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Walgreens will not dispense abortion pills in nearly two dozen states after legal threats from GOP lawmakers, the retail pharmacy chain confirmed...The Walgreens decision stems from a letter written by nearly two dozen Republican state attorneys general at the beginning of February that threatened legal action if the company began distributing mifepristone in their states...Walgreens...spokesperson saying “we are not distributing mifepristone at this time. We intend to be a certified pharmacy and will distribute mifepristone only in those jurisdictions where it is legal and operationally feasible.”...READ MORE

As rescue efforts continue in the wake of a cataclysmic earthquake on the border of Turkey and Syria, drugmakers near and far are rushing to offer aid...Novartis and its generics arm Sandoz are putting up $1 million for the cause. At present, the companies are working to identify the right partners to “make sure this support gets to those most in need,”...Novartis also said it's in close contact with its local team to ensure the well-being of some 1,600 staffers and their families in the region...Bayer...will donate a total of 1.5 million euros to the affected regions...READ MORE

The agency will kick off discussions on how it will negotiate Medicare drug prices in the spring and publish the first 10 drugs selected by Sept. 1, 2023...The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services...released its timeline for negotiating prices on an initial tranche of Medicare drugs, a new power granted the agency by last year’s Inflation Reduction Act...Under the law, Medicare can negotiate prices for top-selling drugs that have no competition, starting with 10 in 2026 and rising to a total of 60 by 2029. But the law didn’t fully detail the process by which that will happen...READ MORE

After setting record-high U.S. prices in the first half of 2022, drugmakers continued to launch medicines at high prices in the second half, a Reuters analysis has found, highlighting their power despite new legislation to lower costs for older prescription products...The median annual price of the 17 novel drugs the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved since July 2022 is $193,900, down from $257,000 in the first half of 2022...For full year 2022, the median was $222,003...The latest numbers imply double digit year-over-year price growth...READ MORE

Telehealth providers and advocates are balking at proposed telemedicine rules released by the Drug Enforcement Administration...If made permanent, the rules would be a marked change from the suspension of the Ryan Haight Online Pharmacy Consumer Protection Act, which propelled a telepsychiatry boom during the COVID-19 pandemic...Under the proposed rule released by the DEA...some medications would require an in-person doctor’s visit. Controlled substances including stimulants like Adderall and opioids such as oxycodone and buprenorphine used to treat opioid use disorder would require at least one in-person visit...READ MORE

Sixteen states have banned a pharmacy benefit management practice that involves not counting the value of drug copay assistance from manufacturers toward patient deductibles...Drugmakers use copay assistance programs to shield patients from out-of-pocket expenses — and build market share for their products in the process. But pharmacy benefit managers have cried foul, saying the copay programs undercut formularies and wind up increasing the use of expensive drugs that are not any better than less expensive ones. They have pushed back with “copay adjustment programs,” especially “copay accumulators,” which are designed to blunt the effect of the copay assistance programs by not counting their value toward patient deductibles...READ MORE

California is suing major drug manufacturers and pharmacy benefits managers for allegedly leveraging their market power to overcharge patients for insulin...The state filed suit...against drug manufacturers Eli Lilly, Novo Nordisk, and Sanofi, along with major PBMs CVS Caremark, Cigna’s Express Scripts and UnitedHealth Group’s OptumRx...The lawsuit alleges that the drugmakers and PBMs worked together to drive up the price of insulin through illegal and deceptive business practices in violation of California’s Unfair Competition Law...READ MORE

The Biden administration rolled out new guidance to drugmakers for meeting a new requirement to dole out rebates if their prices on Medicare Parts B and D go above inflation...The guidance...implements a key part of the Inflation Reduction Act passed last year. Drug companies had to start paying rebates for raising prices past inflation back in January, with the amounts going back to Medicare...“We are fighting to rein in the excessive cost of skyrocketing prescription drug prices, and now drug companies that increase their prices faster than the rate of inflation will have to pay rebates back to the Medicare Trust Fund,” said HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra in a statement...READ MORE

In 2016, a blockbuster drug called Humira was poised to become a lot less valuable...Through its savvy but legal exploitation of the U.S. patent system, Humira’s manufacturer, AbbVie, blocked competitors from entering the market. For the next six years, the drug’s price kept rising. Today, Humira is the most lucrative franchise in pharmaceutical history...Next week, the curtain is expected to come down on a monopoly that has generated $114 billion in revenue for AbbVie just since the end of 2016. The knockoff drug that regulators authorized more than six years ago, Amgen’s Amjevita, will come to market in the United States, and as many as nine more Humira competitors will follow this year from pharmaceutical giants including Pfizer. Prices are likely to tumble...READ MORE

Time for the Drug Channels annual reality check on drug pricing. The data once again tell a different story than you might read in your favorite politician’s Twitter feed or misleading news reports...For 2022, brand-name drugs’ net prices dropped for an unprecedented fifth consecutive year. What’s more, after adjusting for overall inflation, brand-name drug net prices plunged by almost 9%...The factors behind declining drug prices will remain in the coming years—and become even stronger due to forthcoming changes in Medicare and Medicaid. Employers, health plans, and PBMs will determine whether patients will share in this ongoing deflation...READ MORE