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Mylan has cleared another hurdle in its ongoing attempt to acquire Perrigo, announcing Tuesday that the Federal Trade Commission had given the deal its OK, as long as Mylan divests itself of some products following the acquisition’s completion. With the completion of this step — and the recent U.S. court decision not to issue an injunction on behalf of Perrigo against Mylan — all Mylan needs is word from Perrigo’s shareholders on whether or not they will accept the company’s $27 billion acquisition offer…

Late last week, Walgreens Boots Alliance filed an 8-K with the full text of its merger agreement with Rite Aid….The document containing the Agreement and Plan of Merger weighs in at a hefty 137 pages. Below, I highlight four fun facts about the deal’s timing, its termination fees, and what the companies will do to achieve antitrust approval.

1. The deal must be completed before Halloween 2016.
2. If Rite Aid backs out of the deal, then it owes as much as $370 million to Walgreens Boots Alliance.
3. WBA could owe Rite Aid a termination fee as large as $650 million.
4. To get the deal approved, WBA is willing to dump as many as 1,000 stores.

Nevada is looking into whether cryotherapy is safe for the general public after the death of a Las Vegas spa worker found inside a phone booth-sized chamber chilled with liquid nitrogen, regulators said Monday…The state said it was shifting its investigation beyond workplace safety and the equipment used in the treatments to the health concerns surrounding the technology itself. The new approach to the investigation could lead to regulations for the industry, said Steve George, state Division of Industrial Relations administrator…The Division of Industrial Relations is expected to look at all three businesses selling the service in the state as part of its comprehensive review…"At this point, the equipment doesn't seem to be the problem, but we are doing our due diligence," said George, who is head of the state's workplace safety division that also includes the Nevada Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

On Jan. 1, 2015 hospitals became eligible for reimbursement when treating patients with two or more chronic conditions…Under CPT code 99490, in fact, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services will pay clinicians an average of $43.12 for spending at least 20 minutes in non-face-to-face consults…CMS could pay out as much as $17 billion a year under chronic care management…a surprisingly small number of providers have thus far taken to 99490…While there is a strong appreciation of the benefits of chronic care management, both as fee-for-service revenue...and as a foundation for population health management, providers are struggling to incorporate CCM in their current operations…What's the hold up?...three obstacles: insufficient reimbursement for the time required, lack of awareness about the opportunity, and compliance concerns…the median time spent delivering the service is 35 minutes per patient per month...although non-face-to-face services may be furnished by any qualified clinical staff member, half…are using registered nurses – a more expensive resource than other types of clinical staff – to engage patients.

In contrast to the U.S. FDA, regulatory agencies outside the United States have been much more aggressive in approving switches for conditions outside the typical OTC paradigm…increasing patient choice by making more medicines available without a prescription is a priority for the British government…The United Kingdom leads the world in the range of products available without a prescription…Industry research conducted by Kline for its…suggests that switch receptivity in the United States may be changing. There are a wide variety of categories with switch candidates that may have significant impact on many companies across the OTC and Rx markets.

Texas Medical Association wants Congress to intervene and make changes to the federal electronic health-record incentive payment program it's calling "meaningless abuse."…The group says Stage 3 of the program meant to get physicians using EHRs could jeopardize Medicare doc payment rules… wants Congress to lift what it's describing as the $31.6 billion program's “convoluted and tedious” meaningful-use requirements…TMA President Dr. Tom Garcia asked legislators to co-sponsor two bills to alter the meaningful-use landscape…One is the Flex-IT 2 Act...which would delay Stage 3 meaningful-use rules until at least Jan. 1, 2017. The other is the Transparent Ratings on Usability and Security to Transform Information Technology, or TRUST IT Act which is aimed at ensuring health IT systems perform better in the field.

Through a settlement brokered by the State of Nevada Attorney General's Office, approximately $3.8 million is available to the University of Nevada School of Medicine for research projects aimed at improving women's health in Nevada…The State of Nevada obtained the settlement with pharmaceutical companies Wyeth, Pfizer and Pharmacia & Upjohn relating to claims regarding postmenopausal hormone therapy products…The funds will be distributed by the Attorney General's Office over a five-year period ending in 2019, with half the available research funds going to School of Medicine faculty in Reno and Las Vegas and the other half going to University Medical Center of Southern Nevada.

As drug price increases continue to make waves on the national level, Congress is taking the matter into its own hands by requiring generic drugmakers under the Medicaid Drug Rebate Program to pay higher rebates if generic prices rise too quickly…The new penalty for such price increases on generics, which is included in the recently passed budget deal, basically amounts to additional rebates that generic drug manufacturers would have to pay if the price of a generic for a given quarter outpaces the inflation-adjusted baseline Average Manufacturer Price…Under the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2015, the additional rebate...would now be applied to generics, too, beginning in Q1 of 2017...the change could create issues for generic manufacturers around updating their Medicaid price reporting systems, figuring out the potential financial impact of the change, and posing new strategic pricing questions for generic drug launches and market withdrawals.

Prescription drug users rose from 51 percent of U.S. adults in 1999 to 59 percent of adults in 2011, according to a new study…It’s hard to say why prescription drug use would be on the rise…we know that older adults tend to take more medications than younger adults, and so we’d expect prescription drug use to increase as the U.S. population ages…something beyond the aging…appears to be driving the increase in prescription drug use…New drugs enter the market and old drugs lose patent protection and become less costly...patterns of prescription drug use evolve with scientific advances and with changes in clinical guidelines and policies regarding drug marketing and promotion.

Valeant Pharmaceuticals International Inc sought to reassure doctors…that the company's decision to cut ties to a controversial specialty pharmacy would not disrupt doctors' ability to prescribe the company's drugs to patients…In a letter to healthcare professionals…Valeant would pay for the cost of its products through Nov. 8 and make sure patients could fill their prescriptions with no out-of-pocket expenses, wherever possible. Patients on government-run health plans such as Medicare are not eligible…Philidor Rx Services, will file no further insurance claims.