The Insulin-PBM Rebate Kickback Scheme Appears to Be Coming to an End
Last year, on March 3, 2022, in what I believe was a fantastic accomplishment relatively early in Aaron Kowalski ' s tenure as CEO, the JDRF and Civica, Inc. (via the company ' s CivicaScript operating unit) jointly announced Civica ' s intention to commercialize biosimilars of the three bestselling insulin analogues at an affordable price of $30/vial or $55/box of five insulin pens. The Civica press release can be seen athttps://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220303005321/en/Civica-to-Manufacture-and-Distribute-Affordable-Insulin/ and a concurrent press release from JDRF can be seen athttps://www.prnewswire.com/news-rel...
Source: Scott's Web Log - March 14, 2023 Category: Endocrinology Tags: Eli Lilly and Company 2023 Civica CivicaRx CivicaScript drug prices FTC insulin insulin prices JDRF Novo Nordisk Novo Nordisk Pharma Source Type: blogs

Anti-covid, antiviral ensitrelvir
TL:DR – An antiviral drug called ensitrelvir could cut the time a person tests positive when they have COVID-19 by about a day. There is a controversial suggestion that it might also reduce the risk of developing long-covid. An antiviral drug developed by Shionogi in partnership with Hokkaido University is an orally active 3C-like protease inhibitor, which can shorten the time between first testing positive after infection with SARS-CoV-2 and getting a negative test. Early signs are that it may well reduce the risk of developing long-covid, although that data is yet to be peer reviewed. There are some scientists sce...
Source: David Bradley Sciencebase - Songs, Snaps, Science - March 10, 2023 Category: Science Authors: David Bradley Tags: COVID-19 Pharma Source Type: blogs

Matthew ’s health care tidbits: Oh, the DEA makes me sigh….
Each time I send out the THCB Reader, our newsletter that summarizes the best of THCB (Sign up here!) I include a brief tidbits section. Then I had the brainwave to add them to the blog. They’re short and usually not too sweet! –Matthew Holt I have always thought that the dual role of the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) was an anacronym that severely hampers America’s complex relationship with pharmaceuticals. Congress deems some medicines legal and regulates them via the FDA, and deems others illegal and tells the DEA and other law enforcement agencies to attempt to control their supply. Leaving aside the basic...
Source: The Health Care Blog - March 7, 2023 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: matthew holt Tags: Health Policy Matthew Holt Adderall Controlled Substances Act DEA FDA regulations online prescribing Source Type: blogs

Meet GINA, Global INitiative for Asthma
TL:DR – Thanks to GINA I have not needed to use salbutamol to treat my asthma for three years at the time of writing. It’s three years since my asthma nurse introduced me to GINA, the Global INitiative for Asthma. It was a phone consultation because the then new virus SARS-CoV-2, which causes what became known as COVID-19, was beginning to spread. At the time, I was very worried that it would be a killer for me given my asthma. Eventually, medical science learned that people with asthma were not necessarily at any greater risk of morbidity and mortality. Anyway, it was nice to meet GINA. GINA contradicts some ...
Source: David Bradley Sciencebase - Songs, Snaps, Science - February 27, 2023 Category: Science Authors: David Bradley Tags: Asthma Health and Medicine Pharma Source Type: blogs

Let ’s Finish The Job
BY MIKE MAGEE In President Biden’s State of the Union Address, the most oft repeated phrase was “Let’s Finish The Job!” This came as part of an appeal for partnership as well as an assertion that in his first two years as President much had been accomplished. Several days later, as if on cue, U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA), joint chairs of the Senate Subcommittee on Competition Policy, Antitrust, and Consumer Rights, announced that two bipartisan pieces of legislation focused on reducing the price of drugs to consumers had passed the Senate Judiciary Committee. Both bil...
Source: The Health Care Blog - February 16, 2023 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Ryan Bose-Roy Tags: Health Policy Affordable Generics and Biosimilars Act Biden Mike Magee state of the union Source Type: blogs

