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Walgreens Boots Alliance and Rite Aid on Monday morning extended their previously announced definitive merger agreement under which Walgreens Boots Alliance will acquire all outstanding shares of Rite Aid...The retail pharmacy operations also restructured a new deal that would value Rite Aid at between about $6.8 billion and $7.4 billion, depending on required store divestitures, down from an initial acquisition cost of $9.4 billion...Under the terms of the amendment, the parties have agreed to reduce the price for each share of Rite Aid common stock to be paid by Walgreens Boots Alliance...price will be a maximum of $7 per share and a minimum of $6.50 per share...Walgreens Boots Alliance will be required to divest up to 1,200 Rite Aid stores and certain additional related assets if required to obtain regulatory approval...

With hundreds of open positions and a slate of new initiatives to execute on at the FDA, President Donald Trump picked a particularly inconvenient time to declare a hiring freeze for the federal government...No one really knows how this is going to play out, but the speculation is rampant that the FDA will be forced to cut loose from its review timelines, which could have a big impact on a wide range of biopharma companies...the agency is expected to get a record 1600 ANDAs this year. Trump’s freeze could slow reviews on generics to a glacial pace, which in turn would interfere with the introduction of new discounted drugs that could go a long way to removing pressure on new drug prices...The only guarantee Trump can offer now is a rising level of uncertainty over the administration’s plans for the FDA. And that could take months to clarify during a particularly critical year for the biopharma industry...

...Dr. Henri Wetselaar...his medical assistant (David Litwin) and a pharmacist (Jason Smith)...are accused of funneling large quantities of pills onto the streets of Las Vegas through an illegal prescription drug ring...the trial...has provided a window into the scope of the federal government’s crackdown on prescription drug abuse in Southern Nevada...One of the government’s star witnesses is a drug dealer who testified this week about an arrangement she had with Wetselaar and Litwin, who saw clients out of her home twice a week. Carolyn Allen said she would refer clients to Wetselaar, instruct them to complain about back pain, and provide them with the cash to pay for the prescription. Clients would return to her with the prescriptions...she would take the prescriptions to Lam’s Pharmacy, where Smith was the manager. She said Lam’s Pharmacy maintained an entire book dedicated only to her clients. Allen said her clients were prescribed — among other drugs — oxycodone, hydrocodone, Soma and Xanax.

Merck & Co said it agreed to enter into a settlement and license agreement with Bristol-Myers Squibb Co and Ono Pharmaceutical Co Ltd to resolve all global patent-infringement litigation related to its cancer drug, Keytruda...Merck will make an initial payment of $625 million to Bristol and Japan's Ono. The company will also pay a 6.5 percent royalty rate on Keytruda sales from January 2017 to December 2023, and a 2.5 percent rate for the subsequent three years...Bristol will get 75 percent of the royalties and Ono will get the rest.

Laura Joszt, assistant managing editor at The American Journal of Managed Care. Welcome to This Week in Managed Care from the Managed Markets News Network

Employers and drugmakers are eager to say good riddance to an excise tax on brand-name prescription medicines that could get stripped under the latest GOP plan to repeal ObamaCare...While the law’s other major taxes, like the medical device or so-called Cadillac taxes, generated major campaigns seeking their repeal, the prescription drug fee has garnered little publicity. But it’s no negligible element among the law's funding sources. It's expected to bring in $27 billion over a 10-year period, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation's 2010 estimates...But the branded pharmaceutical fee never attracted bipartisan backing for repeal and it went into effect in 2010...consumers are "insensitive to changes in the drug prices."...if someone needs a specialty drug that is likely to be a brand-name product, his or her insurance is going to pay for it or that person will have to pay out of pocket for that amount...if the price happens to go up, you’re still going to pay for the drug...The fight over repealing other ObamaCare taxes means it's still unclear whether the prescription fee will be gone in the first round of the health law’s repeal measures...there could be other opportunities to get rid of it. ObamaCare repeal is looking to be...a series of legislative actions and regulatory actions over the course of the next year or so...

University, health and city officials gathered… at Las Vegas City Hall offered an in-depth review of the UNLV School of Medicine’s progress in establishing the...medical school…city officials believe the school is integral to...develop a...medical district in the central valley...The district, established in 1997 to create an area of concentrated medical activity...covers 684 acres with a core 214-acre area between Charleston Boulevard and Alta Drive, from Rancho Drive to Martin Luther King Boulevard...They have invested more than $36 million in infrastructure in four years and expect to pump in another $97 million in 2018 and beyond...The investment…is expected to pay off...By 2030, the medical school is projected to have an economic impact of $1.2 billion...the growth...provides opportunities for collaboration with local physicians and allows the homegrown medical community to grow alongside the needs of the area...

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

A little more than one week following its reintroduction in the Senate, provider status legislation is again being entertained in the House...the Pharmacy and Medically Underserved Areas Enhancement Act (H.R.592)...will make it easier for Medicare patients in underserved communities to receive care...The...Act would allow Medicare beneficiaries to receive basic care such as immunizations, diabetes management, blood pressure screenings and routine checks from pharmacists. The bill reached impressive levels of bipartisan support… There is currently no avenue for Medicare to directly reimburse pharmacists for providing this care...The work already is underway to build on the momentum that was started in the last Congress, to accelerate the campaign to enhance the quality, accessibility and affordability of patient care through pharmacist-provided services...Pharmacists are highly-accessible, clinically-trained medication experts who can improve health outcomes and reduce overall costs…We hope the common-sense, bicameral, bipartisan legislation, which also generated a lot of support in the previous Congress, can pass both chambers and make it to President Trump’s desk for his signature...

The mental health system in Nevada has long been a lightning rod for criticism, with the Silver State consistently ranking at or near the bottom of most national rankings...But state legislators and health officials say a trio of bills now being drafted would make some small improvements by streamlining licensing of mental health professionals, updating the state’s definition of “mental illness” and making it easier to share information on individuals who have been deemed mentally ill with law enforcement...(Assemblyman James Oscarson)...proposed transferring “responsibility for regulating certain mental health-related professions to the State Board of Health...Another bill...would allow the state criminal record repository to more easily share information with local law enforcement officers. The idea is to help them identify an individual who has been “adjudicated as mentally ill or has been committed to any mental health facility” and is therefore barred from possessing firearms...A third proposal...aims to update the definition of “mental illness” in Nevada statutes...The bill would bring the state into line with the definitions in the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders….