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Outcome Health, which streams pharmaceutical ads on televisions and computer tablets it installs in doctors’ offices, agreed to pay $70 million to end a U.S. criminal probe into whether it defrauded clients by selling ad inventory it did not have...Department of Justice said...Outcome entered a three-year non-prosecution agreement where it admitted that former executives and employees overbilled clients, which were mostly pharmaceutical companies, in a scheme that ran from 2012 to 2017...The Justice Department also said Outcome admitted to overstating revenue, enabling it to raise $972.5 million of equity and debt financing, including from affiliates of Goldman Sachs Group Inc, Google parent Alphabet Inc and Pritzker Group, and obtain a $5 billion valuation by 2017...READ MORE

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is investigating whether the popular heartburn drug Zantac causes carcinogens to form in the bodies of users, in an effort to fully understand the risks posed by the already recalled drug...The issue of whether ranitidine...causes levels of the probable carcinogen N-nitrosodimethylamine to rise in users’ bodies has been raised previously by Valisure, an online pharmacy that originally flagged the potential contamination of ranitidine to the FDA...READ MORE

Canada’s Liberal government is more likely to pass a universal prescription drug plan after losing its majority in Monday’s election, setting the stage for what would be the biggest shakeup of the country’s public healthcare system since it was created in the 1960s...Universal drug coverage would shake up the country’s C$39.8 billion ($30.4 billion) prescription drug market, and cut drugmakers’ revenue by some C$4.8 billion a year by 2027. It may draw opposition from drugmakers, and from private insurers, who could also lose revenue, as well as deficit hawks...READ MORE

A landmark trial over the U.S. opioid epidemic is on track to begin on Monday after drug companies and local governments failed to agree on a settlement on Friday that had been expected to be valued at around $50 billion...Top executives of the largest U.S. drug distributors and drugmaker Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd left a Cleveland courthouse on Friday and lawyers for states and thousands of local governments said there was no agreement...After nearly 11 hours of negotiations...it was “profoundly disappointing” that local governments would not go along with a settlement he valued at $48 billion, including $22 billion in cash and $26 billion in products and services...READ MORE

The Office of Nevada Governor Steve Sisolak announced that they are investigating the State Board of Pharmacy for allegedly failing to do background checks on pharmacy wholesalers...The governor's office says since 2007, the State Board of Pharmacy has been collecting fees, but has not been doing background or fingerprint checks as required by a law passed in 2005...The Governor announced today that he is authorizing the recommendations proposed by the Audit Division:

1. Lifting the temporary moratorium on granting wholesale pharmacy licenses to eligible applicants.

2. Directing the BOP to return unspent fingerprint fees to the appropriate applicants and licensees and transfer any fees that cannot be returned or tied to an individual or entity to the State Treasurer’s Unclaimed Property Account.

3. Requesting that the BOP hold accountable those who failed in their statutory obligations to protect the health and safety of Nevadans...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

Just a day before a lawsuit by The Nevada Independent to obtain public records through the state’s drug transparency law was set for a hearing and both sides had filed briefs, District Court...has kicked the hearing date to November 19...the state effectively denied two records requests seeking copies of reports submitted to the state by drug companies and pharmaceutical middlemen under the state’s bipartisan insulin pricing transparency law...the state argued that a federal law, the Defend Trade Secrets Act, preempts the state law and makes that information confidential. Its position came in the face of stiff opposition from the pharmaceutical industry, which pushed hard against the bill during the 2017 session and which has sued once already to keep the state from publishing key details...That suit was eventually dropped, but only after DHHS adopted internal policies allowing drug makers to mark those details as trade secrets. In ending legal action, industry lawyers — calling the bill “facially unconstitutional” — left the door open for another lawsuit...READ MORE

Three major U.S. retailers, including Walmart, are removing all 22-ounce bottles of Johnson & Johnson’s baby powder from their stores, following the healthcare conglomerate’s recall last week of some bottles due to possible asbestos contamination...CVS Health Corp said...it would remove the bottles from its online store as well, out of caution and to prevent customer confusion. The pharmacy chain said all other sizes of the talc would remain on its shelves...READ MORE

Laura Joszt, 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.

A substantial majority of independent pharmacies say they may close their doors in the next two years, and the main culprits are multi-billion-dollar corporate middlemen who are shaking them down for fees on medicines long after the point of sale, according to a new survey by the National Community Pharmacists Association...“Neighborhood pharmacies are being mugged in broad daylight and no one in Washington is doing anything about it,” said NCPA CEO B. Douglas Hoey. “If Congress or the administration don’t act soon, we’re going to see a wave of layoffs and store closures that will leave many patients stranded without access to a local pharmacist.”...READ MORE