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“The announcement made today puts politics over patients. Eliminating the biologics provision in the USMCA removes vital protections for innovators while doing nothing to help U.S. patients afford their medicines or access future treatments and cures. The only winners today are foreign governments who want to steal American intellectual property (IP) and free ride on America’s global leadership in biopharmaceutical research and development...“We cannot support abandoning provisions that protect American companies and raise standards abroad. We hope that Congress and the Administration will pursue international trade agreements that hold foreign governments accountable by ensuring that they protect and value the ongoing discovery of much-needed medicines to treat and potentially cure the world’s most devastating diseases.”...READ MORE

Canada’s Liberal government is more likely to pass a universal prescription drug plan after losing its majority in Monday’s election, setting the stage for what would be the biggest shakeup of the country’s public healthcare system since it was created in the 1960s...Universal drug coverage would shake up the country’s C$39.8 billion ($30.4 billion) prescription drug market, and cut drugmakers’ revenue by some C$4.8 billion a year by 2027. It may draw opposition from drugmakers, and from private insurers, who could also lose revenue, as well as deficit hawks...READ MORE

When generic challengers come for a branded med’s patent, drugmakers have in the past chosen to pony up and stall their rivals with an anticompetitive pact better known as “pay for delay.” In an effort to keep drug prices down, California is looking to end the practice...a new bill...will make California the first state to ban pay-for-delay deals in pharma...AB 824, will make it unlawful for companies to exchange anything of value in return for a halt to patent challenges from generic drugmakers. That new measure could open the door to a range of civil suits against companies seeking to keep generic competitors off the market...READ MORE

While insurer and hospital groups cheered House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s new drug prices plan, other experts and groups are skeptical of the bill’s chances of ever reaching President Donald Trump...The ambitious plan...drew plaudits from hospital and pharmacy benefit manager groups and fierce opposition from pharma. But major opposition from Republican members of the GOP-controlled Senate could doom the proposal, some experts and groups said...Republicans have blasted the proposal that calls for the Department of Health and Human Services to identify up to 250 brand-name drugs that do not have a lot of competition and aren’t driving up spending...HHS would then negotiate with the makers of those drugs to determine a fair price that Medicare and commercial payers would pay. The price would be linked to an average paid by several developed countries such as Germany and France...READ MORE

California Governor Gavin Newsom signed into law last month new legislation that allows pharmacists in the state to initiate and dispense HIV medication without a prescription. The law, SB159, was amended to say that “a pharmacist may initiate and furnish HIV preexposure prophylaxis” and “a pharmacist may initiate and furnish HIV postexposure prophylaxis.” Previously, only pharmacists in specific collaborative practice agreements were able to dispense the drugs independently.In order to dispense either preexposure prophylaxis (PrEP) or postexposure prophylaxis (PEP), pharmacists will need to complete a boardapproved training program, according to the law...READ MORE

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's plan to require direct price negotiation between the federal government and the pharmaceutical sector would reduce Medicare drug spending by $369 billion over a decade...drugmakers are likely to push back by raising list prices and reducing research and development spending, which in turn could lead to a reduction in the number of new drugs coming to market...Drugmakers...saying price controls would extend to the private sector and reduce industry revenue by as much as $1 trillion over 10 years...READ MORE

A 340B advocacy group is imploring congressional allies to ensure House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s drug prices plan won’t prevent hospitals from getting discounts under the program...The hospital industry-backed advocacy group 340B Health sent a letter to the House Energy & Commerce Committee...extolling the virtues of the program. The letter comes after the release of Pelosi’s Lower Drug Costs Act, which would call for the Department of Health and Human Services secretary to select at least 25 drugs a year to negotiate for a lower price...Currently, the legislative text says that for each year that a negotiated price is applied that drug shall “not be considered a covered outpatient drug subject to an agreement under … 340B.”...READ MORE

Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed into law HB 2088, which requires that all pharmacists who dispense Schedule II controlled substances provide written notice on the safe disposal of controlled substances unless the dispensing pharmacy is authorized to take back those drugs for disposal, regularly accepts those drugs for safe disposal or provides the patient—at no cost—"chemicals to render the unused drugs unusable" or a mail-in pouch. This law goes into effect on January 1, 2020...DisposeRx, which has a network of more than 2,000 pharmacies in Texas, is working to help pharmacists and pharmacies comply with HB 2088 via safe, at-home disposal packets and patient education...READ MORE

California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill...that will make HIV-prevention drugs available without a prescription. It allows pharmacists to dispense both PrEP, or preexposure prophylaxis, and PEP, post-exposure prophylaxis...The legislation also prohibits insurance companies from requiring patients to obtain prior authorization before using their benefits to obtaining the medications...The law requires pharmacists to provide instruction on using the prophylaxis, as well as its possible side effects...READ MORE

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's senior adviser on healthcare pitched the California representative's drug plan to a ballroom full of insurance industry players...and called on them to support the bill...Wendell Primus tried to convince the crowd that a united coalition could weather pharma's influence if it included insurers, doctors, hospitals, the public and the AARP..."I have no reason to underestimate the influence of pharma in this town, and they are going to work very hard to defeat this bill," Primus said in Washington during a conference held by the insurance lobby America's Health Insurance Plans...Jennifer Bryant, senior vice president of policy and research for PhRMA, the lobbying group for the pharmaceutical industry, said the bill would give the government sweeping authority that she said should give those in the ballroom pause...READ MORE