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Here’s a summer surprise for fans of the 340B Drug Pricing Program: Drug Channels has just obtained the 2021 figures from the Health Resources and Services Administration...for 2021, discounted purchases under the 340B program reached a record $43.9 billion—an astonishing $5.9 billion (+15.6%) higher than its 2020 counterpart. Hospitals accounted for 87% of these skyrocketing 340B purchases...What’s more, the difference between list prices and discounted 340B purchases also grew, to $49.7 billion (+$7.0 billion). This figure approximates the money collected by 340B covered entities...340B advocates have been screaming that “drug companies are cutting 340B,” but the data tell a very different story. Only in the U.S. healthcare system can billions more in payments and spreads be considered a cut...READ MORE

A group of 23 state attorneys general led by Florida told a federal court on Monday that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention lacks the legal authority to impose a nationwide transportation mask mandate to address COVID-19...The CDC sought "an unprecedented masking mandate regulating every breath of millions of Americans," said the brief in support of the group that sued to overturn the mask mandate...The group, which included Arizona, Georgia, Indiana, Missouri, Ohio, Texas and Virginia, urged the appeals court to reject the CDC "overreach."...READ MORE

Should pharma reps keep wheeling their cases into doctors' offices? Maybe not. Video meetings are three times more effective than in-person interactions when it comes to driving new prescriptions...That’s according to a new report...which combed through data from 130 million quarterly field interactions across 80% of global biopharmas...It was an unexpected result: Video meetings, which have grown during the pandemic, work better than in-person meetings at getting new prescriptions filled. And digital leaders in the industry “are gaining an advantage using video calls up to three times a week,” the...report said...Why is video better? Partly because video meetings last longer...video calls tend to average 21 minutes, with reps using content in 85% of those meetings compared with 39% in person...READ MORE

Despite what you may have heard, pharmacy participation in the 340B Drug Pricing Program continues to thrive...Drug Channels Institute’s latest analysis reveals that an astonishing 32,000 pharmacy locations—more than half of the entire U.S. pharmacy industry—now act as contract pharmacies for the hospitals and other healthcare providers that participate in the 340B program. Over the past 12 months, the number of pharmacies in the program has grown by more than 2,000 locations...What’s more, five multi-billion-dollar, for-profit, publicly traded pharmacy chains and PBMs...account for three-quarters of all 340B contract pharmacy relationships with covered entities. Is this really what Congress intended when the 340B program was established in 1992?...The 340B Drug Pricing Program has become the second-largest government pharmaceutical program, based on net drug spending. But unlike such programs as Medicare Part D and Medicaid, 340B lacks a regulatory infrastructure, well-developed administrative controls, and clear legislation to guide the program...READ MORE

The main U.S. drug lobby has said it will push back against the legislation, which includes policies that drugmakers have opposed for decades...The pharmaceutical industry is gearing up to minimize the effect of major drug legislation passed by Congress on Friday, the first time in many years lawmakers have overcome the drug lobby’s opposition to limits on their pricing power...the House of Representatives passed the Inflation Reduction Act in a 220-207 party-line vote, sending the bill to President Joe Biden...The bill would allow Medicare to negotiate prices on up to 60 drugs by 2029...The pharma industry spent heavily to lobby against the bill and, after decades of forestalling action to curtail the industry’s pricing power in the U.S., its main lobbying group signaled the fight would continue...READ MORE

For too many years, too few policymakers paid any attention to the 340B drug discount program, blindly accepting the myth that non-profit hospitals and other covered entities were selflessly using 340B savings to “stretch scarce federal healthcare resources” in service of our most vulnerable patients...congressional neglect has resulted in significant financial abuse. Today there is ever-increasing evidence of the program’s out-of-control scope and a growing chorus from all corners of government who are finally beginning to see the 340B drug discount program for what it has become – a moneymaker for hospitals wrapped in the rhetoric of healthcare compassion...it is possible for hospitals to use 340B profit to bolster their own bottom lines on the back of uninsured Americans. (Though it’s more common, and more lucrative, for hospitals to soak payers – commercial insurance companies, Medicaid and Medicare – with marked-up claims for 340B-discounted medicines.)...While the Health Resources and Services Administration...has refused to acknowledge that 340B is a dysfunctional program in need of reform...READ MORE

Biogen’s Q2 earnings report was headlined by stronger than expected second-quarter sales for its multiple sclerosis drugs. Less touted the company’s disclosure that it had agreed in principle to pay about $900 million to settle an old whistleblower lawsuit involving some of the same products...The payment brings to a close a so-called qui tam case, initially brought in 2012, in which former Biogen sales representative Michael Bawduniak alleged that the company ran sham speaker and consultant programs between 2009 and March 2014...The suit contended that these meetings, ostensibly required for the purpose of gathering physician input, were unnecessary. Furthermore, it said the meetings were merely a vehicle for Biogen’s marketing department to shuttle kickbacks to doctors to continue prescribing the company’s drugs after the entrance of a competitor product in the MS space, Novartis’s Gilenya...READ MORE

MenACWY 12th Grade Requirement
What Is the Meningococcal Vaccine and Why Is It Important?
What Does This Mean for Nevada?
What Does This Mean for Pharmacists?
12th Grade MenACWY Vaccination Requirement Resources

...Republican and Democratic senators met with the chamber's parliamentarian to discuss whether the bill's proposal for Medicare to negotiate the price of prescription drugs with manufacturers has a direct impact on government spending or tax revenue, as reconciliation rules require...But these are not negotiations. They're price controls. The bill's text sets maximum prices that the government will pay — and threatens confiscatory taxes for drug companies that refuse to comply...it will mean that fewer cutting-edge drugs are available to American patients...price controls on prescription drugs are unnecessary. Even as the price of just about everything else in our economy has soared in the past year, drug prices have been relatively flat...If lawmakers want to reduce patient drug costs meaningfully, they should train their focus on pharmacy benefit managers...PBMs keep a cut of the savings they extract and send another cut to the insurer, which may use that cut to lower overall premiums...READ MORE

Pharmacists say Georgia's evolving restrictions around access to abortion coupled with recent guidance from the federal government have created confusion over distribution of medication that can terminate pregnancies...The Biden administration earlier this month warned pharmacists nationwide that they are required to fill prescriptions for pills that can induce abortion. Refusing to give out the prescribed medication "may be discriminating" on the basis of sex or disability and could amount to a violation of federal civil rights laws...Bob Coleman, CEO of the Georgia Pharmacy Association, said the organization is working with national pharmacy associations to get clarity..."We understand that confusing and sometimes contradictory information is being shared," he said. "Unfortunately, the HHS guidance puts highly trained health care professionals...in a seemingly impossible situation."...Georgia Republican U.S. Rep. Buddy Carter, a pharmacist, called the HHS message to his colleagues a "gross abuse of executive authority."..."There is no constitutional right to an abortion, and as such, there is no constitutional obligation for pharmacists to knowingly dispense drugs intended for an abortion," Carter said in a statement. "This administration has a habit of using health care professionals as political pawns, from vaccines to abortions, and that abuse must come to an end."...READ MORE