5 Best Practices To Build A Future-Ready  Digital Health Company
Transparent communication, clinically-validated technologies, and addressing real-life clinical needs might sound like no-brainer components to a digital health company since they are working in the healthcare sector. It is also a rapidly expanding one where investments were heavily channelled during the pandemic. However, some estimate that 90% of digital health startups will go bust or be ‘acqui-hired’ within a few years of being founded. If digital health represents the future of medicine and healthcare, it is important to understand why this is the case.  We previously dissected the reasons why digital h...
Source: The Medical Futurist - February 16, 2023 Category: Information Technology Authors: Pranavsingh Dhunnoo Tags: Artificial Intelligence in Medicine Bioethics Digital Health Research E-Patients Future of Medicine Future of Pharma Personalized Medicine Portable Medical Diagnostics Science Fiction Telemedicine & Smartphones theranos study inves Source Type: blogs

Senators Bennet and Collins Have Their Hearts in the Right Place, But Their Eyes on the Wrong Target
Jeffrey A. SingerSenator Susan Collins (R ‑ME) wrote anop ‐​ed for Seacoastonline this week expressing her concerns about skyrocketing drug overdose deaths. According to the most recentdata from the National Center for Health Statistics, 90 percent of opioid ‐​related overdose deaths involve illicit fentanyl, and 15 percent involve diverted prescription pain pills. In her column, Senator Collins expressed pride in a proposal aimed at reducing overdoses that she co‐​sponsored with Senator Michael Bennet (D‑CO). Unfortunately, while the legisla tion was well‐​intended, it placed too much emphasis on educ...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - February 9, 2023 Category: American Health Authors: Jeffrey A. Singer Source Type: blogs

Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Company ( " MCCPDC " ) PBC May Be Able to Say " Mission Accomplished " Even if Sales Stop Growing
On January 19, 2022, a startup called theMark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Company ( " MCCPDC " )opened its doors to the American public as a new online pharmacy and generic manufacturing startup. Initially, MCCPDC was also planning to launch its own Pharmacy Benefit Manager, but it later scrapped those plans, instead announcing several PBM partnerships with some PBM startups which do not engage in " spread pricing " , including on generic, biosimilar and " authorized generic " drugs. The company bears the name of its famous principal investor, multibillionaire Mark Cuban, who is perhaps best known as both owner of the NBA te...
Source: Scott's Web Log - February 7, 2023 Category: Endocrinology Tags: authorized generic 2023 Alex Oshmyansky authorized generics Biosimilar biosimilars Cost Plus costplus drug company drug prices drug pricing generic drugs mark cuban Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Company Source Type: blogs

Weekly Roundup – January 28, 2023
Welcome to our Healthcare IT Today Weekly Roundup. Each week, we’ll be providing a look back at the articles we posted and why they’re important to the healthcare IT community. We hope this gives you a chance to catch up on anything you may have missed during the week. Lessons Learned From a Health System’s Internal Data Breach. An Alabama health system recently fired an employee who accessed 2,500 patient records without authorization. Mike Semel said this is a telltale example of why health systems need to enforce HIPAA’s minimum necessary access rule, along with logging access and updating incident respo...
Source: EMR and HIPAA - January 28, 2023 Category: Information Technology Authors: Brian Eastwood Tags: Healthcare IT Healthcare IT Today Weekly Roundup Source Type: blogs

Talent Group Announces Acquisition of Queen Consulting Group
Talent Group, a leading national IT staffing company, announced today the acquisition of Queen Consulting Group, a nationally recognized IT staffing and consulting company specializing in healthcare and pharma IT, Epic EMR implementations, financial services, and niche technical recruiting. Queen Consulting Group was founded in 2015 by staffing industry veteran Carl Foster, who has more than 30 years of IT staffing and consulting experience. Foster joins Talent Group’s senior leadership team, along with Queen Vice Presidents, Jessica Doherty and Amy Migliore. Matthew Ripaldi, Chief Executive Officer at Talent Group, ...
Source: EMR and HIPAA - January 26, 2023 Category: Information Technology Authors: Healthcare IT News Tags: Health IT Company Healthcare IT Amy Migliore Carl Foster EdgeLink EHR Epic Health IT Acquisitions Health IT Talent Healthcare Consulting Healthcare M&A Jessica Doherty Matthew Ripaldi Michael Babb Osceola Capital Queen Quee Source Type: blogs

