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About five years ago, Nevada started taking high-profile steps toward tackling the opioid crisis. There were bills to curb doctor-shopping and over-prescribing in 2015 and 2017, a statewide opioid summit in 2016 and a cascade of lawsuits against opioid manufacturers from the state and local governments in the past few years...But has the growing awareness and response made a dent in the epidemic?...Scores of law enforcement, treatment professionals, elected officials and others gathered in Las Vegas this week for a two-day conference where they assessed progress and exchanged ideas on how to better tackle opioid abuse...Here are some takeaways from the event:...READ MORE

The deaths of 64 people and sickening of nearly 800 due to criminal negligence by employees of the New England Compounding Center in 2012 marked a profound failure of state and federal regulatory enforcement…led to…the Drug Quality and Security Act of 2013 provisions to create a more robust regulatory framework for compounding pharmacies…The legislation instructed the FDA to create regulations…that would assure patient safety while permitting local compounders to continue to meet patient needs by providing customized compounded medications using FDA-approved substances…But the FDA has overreached in implementing the provisions, all but halting common compounding practices that have been safely performed for years and on which patients with legitimate needs for compounded medications rely. Not only that, but the FDA has done so by circumventing the federal Administrative Procedure Act, issuing “guidance documents” to implement policies rather than following the statutory rule-making process that requires stakeholder input regarding proposed regulations…READ MORE

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

No one loved a bill heard in committee...that would keep emergency room patients from getting socked with surprise medical bills from an out-of-network provider that treats them...But no one hated the bill enough to oppose it...The bill...would bar an out-of-network provider treating an ER patient with “medically necessary emergency services” from charging more than the patient’s insurance co-payment, co-insurance or deductible. It also establishes procedures for insurers and third-party providers to work out payments between them, without putting the patient in the middle, and for transferring patients from an out-of-network facility where they were initially treated to one within their network within 24 hours of becoming stable...READ MORE

In another sign of growing impatience with the high cost of prescription drugs, bipartisan legislation has been introduced in the U.S. House that would limit pharmaceutical companies’ ability to delay the entry of generic drugs into the market...The Terminating the Extension of Rights Misappropriated Act targets the practice of “evergreening,” in which pharmaceutical companies make minor changes to a drug and file a new patent on those miniscule modifications in order to extend their exclusivity and maintain high prices...READ MORE

The National Association of Chain Drug Stores today praised Texas’ enactment of a bill (HB 2174) to address opioid abuse and addiction, while providing key safeguards to address the needs of those suffering from chronic pain...the new law will require electronic prescribing for controlled substances, to help prevent fraud and abuse. It also will limit the supply of a patient’s first opioid prescription to 10 days, when that prescription is for temporary, or acute, pain. It is important to note that this limit does not apply to prescriptions for ongoing, or chronic, pain. It also does not apply to cancer care, treatment of other illnesses, or end-of-life care...READ MORE

Pharmacists and some health experts are opposing a proposal to permit the bulk importation of drugs from Canada to Maine, arguing that it could result in unsafe drugs being brought into the state and have unintended consequences, such as causing drug shortages in Canada...Proponents of Senate President Troy Jackson’s bill say those fears are unfounded, and believe it could be one of several proposals that would help to rein in prescription drug prices in Maine...If approved, the state would designate a wholesale purchaser of drugs from Canadian wholesalers...READ MORE

A year after its opening and a few months after it was targeted in a political debate in the Nevada Legislature, Elite Medical Center...is looking toward 2021...That’s the year that Elite will have to accept Medicare and Medicaid, although CEO Patty Holden, who said it could be much sooner, hopes to work with lawmakers to create different classes of hospitals in Nevada...Less than a mile from Strip landmarks like the Bellagio and Paris Las Vegas, the hospital is working toward accepting Medicare and Medicaid, after state legislators earlier this year passed a law requiring essentially all hospitals in the state to accept the government programs...READ MORE

Colorado passed a new law to help slow down the ongoing opioid epidemic in the United States. Instead of giving an opioid prescription, doctors can instead recommend the use of medical marijuana to alleviate symptoms of their conditions...A bill that allows doctors to prescribe medical marijuana to patients instead of opioid has been signed into law in Colorado....Governor Jared Polis signed Senate Bill 13, which aims to help curb opioid addiction. The law will be effective starting Aug. 12...READ MORE

A Democratic-controlled Senate rejected...an amendment backed by their Republican colleagues that would have removed a carveout in state trade secret law long opposed by the national drug lobby...Senate Republican Leader James Settelmeyer framed the amendment as an attempt to codify an agreement reached between drug companies and the state following a lawsuit over Nevada’s first-in-the-nation diabetes drug pricing transparency law...As part of that agreement, the state mapped out a process in regulation to protect information that drug companies believe to be trade secret protected from public disclosure...“The framework for protection of trade secrets in the regulations adopted for diabetes transparency reporting applies to disclosures under statute but were written by referencing the specific bill that created those sections,”...Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America said in a statement opposing the asthma bill. “The confidentiality language in the regulations for the diabetes transparency bill should be adopted in SB 262 to clarify that the requirements and considerations apply to disclosures required by those sections of statute generally and not just pursuant to any specific bill.”...Sen. Yvanna Cancela, who sponsored both the diabetes and asthma drug pricing bills, said on the floor that she believed the proposed amendment would weaken the state’s drug pricing transparency statute and pointed to the existing regulatory framework in place...READ MORE