael Steel, a spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said the House plan is to “take up something that looks like” the Senate bill “unless the House coalesces around a better alternative, which we are actively pursuing.”

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Charles Wyplosz is betting Greece isn

Now that we know everything there is to know about The New iPad and are busily making plans to camp out overnight when it first hits stores, it

Futures traders are pricing in the biggest increase in U.S. equity hedging costs since 2010 after the Standard & Poor

Japanese Finance Minister Jun Azumi said his nation and China will work together to help Europe solve its debt crisis through the International Monetary Fund.

Europe needs a bigger so-called firewall of added funding to contain the crisis, even as Greece shows some improvement in solving its financial woes, Azumi told reporters in Beijing yesterday after meeting Chinese Vice Premier Wang Qishan. Azumi, who met Chinese Finance Minister Xiu Xuren during his visit, also said he asked China to make its currency more flexible.