Bloomberg: Revenue Hole May Bring GOP Back To Repeal Of Obamacare Mandate
The impact of House Ways and Means Chairman Kevin Brady’s amendment to revise one of the GOP tax bill’s offshore provisions emerged late Tuesday -- an estimated $74 billion revenue hole, which is sending tax writers scrambling to find additional revenue. They may pursue a risky strategy to make up the shortfall: repealing the 2010 Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate. House Republicans are edging closer to accepting President Donald Trump’s suggestion to combine their tax legislation with a repeal of the mandate that all individuals purchase health insurance, according to a person who’s helping to draft the tax bill. (11/8)

Roll Call: Brady Says Individual Mandate Repeal Isn’t Off The Table
Ways and Means Chairman Kevin Brady on Tuesday left open the possibility that repeal of the 2010 health care law’s individual mandate could eventually make it into the GOP’s tax overhaul. The Texas Republican released a substitute amendment Monday that the Ways and Means Committee adopted on a party-line vote that did not include the mandate repeal or any health care changes. But Brady told talk radio host Hugh Hewitt on Tuesday that he’s asked for an updated cost estimate on repealing the individual mandate, indicating he won’t make a final decision until he sees that. (McPherson, 11/7)

Bloomberg: Ted Cruz Is Pushing To Include Obamacare Mandate Repeal In Tax Bill
Senator Ted Cruz of Texas is pushing to keep alive the idea of including a repeal of Obamacare’s individual mandate in the tax overhaul plan, even as House Republicans struggle with how to address an issue that threatens to complicate the tax debate. At a news conference Tuesday, Cruz said it’s vital to use the tax legislation to end the mandate that all Americans have health insurance or pay a penalty. If nothing else, he said, doing so will in effect be a tax cut for the 6.5 million Americans who now pay a penalty because they don’t have health insurance coverage. (Litvan, 11/7)

The Hill: GOP Senator: CBO Moving The Goalposts On ObamaCare Mandate
Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) on Tuesday sharply criticized the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) for shifting its estimates of the effect of ObamaCare’s individual mandate as GOP lawmakers consider new ways of repealing the rule. Lee’s comments come after Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) told The Hill earlier on Tuesday that he has been informed the CBO is now projecting that repealing the mandate will provide significantly less savings than it previously projected. (Sullivan, 11/7)

Meanwhile —

The Wall Street Journal: GOP Senators Aim to Retain Medical-Expenses Deduction
Senate Republicans aim to preserve a popular tax deduction for household medical expenses when they release their version of a tax plan later this week, parting ways with House lawmakers on a proposal that costs about $182 billion over a decade, according to people familiar with the matter. They are also considering delaying the start of a cut in the top corporate tax rate to 20% from 35% but hadn’t decided on the matter as of Tuesday evening. (Hughes, 11/7)

CQ: Health Groups Target Proposed Medical Expense Deduction Repeal
A coalition of health care groups is calling on lawmakers to retain the medical expense deduction in the House GOP tax bill. Led by the seniors' group AARP, nearly 40 groups wrote in a Tuesday letter that the deduction is “truly middle class tax relief,” urging lawmakers not to repeal the deduction as the current version of the House Republican tax bill would. (McIntire, 11/7)

The Associated Press: Notre Dame Employees Keeping Free Birth Control Coverage
The University of Notre Dame told its employees Tuesday that they will continue to receive no-cost birth control coverage in a reversal from what the university told its faculty and staff last week. The Roman Catholic university in northern Indiana sent an email to employees saying its insurance provider is continuing to offer contraception coverage not funded by the university. Notre Dame notified employees a week earlier that contraception coverage would end Jan. 1. (Davies, 11/7)

The Hill: Notre Dame Reverses Decision To End No-Cost Contraceptive Coverage
"The University of Notre Dame, as a Catholic Institution, follows Catholic teaching about the use of contraceptives and engaged in the recent lawsuit to protect its freedom to act in accord with its principles," the university said in an email Tuesday. "Recognizing, however, the plurality of religious and other convictions among its employees, it will not interfere with the provision of contraceptives that will be administered and funded independently of the University." (Savransky, 11/7)

The Hill: FDA Chief: Keep Defense Medical Approvals In Our Sphere
Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said the agency should retain control over medical device and drug approvals after a provision in the defense policy bill would give this power to the Defense Department for soldiers. Gottlieb pointed to an alternative proposal he supports that, he said, would accelerate drug and device approvals at the FDA for the battlefield. (Roubein, 11/7)

