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Walgreens and the Dept. of Veterans Affairs are working together to improve coordination of care for VA-enrolled patients. Through the partnership...VA providers will be able to see the entire medication and immunization history of the VA-enrolled patient if they receive prescriptions and immunizations at Walgreens...“This arrangement is the first of its kind, and it’s a strong collaboration,” said VA Sec. Robert Wilkie. “Partnerships like this will help VA continue to improve the way we care for Veterans.”...The VA-Walgreens exchange eliminates the need for providers to gather medication history from patients who fill their scripts at Walgreens...

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

Nebraska is preparing to carry out its first execution since 1997 on Tuesday in a bewildering about-face driven largely by the state’s Republican governor...Carey Moore, is scheduled to be executed at the Nebraska State Penitentiary...with a never-before-tried combination of drugs. Moore was condemned to die for the 1979 shooting deaths of...Maynard Helgeland and Reuel Van Ness Jr., and is one of the nation’s longest-serving death row inmates...The combination of drugs for Tuesday’s execution has never been used to put a person to death, according to the Lincoln Journal Star. Three of the drugs — diazepam, fentanyl and cisatracurium — have never been used as part of an execution protocol. The fourth drug, potassium chloride, has been challenged as having the potential to cause serious pain for the inmate.

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

Activist investor Carl Icahn has given up his fight to block Cigna's proposed $67 billion acquisition of Express Scripts. Icahn just last week warned shareholders that the deal was among the "worst acquisitions in corporate history" in an open letter...Cigna responded to Icahn's criticism with a lengthy defense. In its response, Cigna called Icahn's opposition "misguided and short-sighted" and said it "demonstrates a clear lack of understanding of the dynamics of the healthcare industry."...Icahn had raised three primary arguments against the acquisition in his open letter to Cigna shareholders: The insurer is paying too much, it would be diving directly into a risky sector embroiled in a political debate over drug pricing, and would soon have to face off with Amazon, which is gearing up to take the industry by storm...Instead, the activist investor proposed an alternative to the acquisition: That Cigna engage in a multi-year partnership with Express Scripts until those regulatory and competitive concerns are ironed out.

Laura Joszt, host for Pharmacy Week in Review.

Amgen made an aggressive legal bid to push Sanofi and Regeneron's rival PCSK9 drug off the market when the two were first duking it out in 2015. It didn't work—but Amgen hasn't given up. It's aiming to take the battle to the U.S. Supreme Court instead...After falling short with its arguments in federal appeals court, Amgen is asking the Supreme Court to strike up a review of the case. Amgen claimed Sanofi and Regeneron stepped on its PCSK9 patents and initially won an injunction against their drug Praluent...Amgen now argues that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit incorrectly interpreted and ruled on patent law. The company says the court has created its own standard that has resulted in “jurisprudential anarchy.” Amgen markets the PSCK9 cholesterol drug Repatha in a head-to-head battle with Praluent; both products have fallen short of expectations, mostly because payers limited access to the high-priced drugs.

The new drug, Onpattro (patisiran), by Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, is in a new class of drugs called small interfering ribonucleic acid (siRNA) treatment...a first-of-its-kind RNA-based therapy for treating peripheral nerve disease (polyneuropathy) caused by hereditary transthyretin-mediated amyloidosis (hATTR) in adult patients...Polyneuropathy caused by hATTR is a rare, debilitating, and often fatal genetic disease characterized by the buildup of abnormal amyloid protein in peripheral nerves, the heart, and other organs...“This approval is part of a broader wave of advances that allows us to treat disease by actually targeting the root cause, enabling us to arrest or reverse a condition, rather than only being able to slow its progression or treat its symptoms...“New technologies like RNA inhibitors that alter the genetic drivers of a disease, have the potential to transform medicine, so we can better confront and even cure debilitating illnesses.

Pfizer has joined three of its Big Pharma peers in a Department of Justice probe examining allegations that the companies paid bribes to a terrorist-run health ministry in Iraq...The Justice Department's inquiries stem from a lawsuit, filed last fall, in which veterans and their families accused Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Roche and Johnson & Johnson of paying bribes to win business from the Iraqi ministry of health at a time when the ministry was controlled by terrorists...The suit alleges the companies paid bribes to terrorists that "openly controlled the Iraqi ministry in charge of importing medical goods." The plaintiffs contend the drug companies "obtained lucrative contracts from that ministry by making corrupt payments to the terrorists who ran it."

This new approval pathway was created to expedite the development and review of a generic drug for products that lack competition...The FDA gave the nod for Apotex’s potassium chloride oral solution...“Today’s approval marks the successful implementation of a new program designed to encourage generic drug development for products with inadequate generic competition,” said FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb, in a press statement...“The quick implementation of this new pathway is part of our broader effort to foster generic competition and help address the high cost of drugs. So are our efforts to narrow the time it takes for generic drugs to reach the market by reducing the number of review cycles that generic applications typically undergo. This new generic drug application was also approved in its first cycle of review. This approval demonstrates that the competitive generic therapy pathway is efficient and open for business. This pathway is a key step in making safe and effective generic drugs available to patients quickly and ensuring there’s adequate competition so patients have affordable access to the treatments they need,” said Gottlieb.