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Samantha DiGrande, Welcome to This Week in Managed Care from the Managed Markets News Network

In states where pharmacists were allowed to sell the potentially lifesaving opioid antidote naloxone without a prescription, fewer people died from opioid overdoses...The passage of laws that let pharmacists sell naloxone directly to patients was associated with a nearly 30 percent drop in the number of opioid overdose deaths compared to states without pharmacist dispensing, researchers report in JAMA Internal Medicine...When the researchers examined the laws involving naloxone prescriptions, they found that few states had any form of legislation before 2010. By 2016, 47 states had passed some sort of law regarding the life-saving medication, but only nine had laws giving authority to pharmacists to sell naloxone directly to patients...READ MORE

The ePrescription is intended to generate added value for patients in Germany - and to stimulate digitisation in the healthcare market...The ePrescription is to be established in Germany by 2020. In April, German health minister Jens Spahn spoke at the DMEA 2019 (formerly conhIT) in Berlin about its benefits and opportunities in Germany...discussed the...implementation and the added value resulting from ePrescription and other online services for digitising the German healthcare system... The e-recipe will bring real added value. If we combine it with on-line consultations or pharmacy delivery services, the range of services offered to patients will be extended to bring the digital component to healthcare...READ MORE

Samantha DiGrande, Welcome to This Week in Managed Care from the Managed Markets News Network

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 Trump administration...said it will require drugmakers to disclose the list price of prescription drugs in direct-to-consumer television advertisements, part of the government’s efforts to lower costs for U.S. consumers...The list price would be included if it is equal to or greater than $35 for a month’s supply or the usual course of therapy. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said that the 10 most commonly advertised drugs have list prices ranging from $488 to $16,938 per month or usual course of therapy...TV advertising requirement would work to drive down list prices alongside a recently proposed rule aimed at requiring that drug rebates, or discounts, be passed on to Medicare patients when they buy the drugs...The advertising rule...was originally suggested as part of President Donald Trump’s “blueprint” to lower U.S. drug prices...READ MORE

FOUR TAKEAWAYS ON THE STATE OF SPECIALTY PHARMACY IN 2019
1) Specialty drugs continue to drive the pharmacy and PBM industries, though growth is slowing.
2) The larger independent specialty pharmacies are pulling ahead.
3) Many smaller independent pharmacies are struggling—and want to cash out.
4) Hospitals and health systems are battling—and partnering with—PBMs over specialty pharmacy
...READ MORE

China has pledged to stem a flood of the synthetic opioid fentanyl onto America’s streets...security experts are skeptical about whether Beijing is willing, or even able, to follow through... Beijing appears to have offered its help so that it could get the best deal possible from Washington in trade negotiations...In April, China pledged...it would expand the list of narcotics subject to state control to the more than 1,400 known fentanyl analogues...as well as any new ones developed in the future...The regulatory change is supposed to shut down the operations of illicit producers and traffickers who advertise and sell fentanyl products on video websites including Google’s YouTube and Vimeo, and on the Dark Web...They deliver the drugs to the U.S. market mainly in the mail, through express delivery services or trans-shipping them through Mexico and Canada...READ MORE

Researchers at GoodRx...found a 2.9% price hike across brand-name and generic drugs in the first quarter of 2019. Most of that was reported in the first week of January, when drugmakers often raise their prices...Large cities are where drug prices are often highest, GoodRx’s team found. Drugs cost nearly 17% more than the national average in New York City, 14% more in San Francisco and about 10% more in Los Angeles...Meanwhile, prices were lowest in Atlanta and Houston, where they were about 20% below the national average...READ MORE

The founder of Insys Therapeutics Inc on Thursday became the highest-ranking pharmaceutical executive to be convicted in a case tied to the U.S. opioid crisis, when he and four colleagues were found guilty of participating in a scheme to bribe doctors to prescribe an addictive painkiller...A federal jury in Boston found John Kapoor, the drugmaker’s former chairman, and his co-defendants guilty of racketeering conspiracy for engaging in a scheme that also misled insurers into paying for the drug...READ MORE