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The National Community Pharmacists Association is highlighting pharmacists' expanding role in health care to the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services...NCPA is urging CMS to enhance coverage of pharmacist-provided care services and reevaluate strict supervision requirements, as well as coverage policies for incident-to services...In response to President Trump’s Executive Order #13890 on Protecting and Improving Medicare for Our Nation’s Seniors...In addition to emphasizing that pharmacists improve patient care and outcomes when collaborating with health care professionals, NCPA argues in its comments that restrictive regulations currently hinder pharmacists’ ability to continue providing this care at the federal level, especially when state laws are already expanding to allow health care practitioners to contribute fully to patient care...READ MORE

Chris Collins, a former Republican lawmaker and longtime ally of President Trump, was sentenced Friday to 26 months in prison, according to local reporters, months after pleading guilty to insider trading for illegal dealings surrounding an Australian biotech company...Collins, who leaked confidential information about a failed drug trial to his son and other associates, resigned his seat in Congress in October after entering a guilty plea. His sentencing caps a three-year saga that also implicated his family, at least four fellow congressmen, and Trump’s onetime health secretary. All have been dogged by allegations that they acted unethically, and in some cases illegally, when they purchased or sold shares of Innate Immunotherapeutics...READ MORE

A Chinese OTC drugmaker gets the distinction of ringing in the new year as the first company to be slapped with an FDA warning letter...The FDA posted a warning letter this week for Huaian Zongheng Bio-Tech for its plant in Huaian, China, which it says makes over-the-counter drug products, many of them for children. It says the company ships them to the U.S. without testing ingredients or retained samples of the finished products to see if they meet specs...The FDA was particularly concerned over the fact that the company uses glycerin in some of its products, pointing out that the use of “glycerin contaminated with diethylene glycol has resulted in various lethal poisoning incidents in humans worldwide.”...READ MORE

Christina Mattina, welcome to This Week in Managed Care from the Managed Markets News Network

Government officials in Wuhan, China are suspending all public transportation, including buses, trains, airplanes and ferries, to better combat the coronavirus outbreak...citing Chinese state media...Officials are also asking citizens not to leave the city unless there are special circumstances. Additionally, people in public places will be required to wear masks to prevent exposure to the illness, local officials said...The actions came after public health officials said earlier in the day that deaths from China’s new virus, which is believed to have started in Wuhan, rose to 17 with more than 540 cases confirmed...READ MORE

For 2020, the two largest pharmacy benefit managers —Express Scripts and the Caremark business of CVS Health—have again increased the number of drugs they have excluded from their standard formularies. The 2020 formulary exclusion lists are available below for your downloading pleasure...key takeaways from the 2020 lists:

1. The biggest PBMs have expanded exclusions.
2. PBMs are refining their formulary management of crucial specialty categories.
3. Indication-based formularies for inflammatory conditions are now routine.
4. PBMs are slowly adopting provider-administered biosimilars on their pharmacy benefit formularies.
5. Express Scripts and CVS Caremark both made patient-unfriendly exclusions in the Hepatitis C category...READ MORE

CEOs from the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies pitched ideas for lowering drug prices at the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference in San Francisco this week. None, however, offered to cut prices on any of their own drugs...Some of the executives, like Regeneron CEO Leonard Schleifer, suggested making changes to Medicare, the federal government’s health insurance plan for the elderly, by adding an out-of-pocket maximum for beneficiaries. Others, including Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla, supported passing rebates paid to pharmacy benefit managers through to consumers, arguing the current system drove up list prices and out-of-pocket costs...They also faulted hospitals and insurers. During a panel on drug pricing reform...Bristol-Myers Squibb CEO Giovanni Caforio and Roche CEO Bill Anderson blasted hospitals for marking up the price of medicines, sometimes by triple-digit percentages...READ MORE

Hospitals in the 340B drug discount program spent more on drugs for prostate and lung cancers compared to facilities not in the program, a new analysis found...But the preliminary analysis from the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC) couldn’t find that the controversial program incentivizes hospitals to pursue higher-priced drugs. The analysis...as part of MedPAC’s monthly meeting, was requested by Congress on the program, which has faced major cuts by the Trump administration...Some lawmakers have argued that 340B, which offers safety-net hospitals discounts on drugs, has not worked as intended and led to hospitals specifically choosing higher-priced drugs to get a big discount.,,READ MORE

While TV watchers saw more pharma brand in commercials in 2019, overall total category spending was flat...Pharma TV spending held steady in 2019, finishing the year with a total for the category at $3.79 billion, according to data from real-time TV ad tracker iSpot.tv. That's just a notch higher than the $3.73 billion tally in 2018 for pharma brand commercials...But there was one major jump—and one reason overall spending didn’t actually sink in 2019—and that's the big spending by AbbVie on TV ads for its anti-inflammatory Humira...READ MORE

Members of the former International Academy of Compounding Pharmacists voted in November 2019 to change the association’s name to the Alliance for Pharmacy Compounding (APC). As of January 1, 2020, the new name has become official...The APC is an advocate on a number of issues related to patient access to compounded medications, including: encouraging national academies and chapters to seek input from prescribers, and dispensers of compounded bioidentical hormone replacement therapy; appealing beyond-use date restrictions in the new USP <795> and <797> chapters; and proposing a “middle way” to the FDA on a memorandum of understanding regarding state level regulation of patient-specific compounded medications...READ MORE