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When Insys founder John Kapoor was found guilty on federal racketeering charges...it marked the stiffest conviction yet for an opioid executive at the center of the nation's addiction crisis. Now, a federal judge says prosecutors failed to present enough evidence to support some of those claims—likely lowering Kapoor's sentence...Prosecutors failed to present evidence showing...Subsys to be prescribed to patients for nonmedical purposes...The order did not affect the sales fraud charges on which those executives were convicted as part of a long-running scheme to drive up prescriptions of Subsys by underselling the drug's addictive properties and capitalizing on patient titration...READ MORE

Laura Joszt for The American Journal of Managed Care®. Here are the top 5 articles for the month of November.

U.S. President Donald Trump said... he will soon release a plan to let Florida and other states import prescription medicines to combat high drug prices, and he blasted the Democrat-led House for not going far enough in a drug-pricing bill...“We will soon be putting more options on the table,” Trump wrote in a series of tweets, adding that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi “and her Do Nothing Democrats drug pricing bill doesn’t do the trick.”...Drug companies have staunchly opposed such a plan, which has been mulled for years but never implemented...READ MORE

The U.S. government is barring federal dollars meant for opioid addiction treatment to be used on medical marijuana...The move is aimed at states that allow marijuana for medical uses, particularly those letting patients with opioid addiction use pot as a treatment, said Dr. Elinore McCance-Katz, whose federal agency doles out money to states for treatment programs...“There’s zero evidence for that,” McCance-Katz said. “We felt that it was time to make it clear we did not want individuals receiving funds for treatment services to be exposed to marijuana and somehow given the impression that it’s a treatment.”...READ MORE

China’s National Healthcare Security Administration has announced it has agreed an average 61% cut in prices of 70 top-selling drugs with large pharma manufacturers in exchange for inclusion on a state-run insurance scheme list...the 70 drugs include Roche’s Perjeta, Novartis’ Xolair and the top selling drug in the world AbbVie’s Humira, as well as Eli Lilly and China-based Innovent Biologics’ Tyvyt...The NHSA claims this makes the prices of these drugs the lowest in the world. Also, this agreements means big pharma and their drugs will have greater access to the world’s second largest pharma market because more Chinese citizens in smaller, more remote cities will be able to afford the drugs through their state medical insurance system...READ MORE

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

A Florida-based charity will pay $4 million to resolve claims that it acted as a conduit for companies including Biogen Inc and Novartis AG to pay kickbacks to Medicare patients using their high-priced multiple sclerosis drugs, the U.S. Justice Department said...The settlement with the patient assistance charity The Assistance Fund marked the third so far with a foundation linked to an industry-wide probe that has resulted in $850 million in settlements with drugmakers and charities...READ MORE

Amazon is jumping into the medication adherence space with a new feature that lets users link up their pharmacy prescription information and, in turn, get reminders about when to take their pills and order refills...The latest feature was born out of a collaboration between the online retail giant and Omnicell, a tech-enabled medication management company. Initially the feature will be rolled out to Giant Eagle Pharmacy customers...this feature will be using “multiple layers of verification” to protect user information, including voice recognition and passcodes...Voice technology is coming onto the healthcare scene in recent years...“Voice has proven to be beneficial for a variety of use cases because it removes barriers, and simplifies daily tasks,”... “We believe this new Alexa feature will help simplify the way people manage their medication by removing the need to continuously think about what medications they’ve taken that day or what they need to take...READ MORE

Nicole Grassano, PTNN, Pharmacy Week in Review, this weekly video program provides our readers with an in-depth review of the latest news, product approvals, FDA rulings and more.

The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC), the independent agency that advises Congress on the Medicare program, recently released its June 2019 Data Book: Health Care Spending and the Medicare Program...This year’s report provides the latest details about the ongoing disruption of the buy-and-bill market in Medicare Part B. As you will see below:

• Physician offices account for a diminishing share of Part B spending, though absolute spending at these sites continues to grow. 
• Hospital outpatient settings have been crowding out physician offices. Hospital outpatient departments now account for more than 40% of Part B spending—and an even greater share for oncology products...READ MORE