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A unit of Insys Therapeutics Inc pleaded guilty...to fraud charges as part of an $225 million deal with the U.S. Justice Department resolving claims that the drugmaker bribed doctors to prescribe an addictive opioid medication...The plea...by the Chandler, Arizona-based Insys’ operating subsidiary, came in one of the few criminal prosecutions to date of a corporation accused of helping fuel the nation’s deadly opioid epidemic...Insys is facing growing financial pressures as a result of the U.S. probe and a decline in sales of its flagship fentanyl pain product, Subsys, which it has said could prompt the company to seek bankruptcy protection...Beyond the plea by subsidiary Insys Pharma Inc, Insys has also entered into a five-year deferred prosecution agreement with the government and agreed to pay $30 million in the criminal case and $195 million to resolve civil claims...READ MORE

The Australian subsidiaries of British drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline and Swiss drugmaker Novartis misled customers and broke the law by promoting identical liniments as though they could treat specific ills, an Australian court found...The court said the companies admitted marketing Voltaren Osteo Gel as a treatment for osteoarthritis-related pain when its ingredients were the same as a cheaper Voltaren product, Emulgel...Judge Bromwich is yet to set a fine but the maximum penalty is the higher of A$10 million ($7 million), triple the benefit earned from the misleading conduct or - if that cannot be determined - a tenth of the annual turnover of the company in question...READ MORE

Attorneys general from more than 40 states are alleging the nation's largest generic drug manufacturers conspired to artificially inflate and manipulate prices for more than 100 different generic drugs...filed in federal court in Connecticut, also names 15 individual senior executives responsible for sales, marketing and pricing...Connecticut Atty. Gen. William Tong...said investigators obtained evidence implicating 20 firms..."We have hard evidence that shows the generic drug industry perpetrated a multibillion-dollar fraud on the American people," Tong said. "We have emails, text messages, telephone records and former company insiders that we believe will prove a multiyear conspiracy to fix prices and divide market share for huge numbers of generic drugs."...READ MORE

Researchers at GoodRx...found a 2.9% price hike across brand-name and generic drugs in the first quarter of 2019. Most of that was reported in the first week of January, when drugmakers often raise their prices...Large cities are where drug prices are often highest, GoodRx’s team found. Drugs cost nearly 17% more than the national average in New York City, 14% more in San Francisco and about 10% more in Los Angeles...Meanwhile, prices were lowest in Atlanta and Houston, where they were about 20% below the national average...READ MORE

After reviewing tens of millions of insurance claims for the country's 49 most popular brand-name prescription drugs, a team from Scripps Research Translational Institute found that net prices rose by a median of 76 percent from January 2012 through December 2017 -- with most products going up once or twice per year...The substantial price increases were not limited to drugs that recently entered the marketplace, as one might expect, or to those lacking generic equivalents. In addition, the increases often were "highly correlated" with price bumps by competitors...READ MORE

Pharma TV ads have been breaking out their boogie shoes lately. A handful of branded drug ads currently on the air are using popular ‘70s light rock songs to accompany their treatment messages, both to aid recall and to reach older audiences with music from their youth...Music can be a powerful emotional and memory device in advertising...Music can conjure up fond (and not-so-fond) memories. Just think about how most people learn the alphabet by using the familiar song to help them remember it. And who hasn’t had an earworm pop lyric stuck in their head all day?...For pharma companies, the familiar, upbeat and bouncy ‘70s tunes quickly grab attention with the audience they’re likely intended for. Songs from the ‘70s and ‘80s...are often targeted at a specific group of older consumers who grew up on those songs...READ MORE

Novartis AG is offering price discounts in negotiations with U.S. health insurers on its gene therapy for spinal muscular atrophy, a treatment that could cost more than a million dollars, but the gesture comes with strings attached...The Swiss drugmaker wants insurers to commit to coverage for patients identified with the rare and often deadly disease...Novartis also seeks their support for widespread screening to identify newborns with SMA, and to ensure quick authorization for the gene therapy, with the aim of starting treatment within two weeks of diagnosis...The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is due to decide this month on approval for Novartis’ Zolgensma. Novartis, which has made a huge bet on gene therapy for future growth, says the one-time treatment could be a cure for SMA and is pushing for a price in the range of $1.5 million to $5 million. That would make Zolgensma the most expensive new therapy to date...READ MORE

A new study from Sweden is suggesting that many older adults with cancer are being prescribed preventive medications at the end of their lives that may harm their quality of life while providing questionable clinical benefits. The problem may stem from inadequate deprescribing...The study...online in Cancer, found that deprescribing strategies need to be more widely adopted to help reduce the burden of drugs that have limited clinical benefit near the end of life...The goal of palliative care is to reduce symptoms and maximize the quality of life, but sometimes what is used as palliative treatment decreases quality of life and that’s troubling...READ MORE

Pharmaceutical giant Gilead Sciences has agreed to donate drugs that reduce the risk of HIV transmission for up to 200,000 people a year...The agreement between Gilead and the Trump administration will last until at least Dec. 31, 2025, and possibly through the end of 2030, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said in a statement...Gilead will donate its PrEP medication Truvada, which is used to reduce the risk of HIV infection and usually sells for $1,600 to $2,000 a month in the United States...The deal will “help us achieve our goal of ending the HIV epidemic in America!,” President Donald Trump said in a tweet...READ MORE

The Trump administration...said it will require drugmakers to disclose the list price of prescription drugs in direct-to-consumer television advertisements, part of the government’s efforts to lower costs for U.S. consumers...The list price would be included if it is equal to or greater than $35 for a month’s supply or the usual course of therapy. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said that the 10 most commonly advertised drugs have list prices ranging from $488 to $16,938 per month or usual course of therapy...TV advertising requirement would work to drive down list prices alongside a recently proposed rule aimed at requiring that drug rebates, or discounts, be passed on to Medicare patients when they buy the drugs...The advertising rule...was originally suggested as part of President Donald Trump’s “blueprint” to lower U.S. drug prices...READ MORE