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In an extensive interview with Bloomberg BNA, IACP's (International Academy of Compounding Pharmacists)David G. Miller, RPh, Executive Vice President & CEO, discusses concerns over the Drug Quality & Security Act (DQSA), emphasizing the need for clarification over which regulatory authority is responsible for the oversight of compounding pharmacy.

House of Representatives’ Ways and Means Committee on Thursday approved the Restoring Access to Medication Act of 2015…bill would essentially reverse a provision in the Affordable Care Act that significantly inhibited the use of health savings accounts or flexible spending accounts for the purchase of over-the-counter medicines…bill restores over-the-counter medications to full tax-preferred status, allowing consumers to use their HSAs or FSAs to pay for these products without first obtaining a prescription.

Specialists in infectious disease are protesting a gigantic overnight increase in the price of a…drug that is the standard of care for treating a life-threatening parasitic infection…Daraprim, was acquired in August by Turing Pharmaceuticals, a start-up run by a former hedge fund manager (Martin Shkreli). Turing immediately raised the price to $750 a tablet from $13.50,…price increase is not an isolated example… most of the attention on pharmaceutical prices has been on new drugs… there is also growing concern about huge price increases on older drugs, some of them generic,… some price increases…have resulted from a business strategy of buying old neglected drugs and turning them into high-priced specialty drugs.

Bond issuance by nonprofit hospitals has reached $18 billion to date for 2015, returning to the highest level since 2012. Bloomberg's Kate Smith looks into the role played by the Affordable Care Act in the resurgence of hospital bond offerings...

South African Police shut down three counterfeit drug making plants last weekend in an INTERPOL-co-ordinated operation that seized 150 tonnes of fake medicines…involved thousands of police and customs officials in Angola, Malawi, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe who raided markets, shops, pharmacies and warehouses in addition to the three illicit plants…seized products were illicit and counterfeit antibiotics, painkillers, erectile dysfunction medicines, birth control and anti-malarial medication...Authorities arrested 550 people…also closed 20 illegal pharmacies where the fake drugs were sold.

Telehealth represents a burgeoning,…opportunity for pharmacy operators, one that has the potential to not only drive traffic into a store, but also to drive new customers into that store…Pharmacy represents a…touchpoint for telehealth operators...making pharmacies that provide access to telehealth services a convenient and less-expensive option for those consumers who are assuming a greater portion of their individual healthcare costs…also an opportunity to improve outcomes through telehealth/retail pharmacy partnerships…many…doctor associations,…support telehealth models,..making retail pharmacy operators fielding in-store telehealth services attractive care partners for health systems.

Back when Martin Shkreli was CEO of Retrophin, he managed to grab a few headlines by buying an old rare-disease drug, Thiola, and raising the price 2000%. Now that he's on to his next company, Turing Pharmaceuticals, he's done himself one better, by buying another old drug and boosting the price 5000%....The drug is Daraprim, which Shkreli's Turing Pharmaceuticals bought a few weeks ago from Impax Laboratories…immediately hiked the price from $13.50 per pill to $750…. Shkreli's extreme sticker shock strategy on an ancient therapy, though, has become the kind of lightning rod for the controversial pricing issue that the industry will find it hard to defend against in the lead-up to a presidential election.

Food and Drug Administration calls a ‘breakthrough’ drug is often not the same as what a layperson would call a breakthrough,…FDA uses the term...for smaller advances, than people use it colloquially, and this may lead patients to have unwarranted confidence in new drug claims…the...Safety and Innovation Act (2012),..allows the FDA to give breakthrough designation to any drug treating a serious or life-threatening condition that "may demonstrate a substantial improvement over existing therapies"…"Breakthrough" is an aspirational term, chosen for the 2012 act to help expedite the new drug approval process,...

Gianrico Farrugia, CEO of Mayo Clinic…laid out his vision of the immediate future of precision medicine at this week’s Individualizing Medicine Conference…He discussed the issues around patient engagement, reimbursement, data security and salience of President Obama’s Precision Medicine Initiative. In terms of immediate potential,…there are five fields worth watching:

• Pharmacogenomics
• Liquid biopsy
• Non-invasive prenatal testing
• Whole genome sequencing
• Microbiome

CNBC's Bertha Coombs reports on the hit to biotech stocks after Hillary Clinton's tweet criticizing drug price gouging.