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“The announcement made today puts politics over patients. Eliminating the biologics provision in the USMCA removes vital protections for innovators while doing nothing to help U.S. patients afford their medicines or access future treatments and cures. The only winners today are foreign governments who want to steal American intellectual property (IP) and free ride on America’s global leadership in biopharmaceutical research and development...“We cannot support abandoning provisions that protect American companies and raise standards abroad. We hope that Congress and the Administration will pursue international trade agreements that hold foreign governments accountable by ensuring that they protect and value the ongoing discovery of much-needed medicines to treat and potentially cure the world’s most devastating diseases.”...READ MORE

Germany’s Bayer has agreed with plaintiffs to postpone its next two U.S. lawsuits over the alleged cancer-causing effects of its glyphosate-based weed killers to allow more time for talks on a settlement...The company, which is facing 42,700 U.S. plaintiffs, is widely expected to eventually buy itself out of the litigation, with analysts currently estimating the size of a future settlement at $8-$12 billion...Bayer agreed with the plaintiff to delay for about six months a case in the California Superior Court for Lake County scheduled for Jan. 15, a company spokesman said in a written statement...READ MORE

Pharmacists have taken their rightful place in the delivery of health care, engaging with patients and making a noticeable improvement in their patients’ health outcomes. As the clinical role of pharmacists has grown, so too has the imperative to fill an ever-increasing number of prescriptions in a day. As a result, pharmacy technology and automation companies are stepping up to the plate to ensure that pharmacists can juggle their role successfully...READ MORE

• Speeding up Dispensing
• Rethinking Processes
• Software and Workflow

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.

In 2018, $198 billion worth of acquisitions took place in the life sciences sector, which includes pharma and biotech, up by $20 billion over 2017 but well below big years between 2014 and 2016...The FTC's close scrutiny of potential antitrust violations in biopharma acquisitions seems to have cast a shadow over transactions large and small, from megamergers like Bristol-Myers Squibb-Celgene and AbbVie-Allergan to comparatively small plays like Alexion-Achillion and UCB-Ra...At its root is the regulators' concern that big pharma wants to hold onto overlapping projects to hedge against the risk of failure or market competition, which could have a detrimental effect if enough promising medicines don't get developed...READ MORE

Consider the boom in pharmacies operated by physician practices. The growth in oral and patient self-injectable specialty drugs has encouraged physicians to dispense these products from their offices and clinics. For example, almost half of all oncology practices now dispense specialty drugs to their patients...the share of oncology practices dispensing prescriptions has declined for the first time in at least six years. I suspect that we are at a turning point in the growth of physician practice dispensing...this development reflects how PBMs and their plan sponsor clients are managing specialty channels...PBMs offer financial carrots that entice plan sponsor to shift prescriptions into PBM-owned specialty pharmacies. This dynamic creates novel competitive conflicts between historically separate drug channel participants. Meanwhile, physicians are learning the perils of competing with vertically-integrated channel organizations...READ MORE

The U.S. is approving new drugs so fast that companies are now preparing for a green light months in advance of the scheduled decision date, a pace that’s helping patients with rare or untreatable diseases but raising alarm among consumer advocates...“It isn’t that we changed our policies and are saying we are going to approve drugs faster,” said Janet Woodcock, director of the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research...“The difference now is we are going to see more of those because of the science. If there are people out there with no options and they have terrible diseases, we are going to get those drugs to them as fast as feasible.”...READ MORE

...I update our estimates of pharmacy economics and margins. Our analysis reveals that profits per prescription in 2018 were unchanged from the 2017 figures. However, the average pharmacy in the NCPA sample filled fewer prescriptions, causing the average pharmacy owner’s salary to decline for the fifth consecutive year...

1. Overall independent pharmacy profit margins have stabilized.
2. Independent pharmacies’ prescription profit margins also were stable.
3. Independent pharmacies’ generic dispensing rates matched those of the overall market.
4. The average pharmacist who owned a single pharmacy earned about $129,000 in 2018—down for the fifth consecutive year.
5. By the NCPA's count, the total number of independent pharmacies continues to drop.

Retail pharmacies account for a majority of the pharmacy industry’s dispensed prescriptions but a decreasing share of the industry’s revenues...This means that most of them lack access to the specialty drugs that now make up one-third of the pharmacy industry’s revenues...READ MORE

California Governor Gavin Newsom signed into law last month new legislation that allows pharmacists in the state to initiate and dispense HIV medication without a prescription. The law, SB159, was amended to say that “a pharmacist may initiate and furnish HIV preexposure prophylaxis” and “a pharmacist may initiate and furnish HIV postexposure prophylaxis.” Previously, only pharmacists in specific collaborative practice agreements were able to dispense the drugs independently.In order to dispense either preexposure prophylaxis (PrEP) or postexposure prophylaxis (PEP), pharmacists will need to complete a boardapproved training program, according to the law...READ MORE

Laura Joszt, Managing Editor at The American Journal of Managed Care. Welcome to This Week in Managed Care from the Managed Markets News Network