- Nevada takes steps toward leaving federal healthcare.gov (ktvn.com)
Nevada is taking steps toward leaving the federal healthcare.gov and setting up a separate exchange operated by the state...the Legislative Interim Finance Committee...authorized state officials to spend $1 million to prepare a request for proposals and find a private provider...Heather Korbulic, executive director of the state system, says changes are needed because healthcare.gov is steadily raising the rates it charges states that link their front-end systems to the federal exchange...Korbulic says the federal rate increases by 2019 will leave the state with almost nothing to run the front-end system...Nevada tied its state exchange to the site after...using Xerox as a contractor failed, but Korbulic says several vendors now have proven systems.
- Pharmacy Week in Review: February 9, 2018 (pharmacytimes.com)
Nicole Crisano, PTNN. This weekly video program provides our readers with an in-depth review of the latest news, product approvals, FDA rulings and more.
- CVS To Invest Tax Cut In Worker Wages And Reducing Aetna Deal’s Debt (forbes.com)
CVS Health...said...it plans to use more than $1 billion in benefits from a new corporate tax cut to boost wages and benefits for workers and reduce debt from its purchase of Aetna...The drugstore chain is gaining $1.2 billion in overall annual tax savings from the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act passed last year....CVS plans to use $425 million annually to increase the starting wage for hourly employees to $11 an hour , freeze employee health premiums for a year and create a new parental leave program...CVS' annualized tax benefit will also be directed toward “data analytics, care management solutions and store service offering pilots to improve health outcomes and lower costs for patients, as well as on debt reduction related to its planned acquisition of Aetna...
- ‘Ostracized and criticized’ Indian CRO hits US FDA with $50m lawsuit (in-pharmatechnologist.com)
Semler Research Center says the US FDA caused the “complete annihilation” of its business after regulators rejected bioanalytical studies on the back of data integrity concerns...In April 2016, the US Food and Drug Administration issued Semler Research Center an ‘Untitled Letter’ stating evidence it had found of data manipulation in a number of bioanalytical studies during an inspection of its facility in Bangalore, India...The Agency then sent a notice to drug sponsors that bioavailability/bioequivalence studies conducted by the contract research organisation would need to be repeated...Semler filed a lawsuit against the FDA, the United States Department Of Health And Human Services and the United States Of America – along with various individuals – for total damages of approximately $50m...The firm claims the FDA’s actions were in violation of the Fifth Amendment, interfered with economic advantages and intentionally inflicted financial distress on the company.
- FDA Clears the First Smart Watch for Use in Neurology (ptcommunity.com)
Wearable device identifies convulsive epileptic seizures and sends alerts to caregivers...The FDA has cleared the Embrace smart watch (Empatica, Inc.) for use by patients with epilepsy. Embrace uses advanced machine learning to monitor for the most dangerous kinds of seizures, known as “grand mal” or “generalized tonic-clonic” seizures, and sends an alert to summon caregivers’ help...The smart watch stands apart from any seizure detection system in that it measures multiple indicators of a seizure. Its unique property is its use of electrodermal activity, a signal used by stress researchers to quantify physiological changes related to sympathetic nervous system activity, also known as the "fight-or-flight" response. Embrace has been approved in Europe as a medical device for seizure monitoring and alert since April 2017.
- This Week in Managed Care: February 9, 2018 (ajmc.com)
Laura Joszt, assistant managing editor at The American Journal of Managed Care. Welcome to This Week in Managed Care from the Managed Markets News Network
- Pharma’s latest defense against pricing criticism: Drugs lower health-care costs (cnbc.com)
When the topic of drug prices comes up, as it so often does in this post-Martin Shkreli world, pharma is always prepared with a rebuttal...Pharma CEOs are now touting that the use of medicines lowers other health-care spending...Studies have shown some truth to the claim, but critics say the support doesn't go that far...most often, pharmaceuticals have the effect of improving or maintaining an individual's health...for example, taking antibiotics to prevent a more severe infection or adhering to medication to manage a chronic condition like diabetes or high blood pressure...In either of those circumstances, taking the medication may also avert hospital admissions and thus reduce the use of medical services...
- Pharmacists Remain Among Most Trusted and Ethical Professionals (pharmacytimes.com)
Pharmacists have once again been ranked among the most honest and ethical professionals in the United States, according to the results of the latest Gallup poll on the topic...Of the survey’s 1049 respondents, 62% rated the honesty and ethical standards of pharmacists as “high” or “very high.” This percentage of favorable responses was the fifth highest of the survey, with nurses (82%) taking the top spot for the 16th year in a row...Pharmacists performed slightly better on the survey last year, earning favorable scores from 67% of participants in 2016...Other highly rated professionals included in the survey were military officers (71%), grade school teachers (66%), and medical doctors (65%). Lobbyists received the lowest score, with only 8% of survey respondents giving them a favorable rating and 58% considering their ethical and honesty standards to be “low” or “very low.”1
- Rite Aid Says It’s Halfway Home On Store Transfers To Walgreens (forbes.com)
Rite Aid...has now transferred 1,114 stores to Walgreens Boots Alliance as part of a larger deal with the nation’s largest pharmacy chain...In all, Walgreens will over the next few weeks buy 1,932 stores and three distribution centers from Rite Aid for nearly $4.4 billion in cash. Rite Aid...has received “cash proceeds of $2.424 billion, which the company continues to use to reduce debt.”...Before agreeing in September to buy 1,932 Rite Aids, Walgreens had been trying to buy all of Rite Aid before antitrust scrutiny from the Federal Trade Commission that ultimately led to the deal’s undoing...As a smaller pharmacy chain, Rite Aid is focusing on eight states largely on the East and West Coats with plans to invest heavily in its pharmacy benefit manager EnvisionRx, which works with employers and government health programs like Medicare to better control drug costs. PBMs are the middlemen between drug makers and patients when it comes to buying prescription drugs and getting discounts for their customers.
- Justice Department requests more information on CVS-Aetna merger (cnbc.com)
Trump administration regulators are not ready to sign off on CVS Health's $69 billion deal to acquire Aetna...The Department of Justice asked the firms to provide more information on Thursday, just as the 30 day waiting period under Hart Scott Rodino Act expired...So far, the Trump administration has shown it's not receptive to vertical integration deals...The DOJ's second notice request extends the waiting period on the CVS-Aetna deal for another 30 days. In the meantime, the firms have scheduled shareholder votes to approve the deal for March 20th.