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Nicole Grassano, PTNN, Pharmacy Week in Review, this weekly video program provides our readers with an in-depth review of the latest news, product approvals, FDA rulings and more.

The U.S. Supreme Court will hear a case brought by Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge against the pharmacy benefit management (PBM) industry…PBMs act as middlemen between health insurance companies and pharmacies...pharmacies have complained that PBMs have been reimbursing them below their cost to acquire a drug...U.S. Solicitor General Noel Francisco recommended Dec. 5 that the Arkansas case – Rutledge v. Pharmaceutical Care Management Association...be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court. Rutledge has argued that more than 16% of rural pharmacies closed in recent years due to declining PBM payments on generic prescriptions causing Arkansans to be unable to receive necessary medications...READ MORE

A Chinese court jailed...the founder of a local traditional Chinese medicine firm for running a pyramid scheme, after the death of a young girl with cancer was linked to the company in an online article that sparked anger on social media...Shu Yuhui, founder and chairman of Quanjian Nature Medicine Technology Development, was sentenced to nine years in prison and fined 50 million yuan ($7.2 million), according to the court. The company was fined 100 million yuan..READ MORE

Brace yourselves, pharma watchers. With the annual J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference around the corner, some major biopharma deal announcements could hit the headlines, just as Bristol-Myers Squibb unveiled its $74 billion Celgene buyout and Eli Lilly its $8 billion Loxo Oncology takeover last year.,,Those announcements kicked off a year marked by record-breaking biopharma mergers and acquisitions, and signs point to a busy 2020, thanks to a growing deal appetite among major drugmakers, according to one group of analysts...Plus, there's increasing political scrutiny of the drug industry, the looming presidential election and intensifying antitrust scrutiny. That pressure is “likely contributing to a mentality of ‘get it done now or possibly not at all’ among large companies,”...READ MORE

Changes in U.S. Food and Drug Administration procedures meant to speed approvals for medications may have resulted in less exacting standards, a new analysis suggests...Congressional acts that changed the way the FDA evaluates drugs have led to less rigorous evaluations, with drug approvals being based on fewer and/or earlier-stage clinical trials that may not be randomized, controlled, blinded or based on traditional measures of efficacy…the good news...points to the increased number of orphan drugs that have been approved...the bad news. “Faster in this case means that less data gets collected,”...“Some drugs may get accelerated approval, on thinner evidence, and wind up not being any better than existing and often cheaper alternatives.”...READ MORE

Melinta Therapeutics, one of the few companies to recently bring a new antibiotic to market, filed for bankruptcy at the end of December. This news comes less than a year after another antibiotic developer, Achaogen, did the same thing...`More than 90% of antibiotics in the pipeline today are being developed by small companies like these, not by the pharmaceutical giants that once dominated the field. And with antibiotic prices low and profit margins narrow, many small companies just can’t stay afloat...just when the world needs more novel weapons in the fight against resistant pathogens, there are far too few in the pipeline. And although there are real scientific challenges in finding new antibiotics, the big drug companies have largely abandoned the field due to the low return on investment...READ MORE

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

Manufacturers recently announced list price increases for many brand-name drugs. The typical increase was about 5%. Judging by recent history, these moderately higher list prices will translate into another year of falling brand-name drug prices in 2020...This surprising conclusion comes from our analysis of SSR Health data on prices for more than 1,000 drugs...SSR Health data reveal that list prices for brand-name drugs rose by about 5% in 2019. However, net prices (after rebates and discounts) decreased by -3.1%. Drug makers discounted their brand-name drug list prices by an average of 45%…READ MORE

California would become the first state to contract with generic-drug manufacturers to make prescription medicines to sell to residents, under a plan proposed by Gov. Gavin Newsom that aims to control rising health costs...Mr. Newsom, a Democrat, said it will be part of his new budget proposal. Few details were provided about how the plan would work, what kind of drugs it would produce, how much it would cost to enact or how much it might save the state...Mr. Newsom is betting that California’s purchasing power can help it offer drugs at a lower price than they are offered commercially...READ MORE

Nicole Grassano, PTNN, Pharmacy Week in Review, this weekly video program provides our readers with an in-depth review of the latest news, product approvals, FDA rulings and more.