Politico Pro: GOP Senators Say They'll Oppose Defense Bill If Pentagon Drug Policy Stays In
The Pentagon is facing growing resistance in Congress over its plan to approve drugs and medical products without FDA involvement just hours before congressional negotiators are set to finalize a defense policy bill. (Diamond, 11/7)

The New York Times: Texas Gunman Once Escaped From Mental Health Facility
The gunman behind the worst mass shooting in Texas history escaped from a psychiatric hospital while he was in the Air Force, and was caught a few miles away by the local police, who were told that he had made death threats against his superiors and tried to smuggle weapons onto his base, a 2012 police report showed. That episode, which came to light on Tuesday, was another in a series of red flags about the threat the gunman, Devin P. Kelley, posed to those around him. But none of the warnings stopped Mr. Kelley from legally purchasing several firearms, including the rifle he used to kill 26 people at the First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs on Sunday. (Romero, Blinder and Perez-Pena, 11/7)

The Associated Press: Gunman Once Fled Mental Health Center, Threatened Superiors
The records that emerged Tuesday add up to at least three missed opportunities that might have offered law enforcement a way to stop Kelley from having access to guns long before he slaughtered much of the congregation in the middle of a service. Authorities said the death toll of 26 included the unborn baby of one of the women killed. Kelley died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound after he was chased by bystanders and crashed his car. (11/8)

Los Angeles Times: Texas Gunman Escaped From Mental Health Facility In 2012, Threatened Military Superiors
Kelley "suffered from mental health disorders" and had apparently been sent to the facility during his Air Force court-martial proceedings on charges of beating his wife and stepson in 2011 and 2012, according to the police records. An incident report described Kelley as "a danger to himself and others as he had already been caught sneaking firearms onto Holloman Air Force Base" in New Mexico, and said that he had concocted a plan to use a bus to escape the mental health facility. (Pearce, 11/7)

NPR: Texas Shooter's History Raises Questions About Mental Health And Mass Murder
Devin Kelley, the man we now know killed more than two dozen people at a Texas church on Sunday, escaped a mental health facility before the Air Force could try him on charges that he beat his wife and baby stepson back in 2012. And President Trump, like many people before him, is pointing to mental health — not guns — as the cause of the church massacre. (Kodjak, 11/7)

Los Angeles Times: Over-The-Counter Painkillers Treated Painful Injuries Just As Well As Opioids In New Study
In an opioid epidemic that currently claims an average of 91 lives per day, there have been many paths to addiction. For some, it started with a fall or a sports injury, a trip to a nearby emergency room and a prescription for a narcotic pain reliever that seemed to work well in the ER. New research underscores how tragically risky — and unnecessary — such prescribing choices have been. (Healy, 11/7)

Stat: ‘This Is Just The Beginning’: Scope Of Opioid Lawsuits Widens To Include Hospital Accreditor
Now local officials in West Virginia — the state with the nation’s highest drug death rate — have taken aim at a different target: the medical experts who recommended their use. This past week the cities and towns of Huntington, Charleston, Kenova, and Ceredo filed a class-action lawsuit against the Joint Commission, the influential nonprofit that both inspects hospitals’ performance and sets practice standards for their physicians. Hospitals must abide by the group’s standards, on opioids or anything else, in order to get reimbursed for care provided to Medicaid and Medicare patients. (Blau, 11/7)

California Healthline: Taking A Page From Pharma’s Playbook To Fight The Opioid Crisis
Dr. Mary Meengs remembers the days, a couple of decades ago, when pharmaceutical salespeople would drop into her family practice in Chicago, eager to catch a moment between patients so they could pitch her a new drug. Now living in Humboldt County, Calif., Meengs is taking a page from the pharmaceutical industry’s playbook with an opposite goal in mind: to reduce the use of prescription painkillers. (Bartolone, 11/8)

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: 28 Wisconsin Counties Sue Prescription Drug-Makers To Recover Costs Of Fighting Opioid Epidemic
More than one-third of all Wisconsin counties sued several pharmaceutical drug-makers and physicians on Tuesday for fraudulent marketing of prescription painkillers that contributed to a nationwide public health crisis of opioid addiction and overdose deaths. (Behm, 11/7)

