- China says vaccine maker Changsheng broke manufacturing rules, faked records: Xinhua (reuters.com)Arrests on the way at Changsheng Bio-tech, the company at the centre of Chinese vaccine scare (scmp.com)China widens vaccine scandal probe, vows tough penalties (reuters.com)
China’s cabinet investigation group has found that vaccine maker Changsheng Bio-technology broke the law in manufacturing rabies vaccines...The investigation group said the company had systematically falsified production and testing records to avoid regulatory scrutiny...“The company used expired materials to produce some rabies vaccine and falsified the production date,”...“To cover up violations, the company systematically fabricated production and testing records.”...China has launched sweeping spot checks on vaccine makers around the country after Changsheng was found to have falsified data and sold ineffective vaccines for children...President Xi Jinping has ordered all relevant departments to investigate the scandal, which has triggered public outrage in what is the latest case of tainted medical products...
- As Amazon Lurks, Walgreens Launches Digital Marketplace Listing Providers And Prices (forbes.com)
Walgreens Boots Alliance is launching a new digital marketplace that will connect the pharmacy chain's mobile visitors to its drugstores as well as local doctors and clinics...The move comes as Walgreens, CVS Health, Walmart and other brick-and-mortar retailers with health services face the possibility online retailer Amazon will expand deeper into the healthcare business...But Walgreens is stressing ties to local healthcare providers, which Amazon doesn’t yet have...Walgreens “Find Care Now” platform lists cash prices for healthcare services for everything from a local clinic or optometrist to the cost of a telehealth vendor’s virtual doctor consultation. For now, there are 16 local health systems and national healthcare providers participating in Find Care Now but Walgreens said they expect more to join the marketplace.
- July 27 Pharmacy Week in Review: Drug Approved for Endometriosis Pain, Diabetes Increases Cancer Risk (pharmacytimes.com)
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.
- Opioid Task Force reconvenes at state capitol (kolotv.com)Nevada Division of Public and Behavioral Health - Opioid abuse in Nevada (dpbh.nv.gov)
...the Governor’s Opioid State Action Accountability Task Force met in the Capitol building in Carson City, with the conference being teleconferenced to Las Vegas...The meeting provided status reports on the four tracks - prescriber education and guidelines, treatment options and third-party payers, data collection and intelligence sharing, and criminal justice investigations that were developed during the two-day Governor’s Prescription Drug Abuse Summit in 2016...meeting was the third time the opioid state action accountability task force came together, and opioid use has been steadily going down in Nevada since it peaked in 2011
- Our bipartisan bill will force drug companies to justify ‘drastic’ price hikes (cnbc.com)
Drug companies are making record profits and at the same time raising the prices of life-saving prescription drugs...Additionally, drug companies have no legal obligation to justify or explain the massive spikes in drug prices...the FAIR Drug Pricing Act, a bill that takes the first step in addressing skyrocketing prescription drug prices by requiring basic transparency for pharmaceutical companies that drastically spike the price of a drug...whose initials stand for “Fair Accountability and Innovative Research," would require drug companies to give notice and justification for raising the price of a drug more than 10 percent at one time or more than 25 percent over three years...For each price increase drug companies would have to tell the public what they spent on manufacturing, research and development costs for the qualifying drug, net profits attributable to the qualifying drug, and marketing and advertising spending on the qualifying drug...
- Nevada to get quick state Supreme Court reply on execution (ktvn.com)Officials warn that expiring drugs means Dozier execution must take place before November (thenevadaindependent.com)
The Nevada Supreme Court has agreed to quickly take up the question of whether a drug company can block the use of its product in an inmate's execution...Prison officials won expedited review Friday, just minutes after filing documents saying the state faces the expiration of one of three drugs it wants to use...State Attorney General Adam Laxalt's office says it needs a high court ruling by Oct. 19...That would put twice-convicted killer Scott Raymond Dozier's twice-postponed lethal injection on track for mid-November...Dozier says he wants to die, but judges have for different reasons blocked the never-tried combination of drugs the state drew up after struggling to find lethal injection supplies...Pharmaceutical firm Alvogen says Nevada improperly obtained its sedative midazolam to use in Dozier's execution.
- Swiss, German drugmakers join U.S. price freeze (reuters.com)
European drugmakers Roche, Bayer and Merck KGaA became the latest companies to freeze prices in the United States for the rest of 2018 following criticism by President Donald Trump over the cost of medicine...Roche did boost U.S. prices for nine key drugs by an average of 3 percent on July 1, but said it would hold off additional increases as discussions with the Trump administration continue over a longer-term solution to containing healthcare costs...The European announcements on Friday follow similar moves from Novartis, Pfizer and U.S. drugmaker Merck.
- Viral content: vaccine scandal tests Beijing’s grip on information control (reuters.com)
A Chinese vaccine scandal has laid bare a new challenge Beijing faces in its long-running battle for information control: blogs and online articles by independent writers capable of unleashing a storm of public fury...The outrage over safety lapses by Changsheng Bio-technology Co Ltd in some of its vaccines for children came six days after the issue was flagged in regulatory filings, triggered instead by a July 21 article posted on the popular WeChat messaging platform...Titled “Vaccine King” and posted to a WeChat account managed by former journalists, it critiqued business practices by Changsheng’s chairwoman and was read tens of thousands of times before being deleted the next day...The enormous impact of the so-called “zi meiti”, or “self-media” article marks a threat to efforts by China’s ruling Communist Party to tighten its grip over content online...The article touched a nerve in a country already scarred by a long history of drug and food scandals. A day later Chinese social media was ablaze...For China, keeping a tight grip on the flow of information is seen as key to maintaining social stability in the world’s most populous nation...
- This Week in Managed Care: July 27, 2018 (ajmc.com)
Laura Joszt, Managing Editor at The American Journal of Managed Care. Welcome to This Week in Managed Care from the Managed Markets News Network
- EU drug regulators step up work to prepare for ‘no deal’ Brexit (reuters.com)
Drug regulators across Europe are hiring extra staff and increasing their workload as the role of British experts in the EU-wide system of medicines supervision winds down ahead of Brexit...Britain has already stopped taking on new projects that will extend beyond March 29, 2019 and is preparing to hand over existing drug review work to other countries...Despite a vote by UK members of parliament this week calling for Britain’s continued participation in the Europe regulatory network for medicines, there is no certainty that any such deal will be reached...That reflects the wider lack of clarity over Britain’s future relationship with the world’s biggest trading bloc after it leaves the EU next March...The Brexit-induced disruption also comes at a time when regulators are having to grapple with oversight of a range of new health technologies, such as gene therapy, and a slew of big data on health outcomes...Global drug companies, including UK-based GlaxoSmithKline and AstraZeneca, have been vocal in calling for continued close EU-UK ties after Brexit. The issue is also important to many Japanese drugmakers that have made Britain their European base.