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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.

A Florida-based charity will pay $4 million to resolve claims that it acted as a conduit for companies including Biogen Inc and Novartis AG to pay kickbacks to Medicare patients using their high-priced multiple sclerosis drugs, the U.S. Justice Department said...The settlement with the patient assistance charity The Assistance Fund marked the third so far with a foundation linked to an industry-wide probe that has resulted in $850 million in settlements with drugmakers and charities...READ MORE

Martin Shkreli, the disgraced former CEO of Retrophin currently serving a seven-year sentence for securities fraud and conspiracy, was hoping for a SCOTUS Hail Mary after multiple appeals fell flat. Turns out the court wasn't interested in hearing Shkreli's pleas at all...The U.S. Supreme Court...denied hearing Shkreli's appeal to overturn his 2017 fraud conviction after his disastrous run as head of biotech Retrophin. Shkreli was also forced to forfeit $7.36 million in his conviction...READ MORE

The world can’t stop talking about biopharma’s scientific achievements, but the discussion often avoids the industry’s biggest potential buzzkill: a shortage of properly trained workers to manufacture these new drugs...As more new therapies are approved and the industry ramps up facility capacity, biopharma needs to have a properly trained workforce in place...Traditional training methods are one-dimensional and simply not producing biopharma workers who can “hit the plant floor running.” With help from academia, the biopharma industry is at long last beginning to address this problem and subsequently rethink workforce training — but is this paradigm shift happening fast enough to keep pace with biopharma’s progress?...READ MORE

Read any newspaper and you will be confronted with articles to related to the opioid crisis. Whether the news is highlighting death related to overdoses, over-prescriptions, a medication grey market or doctors sending patients to pill mills, the focus is one: too many opioids are being prescribed and it’s time for pharmacists to take on additional roles in the national fight against opioid addiction and death. Several states have implemented new rules related to a pharmacy’s reporting obligations while other states, such as New York, are taking distribution companies to court...Currently, lawsuits are focusing on drug distributors like RDC and McKesson, which distribute opioid drugs to pharmacies who in turn disseminate those drugs to patients. But from 2017 to the present, several pharmacy owners have been jailed and fined millions of dollars for filling fake prescriptions...READ MORE

The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC), the independent agency that advises Congress on the Medicare program, recently released its June 2019 Data Book: Health Care Spending and the Medicare Program...This year’s report provides the latest details about the ongoing disruption of the buy-and-bill market in Medicare Part B. As you will see below:

• Physician offices account for a diminishing share of Part B spending, though absolute spending at these sites continues to grow. 
• Hospital outpatient settings have been crowding out physician offices. Hospital outpatient departments now account for more than 40% of Part B spending—and an even greater share for oncology products...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

U.S. President Donald Trump said... he will soon release a plan to let Florida and other states import prescription medicines to combat high drug prices, and he blasted the Democrat-led House for not going far enough in a drug-pricing bill...“We will soon be putting more options on the table,” Trump wrote in a series of tweets, adding that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi “and her Do Nothing Democrats drug pricing bill doesn’t do the trick.”...Drug companies have staunchly opposed such a plan, which has been mulled for years but never implemented...READ MORE

The U.S. government is barring federal dollars meant for opioid addiction treatment to be used on medical marijuana...The move is aimed at states that allow marijuana for medical uses, particularly those letting patients with opioid addiction use pot as a treatment, said Dr. Elinore McCance-Katz, whose federal agency doles out money to states for treatment programs...“There’s zero evidence for that,” McCance-Katz said. “We felt that it was time to make it clear we did not want individuals receiving funds for treatment services to be exposed to marijuana and somehow given the impression that it’s a treatment.”...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.