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CVS reported first quarter financial results premarket Wednesday fresh off closing some of its biggest acquisitions since its $70 billion megamerger with insurer Aetna in 2018...The retail health giant tied up its $10.6 billion acquisition of value-based medical group Oak Street Health...and completed its $7.8 billion acquisition of home care provider Signify Health in March. The acquisitions are meant to advance CVS’ value-based strategy in primary care and home health...READ MORE

Pharma rep access to HCPs across specialties rose to an average of 60% in the U.S., from a 20% low during the pandemic...The increasing number of clinicians willing to meet virtually has driven the rate of rep-friendly physicians to a record high of 60% in the U.S...That figure, a cross-specialty tally, is up from an average of about 20% during the COVID-19 pandemic. The report shows the extent to which in-person visits, long a staple of the typical drugmaker’s marketing playbook, have been complemented by virtual meetings in the engagement mix. With more than half of all accessible physicians using video in combination with in-person, video is supporting its offline cousin, not supplanting it...READ MORE

Nevada’s governor...said the state is launching a prescription discount card, a method of softening the rising costs of medications that is also used in Washington and Oregon...The digital card, called ArrayRX, saves an average of 80% on generic prescriptions and up to 20% on brand name drugs and is free for Nevadans, Governor Steve Sisolak said. For those without health insurance, the card is set to lower costs significantly...Those with health insurance will be able to compare their costs with ArrayRX, and can opt for whichever option is cheaper...READ MORE

Former pharmaceutical executive Martin Shkreli was released from prison on Wednesday after serving most of his seven-year sentence for lying to hedge fund investors and defrauding drug company investors...Shkreli, 39, was released from a prison in Allenwood, Pa., and moved “community confinement,” or a halfway house overseen by the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ New York Residential Reentry Management Office, the AP reported. The bureau said his projected release date is Sept. 14...READ MORE

The number of drugs excluded from the three largest pharmacy benefit manager formularies reached an all-time high in 2023, despite concerns that profits are being put ahead of patient access. This year, CVS Caremark, Optum Rx and Express Scripts — which together handle 80% of all prescriptions in the United States — each have roughly 600 medications on their standard formulary exclusion lists...Exclusions leave patients with fewer options for treatment unless they can afford the out-of-pocket costs of buying drugs that are not covered by the insurer. What is even more disturbing are the trends within the trend of formulary exclusions, critics say,,,READ MORE

CVS reported a quarterly loss of more than $3 billion to cover its share of a global opioid settlement, but its third-quarter earnings blew past Wall Street estimates...The pharmacy retail giant said that it had a $5.2 billion charge in the third quarter for a settlement relating to its role in the opioid crisis. The settlement resolves "substantially all opioid lawsuits and claims filed by other states, political subdivisions and tribes against the company to be paid over 10 years, beginning in 2023...READ MORE

Getting diagnosed with cancer or another life-altering illness can overwhelm patients, who suddenly face a complex condition while worrying about their future, family and finances. The ability to quickly access prescribed specialty medicines shouldn’t add to those worries...There’s a far more efficient way to handle this, both for patients and doctors: provide the prescribed medications at the cancer clinic or academic medical center where the patient regularly goes for testing and medical appointments. Embedding a specialty pharmacy within the practice—called medically integrated dispensing dramatically improves the healthcare experience by removing the PBM-controlled specialty pharmacy from the “triangle of care”—the doctor, the patient, and the pharmacist...READ MORE

After setting record-high U.S. prices in the first half of 2022, drugmakers continued to launch medicines at high prices in the second half, a Reuters analysis has found, highlighting their power despite new legislation to lower costs for older prescription products...The median annual price of the 17 novel drugs the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved since July 2022 is $193,900, down from $257,000 in the first half of 2022...For full year 2022, the median was $222,003...The latest numbers imply double digit year-over-year price growth...READ MORE

Who decides how much you pay for prescription medicines? It's a question with a very complicated answer. Now, Mavericks owner Mark Cuban is hoping to simplify the process and save you money by opening his own pharmacy...Cuban helped launch Cost Plus Drugs in January. It's an online pharmacy with no storefronts that offers more than 1,000 generic drugs. The business model is built on transparency. Each drug profile breaks down how Cost Plus determines its price: cost plus a 15% markup, $3 pharmacy fee, and $5 for shipping..."We get people coming to us and saying 'your price is $10, my co-pay is $20,'" said Cuban. "'So I'm ignoring my insurance and coming straight to you.'"...Cost Plus does it by negotiating directly with drug manufacturers and cutting out the middleman...READ MORE

The U.S. Supreme Court...rejected bids by Insys Therapeutics Inc founder John Kapoor and another former executive of the drugmaker to overturn their convictions for conspiring to bribe doctors to prescribe addictive opioids and defraud insurers into paying for them...Kapoor, 78, is serving a prison sentence of 5-1/2 years and is the highest-level corporate executive convicted at trial of crimes related to the opioid epidemic that has killed hundreds of thousands of Americans in the past two decades...READ MORE