Costco Wholesale: What Is Its Pharmacy Strategy? It's Complicated.
Conclusion: Costco Pharmacy Manages Hybrid Cash/Insurance Payments for Rx Drugs Better Than Most Other Big Pharmacy Chains. Still, Costco Won ' tALWAYS Be the Low-Price Leader Because of How the U.S. Prescription Drug Market Functions.Costco Pharmacy ' s cash prices for many prescriptions may be low enough for people to simply bypass their insurance and pay out-of-pocket, which Costco welcomes, similar to how Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Co. or a number of other rapidly-growing, cash-only pharmacies which are popping up nationwide operate because their cash prices may be potentially even cheaper than by using insurance. Howev...
Source: Scott's Web Log - January 21, 2023 Category: Endocrinology Tags: 2023 Big pharma bypass insurance cash pharmacy cash-only pharmacy Costco Costco Wholesale Corp. PBM ' Source Type: blogs

The “open data” movement runs aground on FOURIER
BY ANISH KOKA Reanalysis of a trial used to approve a commonly used injectable cholesterol-lowering drug confirms the original analysis by accident. The open-data movement seeks to liberate the massive amount of data generated in running clinical trials from the grasp of the academic medical-pharmaceutical industrial complex that mostly runs the most important trials responsible for bringing novel therapeutics to market. There are only a few elite academic trialist groups capable of running large trials and there’s ample reason to be suspicious about the nexus that has developed between academia and the pharmace...
Source: The Health Care Blog - January 19, 2023 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Ryan Bose-Roy Tags: Uncategorized Source Type: blogs

The Open Data Movement Runs Aground on FOURIER
BY ANISH KOKA Reanalysis of a trial used to approve a commonly used injectable cholesterol-lowering drug confirms the original analysis by accident. The open-data movement seeks to liberate the massive amount of data generated in running clinical trials from the grasp of the academic medical-pharmaceutical industrial complex that mostly runs the most important trials responsible for bringing novel therapeutics to market. There are only a few elite academic trialist groups capable of running large trials and there’s ample reason to be suspicious about the nexus that has developed between academia and the pharmace...
Source: The Health Care Blog - January 19, 2023 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Ryan Bose-Roy Tags: Medical Practice Anish Koka FDA regulations Fourier open data Source Type: blogs

Furore over FOURIER is (un)warranted : Evolocumab is an Innocent molecule !
Welcome back to the big molecular science of PCSK and its antagonist Evolocumab, a monoclonal antibody designed to target and prevent the LDL receptor catabolism inside the lysosomes. Evolocumab was approved by FDA for aggressive lowering of LDL, following a  customary study published in NEJM 2017, that released this double-edged anti-lipid molecule into the human domain with all fanfare. It aimed to reduce the LDL as low as possible in selected patients with familial LDLemia & and those who don’t tolerate statins.  Now, a study was silently released in BMJ open, at the fag end of 2002, which is causing ripp...
Source: Dr.S.Venkatesan MD - January 16, 2023 Category: Cardiology Authors: dr s venkatesan Tags: lipid metabolism evolocumab fourier study how low ldl can go inclisiron lipid guidelines acc aha esc csi Source Type: blogs

Weekly Roundup – January 14, 2023
Welcome to our Healthcare IT Today Weekly Roundup. Each week, we’ll be providing a look back at the articles we posted and why they’re important to the healthcare IT community. We hope this gives you a chance to catch up on anything you may have missed during the week. 2023 Health IT Predictions: Consumerism. Healthcare IT Today kicked off 2023 by asking the experts in our community to offer their thoughts on the year ahead. Our latest round of predictions kicks off with the ongoing consumerization of healthcare. Our experts say retail health and telehealth will continue to make gains as consumers vote with their feet ...
Source: EMR and HIPAA - January 14, 2023 Category: Information Technology Authors: Brian Eastwood Tags: Healthcare IT Healthcare IT Today Weekly Roundup Source Type: blogs