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CVS has a plan to win over millennials and it looks a lot like Amazon Prime: free home delivery of products...CVS announced...its CarePass program will expand nationwide...Pharmacy chains like CVS and Walgreens are fighting to stay relevant as consumers...shop online more and in physical stores less. Their business models rely on people buying toothpaste, vitamins and other convenience items in addition to filling their prescriptions...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

STAT recently published our op-ed: State drug importation laws undermine the process that keeps our supply chain safe...there is no legal or operational way of transforming a drug packaged for a foreign market into a drug that meets the U.S. requirements of our in-progress track-and-trace system. What’s more, there is no way to alter the law to enable importation without undermining the law’s purpose and value...States can't wish away the requirements of a significant federal law. Either we have a secure drug supply chain or we don’t...READ MORE

• Why the U.S. is building a track-and-trace system
• How track-and-trace works
• Importation undermines the track-and-trace system
• Importation enables counterfeits
• Forgetting the lessons

Jaime Rosenberg, welcome to This Week in Managed Care from the Managed Markets News Network

The Trump administration is proposing a rule that would require hospitals to publish the prices that are negotiated with insurers or risk being fined...The proposed rule...would apply to the roughly 6,000 hospitals that accept Medicare. Hospitals could be fined up to $300 a day if the standard and negotiated prices for services are not posted online...Starting this year, the administration required hospitals to publish list prices, or the sticker price. That does not reflect what someone might pay with insurance. The proposed rule would go a step further and require hospitals to also post the prices various insurance plans pay...“We’re trying to change the paradigm here,” Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Administrator Seema Verma said...“We’re trying to ensure we have a competitive free market where providers can compete on cost and quality and patients have the information they need to seek high-quality providers.”...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.

Large-scale M&A among drugmakers isn't a new phenomena. Expiring patents, coupled with persistent struggles to develop new drugs, spur periodic waves of consolidation... Today's deals relate to upcoming patent expirations, but the uncertainty around regulatory efforts targeting pricing is much greater today than it was in 2009...On top of that, drugmakers face insurers and buying groups that are consolidated to a point that's resulted in higher rebate payments and reduced net prices for drugs in certain competitive classes...READ MORE

Surescripts is upping its battle with Amazon-owned PillPack, accusing a third company of providing PillPack with patient prescription information “fraudulently,” and turning the matter over to the FBI. It’s the latest in a series of moves that could make it harder for Amazon to enter the prescription drug market...PillPack found a way to access its patients’ prescription information via a third-party called ReMy Health...Surescripts, which contracts with ReMy, said this represents “unauthorized access” to its network...READ MORE

The Trump administration took a step...toward allowing importation of medicines from Canada, an action the president has advocated as a way to bring cheaper prescription drugs to Americans, but the pharmaceutical industry was quick to resist the move...The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said it and the Food and Drug Administration will propose a rule that will allow it to authorize states and other groups to pursue pilot projects related to importing drugs from Canada...READ MORE

The past business practices of biopharma companies like Endo and Teva continue to be under scrutiny. The scope of pending legal actions is difficult to quantify, given that both governments and individuals are involved, and the actions have now extended to price fixing as well as marketing...Using Iqvia prescription data, Purdue Pharma's $270 million settlement with Oklahoma and Teva's subsequent $85 million deal as benchmarks, Fadia calculated the total liability to be $4 billion for Endo, $2.5 billion for Teva, $1.2 billion for Amneal and $800 million for Mylan. That estimate relates to improper marketing of opioids...On the price-fixing charges, Fadia built an estimate around Iqvia prescriptions and potential excess sales that could have occurred on 114 different drugs, and then applied treble damages. In this scenario, Teva's liability could be as much as $3.1 billion, Mylan's $2.8 billion, Endo's $265 million and Amneal's $55 million…READ MORE