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Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed into law HB 2088, which requires that all pharmacists who dispense Schedule II controlled substances provide written notice on the safe disposal of controlled substances unless the dispensing pharmacy is authorized to take back those drugs for disposal, regularly accepts those drugs for safe disposal or provides the patient—at no cost—"chemicals to render the unused drugs unusable" or a mail-in pouch. This law goes into effect on January 1, 2020...DisposeRx, which has a network of more than 2,000 pharmacies in Texas, is working to help pharmacists and pharmacies comply with HB 2088 via safe, at-home disposal packets and patient education...READ MORE

With the major Democratic 2020 candidates campaigning on lowering drug prices, march-in rights are now back in focus as a tool to achieve that goal. Biopharmas are setting too-high prices for drugs discovered with taxpayer support, the argument goes, which ought to spur the government to take possession of their patents to lower costs. The Trump administration also has shown some interest in pharma patents...The calls are only growing thanks to "patent thickets," the expansive intellectual property estates that drugmakers use to shield drugs from generic competition well beyond the date of first patent expiration...The problem with appealing to march-in rights as a solution is the government has always refused to use the power it holds...READ MORE

China’s National Healthcare Security Administration has announced it has agreed an average 61% cut in prices of 70 top-selling drugs with large pharma manufacturers in exchange for inclusion on a state-run insurance scheme list...the 70 drugs include Roche’s Perjeta, Novartis’ Xolair and the top selling drug in the world AbbVie’s Humira, as well as Eli Lilly and China-based Innovent Biologics’ Tyvyt...The NHSA claims this makes the prices of these drugs the lowest in the world. Also, this agreements means big pharma and their drugs will have greater access to the world’s second largest pharma market because more Chinese citizens in smaller, more remote cities will be able to afford the drugs through their state medical insurance system...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

Blink Health, a digital health company, is getting into the holiday spirit by offering new patients more than 4,000 medications for free...“Prescription drug prices are simply too high for too many people. We have all heard the tragic stories of people having to decide between taking their medications and eating, or cutting pills in half to save money — that’s simply not acceptable...” Geoff Chaiken, Blink Health CEO said. “...we’re focused on fixing that problem by putting the interests of patients first — not large corporations.”...New patients who sign up and order their first prescription through Blink Health will be provided with a credit of up to $10 off their first order, which covers many of the most popular prescription drugs available through Blink Health...READ MORE

The co-founders of Outcome Health and several former executives have been charged by the Department of Justice in a $1 billion fraud scheme targeting clients, lenders and investors...The DOJ...charging Rishi Shah and Shradha Agarwal, the co-founders...along with Brad Purdy, former chief operating officer and chief financial officer and Ashik Desai, former executive vice president of business operations...At the same time, the Securities and Exchange Commission...added the executives to its civil complaint, alleging they falsely portrayed the company’s success to investors and auditors to the tune of $487 million...The DOJ filing alleges that from 2011 to 2017, the executives bilked mostly pharma companies by selling them “tens of millions of dollars of advertising inventory that did not exist.” The indictment claims the faux sales resulted in inflated financial statements that were then used to raise financing in 2016 and 2017...READ MORE

Amazon is jumping into the medication adherence space with a new feature that lets users link up their pharmacy prescription information and, in turn, get reminders about when to take their pills and order refills...The latest feature was born out of a collaboration between the online retail giant and Omnicell, a tech-enabled medication management company. Initially the feature will be rolled out to Giant Eagle Pharmacy customers...this feature will be using “multiple layers of verification” to protect user information, including voice recognition and passcodes...Voice technology is coming onto the healthcare scene in recent years...“Voice has proven to be beneficial for a variety of use cases because it removes barriers, and simplifies daily tasks,”... “We believe this new Alexa feature will help simplify the way people manage their medication by removing the need to continuously think about what medications they’ve taken that day or what they need to take...READ MORE

The FDA has issued warning letters to 15 companies for illegally selling products containing cannabidiol in ways that violate the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act...“We remain concerned that some people wrongly think that the myriad of CBD products on the market, many of which are illegal, have been evaluated by the FDA and determined to be safe, or that trying CBD ‘can’t hurt,’” said FDA Principal Deputy Commissioner Amy Abernethy,...“Aside from one prescription drug approved to treat two pediatric epilepsy disorders, these products have not been approved by the FDA and we want to be clear that a number of questions remain regarding CBD’s safety—including reports of products containing contaminants, such as pesticides and heavy metals— and there are real risks that need to be considered.”...READ MORE

When Insys founder John Kapoor was found guilty on federal racketeering charges...it marked the stiffest conviction yet for an opioid executive at the center of the nation's addiction crisis. Now, a federal judge says prosecutors failed to present enough evidence to support some of those claims—likely lowering Kapoor's sentence...Prosecutors failed to present evidence showing...Subsys to be prescribed to patients for nonmedical purposes...The order did not affect the sales fraud charges on which those executives were convicted as part of a long-running scheme to drive up prescriptions of Subsys by underselling the drug's addictive properties and capitalizing on patient titration...READ MORE

Laura Joszt for The American Journal of Managed Care®. Here are the top 5 articles for the month of November.