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Governor Brian Sandoval says health insurance company Centene will expand coverage on Nevada's health exchange for 2018, meaning all the state's rural counties will continue to have health coverage...An a news conference in Silver Springs, Sandoval announced the Missouri-based Centene Corporation, also known as Silver Summit in Nevada, will offer health insurance coverage to all Nevada residents including those living in Carson City, Churchill, Douglas, Elko, Esmeralda, Eureka, Humboldt, Lander, Lincoln, Lyon, Mineral, Pershing, Storey and White Pine on the Silver State Health Insurance Exchange...Today’s announcement will ensure that more than 8,000 Nevadans will have the ability to exercise their option to utilize Nevada’s online marketplace and secure coverage for their families,” said Governor Brian Sandoval. “This is a fantastic time to welcome SilverSummit to our healthcare market and express the state’s sincere gratitude for stepping up, partnering with Nevada’s own Hometown Health, and providing an insurance option for thousands of Nevadans.”...

Merck & Co.’s CEO quit President Donald Trump’s council of manufacturing executives Monday, saying “America’s leaders must honor our fundamental values” by rejecting expressions of hatred, bigotry and group supremacy...He was almost immediately attacked by Trump on Twitter...Following a weekend of violence in Virginia involving white-supremacist groups that Trump has been criticized for not explicitly condemning, Merck Chief Executive Officer Ken Frazier said “as a matter of personal conscience, I feel a responsibility to take a stand against intolerance and extremism.”

Regulation can be a tool to strengthen competition and address important health and safety concerns, but it can also be abused to limit access to the market...lawmakers and regulators must regulate wisely and be careful of unintended consequences...what happens when important safety regulations can be gamed by bad actors seeking to preserve their monopoly profits?...This has been happening in the market for generic drugs, where some dominant brand name pharmaceutical companies are trying to shut out low cost generic competitors by manipulating the regulations originally designed to keep people safe. And this is not a small problem, either…The problem comes from a conflict that arises between...Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy, and the approval process a generic company needs to go through to enter the market once a drug patent expires. Generics must get a sample of the brand name drug they want to compete with to prove to the FDA that their product is exactly the same...the REMS program greatly restricts access of certain drugs unless proper safety protocols, unique to each drug, are met. This can leave generic companies with no choice but to ask for samples directly from the manufacturer...It is not surprising that these drug makers are denying generics access to these samples. However, the FDA currently does not have the tools necessary to discipline these bad actors and force the distribution of samples to generic companies...Congress is now paying attention...

The Senate...passed a bill allowing the Food and Drug Administration to continue collecting fees from drug companies to review new product applications...The FDA Reauthorization Act renews an existing law that expires on Sept. 30 and which provides the majority of FDA funds used to review pharmaceuticals and determine whether they are safe and effective. The Senate passed the bill by a vote of 94-1...It was passed last month in the House of Representatives.

New legislation to deliver a real-time prescription monitoring system in Victoria has been welcomed by the peak national body for pharmacists, the Pharmaceutical Society of Australia...Legislation introduced into the Victorian Parliament...will establish the legislative framework for a Victorian real-time monitoring system...PSA Victorian President Benjamin Marchant said PSA welcomed the long-overdue system, which will support clinical decision-making by prescribers and pharmacists to optimise use of medicines and save lives in Victoria...“The system will allow timely and relevant information to be shared among prescribers and pharmacists, ensuring potent medicines are used safely,” Mr Marchant said. “The system will identify people at risk of harm and provide referral pathways for pharmacists to support our patients...“PSA supports the Victorian legislation’s mandatory requirements for prescribers and pharmacists. The system should be integrated and streamlined for prescribing and dispensing software to ensure it is effective and useable.”...

Nicole Crisano, PTNN. This weekly video program provides our readers with an in-depth review of the latest news, product approvals, FDA rulings and more.

The Division of Insurance has announced that Nevada’s insurance carriers that participate in the Silver State Health Insurance Exchange have decided to only offer coverage to Clark, Washoe, and Nye counties beginning in 2018...Currently these medical carriers offer plans on Nevada Health Link: Health Plan of Nevada, Prominence Health Plan, Anthem...But some changes are coming as of January 1, 2018.

• Health Plan of Nevada will only be offering coverage in Washoe, Clark, and Nye Counties.
• Prominence Health Plan announced this week that they will be pulling out of the Nevada Exchange market.
• Two new companies, Aetna and Centene will be joining the exchange market but according to the Division of Insurance at most they will only be offering plans in Washoe, Clark, and Nye counties

The Division of Insurance says this will leave about 8,000 Nevada residents without coverage across 14 counties. The largest group is about 5,000 people across Carson City, Douglas, Lyon, and Storey Counties...If you live outside of Washoe, Clark, or Nye counties and have concerns about your coverage, Silver State Health Exchanges suggests you call them at 855-768-5465...They say that they are working diligently with Governor Sandoval to come up with a plan for those that could be uninsured.

The King Review has failed to acknowledge the role of hospital pharmacists, says the SHPA...The interim report of the Review of Pharmacy Remuneration and Regulation’s failure to acknowledge or leverage the “pivotal” role of hospital pharmacists in ensuring Australians have appropriate and convenient access to medicines, the Society of Hospital Pharmacists of Australia says...In its formal response to the interim report, SHPA highlighted managing transitions of care between hospitals and the community and prioritising the development of HMRs (Home Medicine Reviews) as key aspects of the King Review...It also reaffirmed what it sees as the “crucial” value of including SHPA in Agreement negotiations and decisions...SHPA Chief Executive Kristin Michaels says SHPA’s response to the King Review was driven by the position of hospital pharmacists as progressive advocates for clinical excellence and committed to evidence-based practice...Ms Michaels says hospital pharmacists are equipped to influence a reduction in the 230,000 medicine-related hospital admissions per year in Australia, which cost the health budget $1.2bn annually...

What's the dollar value of pain?...That's the question posed by a team of Icelandic and American economists in a working paper published this week by the National Bureau of Economic Research...how far would we go to avoid pain?...if you're an economist, answering that question is surprisingly difficult. You can't simply flat-out ask people how much they'd pay to avoid pain. Most people aren't used to thinking of their suffering in dollar terms. People who haven't experienced severe or chronic pain are likely to underestimate the value of being pain-free...researchers used a technique that's been used to study the implicit "cost" of a number of different ailments...They analyzed data from over 22,000 Americans over the age of 50 who had taken part in the Health and Retirement Study...As the study's authors put it, you get an implicit answer to this question without having to actually pose it to people: "Consider your overall satisfaction with life being often troubled by pain, what would you be willing to pay to be just as happy but without pain?"...The answer: between $56 and $145. A day. Which works out to between $20,000 and $53,000 a year. Recall that the median household income is about $56,000, and the trade-off becomes stark: Some people would theoretically be willing to give up their entire livelihoods to be pain-free.

New Hampshire sued...Purdue Pharma LP...joining several state and local governments in accusing the drugmaker of engaging in deceptive marketing practices that have helped fuel a national opioid addiction epidemic...The lawsuit filed...claimed that Purdue Pharma significantly downplayed the risk of addiction posed by OxyContin and engaged in marketing practices that "opened the floodgates" to opioid use and abuse...The lawsuit came after the state's top court in June overturned a ruling that barred the enforcement of subpoenas against Purdue and four other drugmakers because of the use of a private law firm by the office of the attorney general...The complaint said...the...company had spent hundreds of millions of dollars since the 1990s on misleading marketing that overstated the benefits of opioids for treating chronic, rather than short-term, pain.