The New York Times: Cancer Doctors Cite Risks Of Drinking Alcohol
The American Society of Clinical Oncology, which represents many of the nation’s top cancer doctors, is calling attention to the ties between alcohol and cancer. In a statement published Tuesday in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, the group cites evidence that even light drinking can slightly raise a woman’s risk of breast cancer and increase a common type of esophageal cancer. Heavy drinkers face much higher risks of mouth and throat cancer, cancer of the voice box, liver cancer and, to a lesser extent, colorectal cancers, the group cautions. (Rabin, 11/7)

The Washington Post: New Evidence Of Brain Damage From West Nile Virus, Scientists Say
Experts who work on the mosquito-borne West Nile virus have long known that it can cause serious neurological symptoms, such as memory problems and tremors, when it invades the brain and spinal cord. Now researchers have found physical evidence of brain damage in patients years after their original infection, the first such documentation using magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI. (Sun, 11/7)

The New York Times: Women More Likely Than Men To Die In First Year After Heart Attack
Compared with men, women are at significantly higher risk of death in the first year after a heart attack, a new study has found. The generally higher risk of death in women who have heart attacks is well known, but the differences are largely explained by women’s older age when the attack occurs, higher rates of other diseases, and types of treatment they typically receive. (Bakalar, 11/7)

Stat: Hockey And DNA: Personalized Genetic Tests Show Up Rink-Side
The Boston-based consumer genetics company Orig3n had announced that it was planning to set up booths at a Boston Bruins game I was going to attend. Along with other fans, I could get a free DNA test and learn about my own genes. These kinds of tests are increasingly common — and many of them are marketed toward fitness junkies and sports fans like myself. The idea is that you can discover all kinds of things you never knew about your health. (Hogan, 11/7)

NPR: You Can Get Your DNA Tested At An NFL Game. Should You?
Depending on who you ask, finding out whether your genes make you a better athlete or give you healthier skin may be as easy as swabbing your cheeks for a DNA test on your way into a football game. But others say these "wellness" tests marketed directly to consumers are modern snake oil – worthless, or even misleading. On Monday, the Food and Drug Administration gave a boost to direct-to-consumer genetic testing, when it announced plans to streamline its approval process. (Levy, 11/8)

Stat: Journal Editors Take Industry Payments, Too — In Two Cases, Over $1 Million
For the past decade, many medical journals have begun requiring contributors to disclose their conflicts of interest, but a new study finds that many journal editors — who are also doctors — themselves receive hefty payments from industry and most of their journals do a poor job of disclosing relevant policies. To wit, the study found that, in 2014, half of 713 journal editors, whose payments were reported to a U.S. government database, had received something of value from drug or device makers, and nearly 10 percent had received research funding. While the median general payment was only $11, the range was large — from $0 to more than $2,900. And two editors received more than $1 million in payments. (Silverman, 11/7)

The Philadelphia Inquirer: Study Finds 40 Percent Of Doctors Work While Sick. Here's How Philly Hospitals Handle Sick Days.
Just what you need in flu session. The guy next to you – he’s sneezing. He’s sniffling. He’s coughing. He’s got a nose like Rudolph the reindeer. He’s…your doctor? The chances of that happening are better than you might think, according to a new study published this month in the American Journal of Infectious Control. Four in 10 healthcare professionals report to work while experiencing influenza-like symptoms, working a median of three days, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Prevention and Control (CDC). The findings were based on a survey of nearly 2,000 healthcare workers. (Giordano, 11/8)

The New York Times: Could You Be Allergic To Additives In Food Or Drugs?
When Kammy Eisenberg broke out in hives last December, she attributed it to stress. But the rash persisted, and Ms. Eisenberg was covered in hives “from head to toe” for eight months. “It was everywhere,” said Ms. Eisenberg, 52, who lives in Atlanta. “I was beyond itchy.” Even powerful drugs like prednisone provided only moderate relief, she said. “My allergist was at a loss.” (Rabin, 11/7)

Kaiser Health News: For Active Seniors, Cohousing Offers A Cozier Alternative To Downsizing
The 5-mile hikes, yoga classes and communal dinners are now routines for the residents at PDX Commons Cohousing in Portland, Ore. These 39 individuals (about half partnered but largely strangers at first) started forging relationships well before they moved in late this summer to join a trend called cohousing. “Here, you walk in and know every one of the people and you know them well,” said Steve Fisher, 63, a retired transportation planner who leads the weekly hikes. He and his wife moved from San Jose, Calif., to PDX Commons. “You greet them. They’re your friends. You do stuff with them. It’s the opposite of the isolation you sometimes get in the urban areas.” (Jayson, 11/8)

