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Mergers will benefit consumers, CEOs of both companies tell Senate panel…chief executives of Aetna Inc. and Anthem Inc. defended their merger deals before a Senate subcommittee, facing sharply critical testimony that raised questions about the impact of health-insurance consolidation…Aetna is seeking to acquire Humana Inc.,..focused largely on the private Medicare plans known as Medicare Advantage. Anthem aims to take over Cigna Corp…The two deals together would shrink the top five health insurers to a big three, each with annual revenue of more than $100 billion. The third player would be UnitedHealth Group Inc.

Walgreen Co.’s persisting failure to remove expired sales tags from its shelves deceives customers and violates a 2014 settlement that sought to resolve the matter in Missouri, the state’s attorney general argued…in asking a state court to punish the pharmacy chain…Attorney General Chris Koster filed court documents asking a judge to hold the nation’s largest pharmacy retailer in contempt of the settlement and issue steeper fines, including up to $5,000 for each expired tag. Koster said that since July, undercover investigators have found a total of more than 1,300 shelf tags displaying sales prices that had expired...

Researchers stripped a virus of its infectious machinery and turned its benign core into a delivery vehicle that can target sick cells while leaving healthy tissue alone….totally redesigned its core to repurpose its infectious capabilities into a safe vehicle for delivering vaccines and therapies directly where they are needed…"We call this a smart particle,"…. "We make it smart by adding molecular tags that act like addresses to send the therapeutic payload where we want it to go." Stanford has patented the technology and different aspects are licensed to a biotechnology company… no timetable for commercial development.

South African Police shut down three counterfeit drug making plants last weekend in an INTERPOL-co-ordinated operation that seized 150 tonnes of fake medicines…involved thousands of police and customs officials in Angola, Malawi, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe who raided markets, shops, pharmacies and warehouses in addition to the three illicit plants…seized products were illicit and counterfeit antibiotics, painkillers, erectile dysfunction medicines, birth control and anti-malarial medication...Authorities arrested 550 people…also closed 20 illegal pharmacies where the fake drugs were sold.

In Europe, uptake of biosimilars has been slowed by safety concerns,low awareness…The introduction of biosimilar drugs in the U.S.,which kicked off this month with Novartis AG ’s version (filgrastim, Zarzio) of an Amgen Inc. blockbuster (filgrastim, Neupogen),hands health-care payers a new weapon against rising drug prices. But it could be a duller blade than they had hoped...

Gilead Sciences' decision to slap Sovaldi,…with an $84,000 price tag was widely considered a turning point for payers and pharmacy benefit managers…the months leading up to the approvals this summer…negotiations were already under way between those drugmakers and Express Scripts,…PBMs are becoming increasingly savvy and hard-nosed about which drugs they will cover and what they are willing to pay for them… PBMs want to position [themselves] so they are advocating on behalf of their customers. Their customers are worried...

United States is the only country with a strong pharmaceutical regulatory infrastructure that allows direct-to-consumer advertising of prescription drugs in print, broadcast, and electronic media. U.S. consumers are accustomed to full-page ads in newspapers and magazines detailing a drug's benefits… That may soon change, however, as the Food and Drug Administration moves to enact new regulations regarding risk communication in DTCA…. responds to mounting research showing that reprinting highly technical package inserts in print ads does very little to communicate risks to consumers. The goal is to communicate those risks in a new vernacular.

U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton proposed on Tuesday a $250 monthly cap on out-of-pocket prescription drug costs and other measures to stop what she called "price gouging" by pharmaceutical companies….Clinton rolled out a plan to encourage the development and use of generic drugs and to end pharmaceutical companies' ability to write off consumer-directed advertising as a business expense….monthly cap would limit what insurance companies could ask patients to pay for drugs that treat chronic or serious medical conditions.

At least that's the main message from his appearances on various TV news shows…In an interview on "CBS This Morning," Shkreli told reporter…Daraprim, was unprofitable at the old price…. Shkreli didn't do himself or his company any favors over the weekend when the news of the price spike went viral online after an HIV/AIDS group complained of the increase and he took to his Twitter account to admonish anyone who dared to question the business decision

In an extensive interview with Bloomberg BNA, IACP's (International Academy of Compounding Pharmacists)David G. Miller, RPh, Executive Vice President & CEO, discusses concerns over the Drug Quality & Security Act (DQSA), emphasizing the need for clarification over which regulatory authority is responsible for the oversight of compounding pharmacy.