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Walgreens is testing a new on-demand delivery service with Alphabet’s drone delivery service Wing, beginning next month...The pilot program will deliver food and beverage, over-the-counter medications and other items within minutes...Prescription deliveries will not be available...Walgreens will be the first retailer in the U.S. to test an on-demand drone delivery service...READ MORE

Fifty-eight people have been charged with engaging in healthcare fraud schemes that centered on the illegal distribution of more than 6 million opioid pills across Texas...Some 16 medical professionals, including six doctors and seven pharmacists, were charged in the schemes, which featured one pharmacy in Houston that illegally dispensed more than 760,000 pills from March 2018 to September 2019…The schemes in Texas entailed Medicare fraud that resulted in more than $66 million in losses...They also included $158 million in fraudulent claims for compound creams and $23 million in tax evasion...Federal authorities have frozen $60 million in assets of the people accused...READ MORE

With Purdue Pharma agreeing to settle with dozens of cities and states for a record-setting $12 billion, more opioid settlements could be on the way. But Purdue's agreement doesn't mean all the defendants are willing to go to the negotiating table quietly…Defendants in a Cleveland multidistrict litigation have gone so far as to attack the judge in charge of the case. In a...motion, retailers and distributors—but no drugmakers—demanded the removal of Judge Dan Polster for pushing a settlement. The absence of a pharma company there could show opioid makers are looking for deals rather than continuing to spar it out...READ MORE

Purdue Pharma...filed for bankruptcy...days after reaching a tentative settlement with many of the state and local governments suing it…The filing was anticipated before and after the tentative deal, which could be worth up to $12 billion over time, was struck..."This settlement framework avoids wasting hundreds of millions of dollars and years on protracted litigation," Steve Miller, chairman of Purdue's board of directors, said in a statement, "and instead will provide billions of dollars and critical resources to communities across the country trying to cope with the opioid crisis. We will continue to work with state attorneys general and other plaintiff representatives to finalize and implement this agreement as quickly as possible."...READ MORE

States are seeking to try value-based payment models to mitigate high drug costs, but there are plenty of barriers to implementing these programs…Several states have rolled out outcomes-based or population-based models for drug pricing in Medicaid. Louisiana and Washington, for example, operate “Netflix-style” subscription models for hepatitis C drugs. States such as Michigan and Oklahoma are testing outcomes-based approaches...“This is just really new territory for a lot of these states to even interact with manufacturers this way—knowing just the right mechanisms and the right way to begin these conversations,”…there are few models to learn from, and taking lessons from one another can also be a challenge...READ MORE

It’s bad news for pharmaceutical company sales reps. U.S. physicians are increasingly too busy to see them…Given the common complaint that they don’t have enough time to spend with patients, busy doctors are making less time to meet with pharma representatives…As physicians increasingly struggle to balance their time with patient loads, electronic health records and time spent on administrative tasks, almost half of doctors don’t have time to meet in-person with pharma sales reps...seeing reps in-person dropped from 67% last year to 54% in this year’s survey...READ MORE

Certain ranitidine medications used to treat heartburn—including some products sold under the brand-name Zantac—contain low levels of a nitrosamine impurity linked with cancer…The contaminant, N-nitrosodimethylamine (NDMA), is classified as a probable human carcinogen...The FDA has been investigating NDMA and other nitrosamine impurities in blood pressure and heart failure medicines (angiotensin II receptor blockers)...The FDA has recommended numerous ARB recalls as it discovered unacceptable levels of nitrosamines...NDMA, a known environmental contaminant, is found in water, meats, dairy products, and vegetables...The FDA is investigating the source of the ranitidine impurity. The agency pledged to “take appropriate measures based on the results of the ongoing investigation.”...READ MORE

An independent expert panel to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration...recommended approval of GlaxoSmithKline Plc’s over-the-counter nicotine oral spray that aims to help smokers quit their addiction...The panel...saying its benefits as a smoking cessation aid outweighed risks. The FDA usually follows the recommendations of its experts, but is not mandated to do so...Panel members also raised concerns regarding the potential for abuse and misuse of the product by non-smokers and teenagers...READ MORE

Paying well is one way to lure job seekers in and keep existing talent happy, in biopharma and beyond. And while CEOs often catch the limelight for their multimillion-dollar paychecks…Here, we rank the top 10 most generous biopharma companies, ranked by median employee pay in 2018. You’ll notice that most of them have just one or a few products and number their employees in the hundreds or one or two thousand...Big Pharma companies may win in terms of size and revenues, but their median compensation is no match for that of these R&D-heavy biotechs. Take AbbVie, with a 30,000-strong team that looks like a traditional Big Pharma. Its median salary was $148,823 in 2018. That number was the highest among large multinationals including Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, Merck & Co., Eli Lilly, Bristol-Myers Squibb and AbbVie's buyout target Allergan, but came nowhere near the median salary of $216,797 at Jazz—No. 10 on our list...READ MORE

The U.S. Department of Justice examined using fentanyl in lethal injections as it prepared last year to resume executing condemned prisoners…The department revealed it had contemplated using the drug in a court filing last month, which has not been previously reported...In the end, it decided against adopting the drug for executions. Attorney General William Barr announced...his department instead would use pentobarbital...when it resumes federal executions later this year, ending a de facto moratorium on the punishment…READ MORE