Start of Greyhound service to Wells delayed two days

Greyhound on Monday announced that it will delay the start of its new bus service to Wells by two days. The company will now begin the service April 17, said company spokesperson Ashley Sears.

Greyhound will offer two southbound trips, to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and South Station in Boston, and two northbound trips, to Portland and Bangor, with some buses also stopping in Brunswick.

Passengers won’t be able to buy tickets until April 17, and tickets can only be purchased online at www.greyhound.com. The company has yet to announce the schedule, but that will also be available online April 17.

Spending on prescriptions increases by 13 percent

U.S. spending on prescription drugs soared last year, driven up primarily by costly breakthrough medicines, manufacturer price hikes and a surge from millions of people newly insured due to the Affordable Care Act.

Spending rose 13 percent, the biggest jump since 2001, to a total of $374 billion, according to a report released Tuesday by the IMS Institute for Healthcare Informatics. After accounting for population growth and inflation, the increase equaled 10 percent.

A record 4.3 billion prescriptions were filled in 2014, many of them for inexpensive generic pills going to patients now insured through Medicaid in states that expanded eligibility for the government health program for the poor and disabled. The number of prescriptions covered by Medicaid rose by nearly 17 percent, and that increase accounted for 70 percent of growth in the number of prescriptions filled at retail pharmacies. Another sign of the Affordable Care Act’s impact was that prescriptions paid for in cash, normally filled by uninsured people, declined 5.5 percent.

The higher spending, though, was mostly due to the many recent drugs with eye-popping price tags: tens of thousands of dollars for a year or course of treatment.

Last year saw an unusually high 42 novel medicines launched, 18 for rare diseases, those that affect fewer than 200,000 Americans. Ten of the new drugs were designated as breakthrough therapies, for conditions including multiple sclerosis, various cancers and hepatitis C.

Coca-Cola to sponsor MLS; Pepsi gets NBA sponsorship

Coca-Cola and Pepsi made dueling announcements of new major league sports sponsorships Monday as the two powerhouses continued their long-running battle for beverage supremacy.

Atlanta-based Coke unveiled Monday a reportedly four-year deal to be the official sponsor of Major League Soccer. The sponsorship, which had been held by Pepsi until the end of last year, is on top of the global deal Coca-Cola has had with FIFA’s World Cup since 1974.

Not to be outdone, Pepsi announced later in the day that it had secured the sponsorship right for the NBA, a partnership previously held by Coca-Cola. Pepsi’s deal gives the Purchase, N.Y.-company the North American league sponsorship rights for the NFL, MLB, the NHL and the NBA, said industry publication Beverage Digest.

A Coca-Cola spokeswoman said the company remains fans of the NBA, of which Coke had been a sponsor for 28 years.

Major stock indexes dip before earnings reports

Investors sent stocks slightly lower Monday ahead of a busy week for company earnings.

With little news to move the market either way, major indexes spent the day wavering between slim gains and losses. Stocks started higher in the morning, turned lower shortly after midday, then drifted downward until the closing bell.

The Dow Jones industrial average fell 80.61 points, or 0.5 percent, to close at 17,977.04. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index slipped 9.63 points, or 0.5 percent, to 2,092.43. The Nasdaq lost 7.73 points, or 0.2 percent, to 4,988.25.

JetBlue Airways surged after the airline reported a 9 percent increase in passengers last month compared with the same period a year ago. The company’s stock gained 80 cents, or 4 percent, to $19.85.

JPMorgan Chase, Johnson & Johnson, and Wells Fargo are among the big names turning in quarterly results Tuesday as earnings season gets underway. Investors are braced for bad news, a result of the stronger dollar and low oil prices squeezing revenues. Analysts forecast that first-quarter earnings shrank 3 percent compared with the same quarter of last year, according to S&P Capital IQ. If that winds up happening, it would be the first drop in quarterly profits since 2009.

– From staff and news services