St. Louis Public Radio: Missouri Senators Still Want Special Session For In-Home Health Care — But Time Is Running Out
The Missouri Senate is waiting to go into special session on securing in-home health care benefits for more than 8,000 state residents. ...It involves reducing the number of elderly homeowners and renters who qualify for a housing tax break known as the “circuit breaker.” (Griffin, 11/7)

Chicago Sun-Times: County Hospitals, Health Systems May Face More Budget Cuts
Board members of the Cook County Health and Hospitals System came up with about $12.4 million in proposed reductions to the FY2018 executive budget recommendation in October — the target was $27 million. Over the course of the presenation, commissioners asked Dr. Jay Shannon, CEO of the health and hospitals system, and other board members what else could be cut from the system during the department’s presentation. (Hinton, 11/7)

New Hampshire Union Leader: Doctor Relieved Of Duties At Manchester VA Returns To New Hampshire
The Veterans Affairs physician relieved of his duties the day that the Boston Globe reported about problems with the Manchester VA Medical Center is back in New Hampshire, working at a VA clinic in the Lakes Region, officials said. Dr. James Schlosser, former medical director at the Manchester VA, was temporarily assigned as a staff physician at the Tilton Community Based Outpatient Clinic beginning Oct. 2, said Manchester VA spokesman Kristin Pressly. (Hayward, 11/7)

Sacramento Bee: Sutter Health HMO Expanding Its care Options In Bay Area
Sutter Health announced Tuesday that it is expanding its Sacramento-based HMO, Sutter Health Plus, into a 15th Northern California county, Santa Cruz, starting Jan. 1 as it bolsters its network in the San Francisco Bay Area. ...In Santa Cruz County, the Sutter Health Plus Network will include medical staff at Palo Alto Medical Foundation and its care centers, Sutter Maternity & Surgery Center and Watsonville Community Hospital. (Anderson, 11/7)

East Oregonian: Management Problems Endemic At OHA
While technical failures are to blame for recent issues at the Oregon Health Authority, observers say mismanagement is likely at the root of its problems. Last week’s news that OHA overpaid Medicaid providers by $74 million over three years was merely the latest in a steady stream of negative news about the agency, which has thousands of employees and a budget of roughly $10 billion per year. (Withycombe, 11/7)

Georgia Health News: Health IT Experts Say Data Revolution Still Has A Ways To Go
The digital revolution has swept over health care, as wearable devices, electronic medical records and other computerized innovations have become pervasive. Yet some frustrating connection problems and other technical hiccups have often thwarted the potential payoff of these breakthroughs, with improvements in the quality of care not always as dramatic as one would hope. (Miller, 11/7)

The Wall Street Journal: Investors Sue Ad Startup Outcome Health For Alleged Fraud
Investors in Outcome Health on Tuesday sued the prominent Chicago advertising startup and its two founders, claiming fraud and breach of contract some eight months after investing nearly $500 million in the company. Funds managed by an investment unit of Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Google parent Alphabet Inc., and other firms alleged the company and its founders, Rishi Shah and Shradha Agarwal, misled them by knowingly providing false data and financial reports before the firms invested $487.5 million beginning in March. (Wrinkler, 11/8)

Stat: Trump Takes On Hospitals: The Facts Behind Fight Over 340B Drug Discounts
There’s at least one unassailable fact in the battle over the federal 340B drug discount program: $1.6 billion is a lot of money. That’s how much so-called safety net hospitals will lose from a Trump administration policy, announced last week, to slash reimbursement to providers in the 25-year-old program. (Ross, 11/6)

Politico Pro: Final MACRA Rule Could Hurt Doctors Who Prescribe High-Cost Drugs
Doctors who prescribe a large volume of high-cost Part B drugs may be penalized under MACRA’s merit-based incentive system. ...Oncologists, rheumatologists and ophthalmologists — all specialists that administer a lot of high-cost drugs — would be most affected by this move, according to an Avalere report funded by PhRMA. (Karlin-Smith, 11/6)

The Hill: Trump Talks Tough But Little Action Seen On Drug Prices 
President Trump blasted the pharmaceutical industry for “getting away with murder” with steep drug prices during the campaign and since, but his administration has done little to force the industry to change its ways. As recently as Oct. 16, the president repeated the “getting away with murder” line and promised to bring prices “way down.” But despite the rhetoric, Trump has not acted on most of the drug pricing promises he made during the election. (Weixel, 11/1)

Stat: Q&A: Forget Repeal, Says Toby Cosgrove. Focus On Cutting Regulations And Drug Prices
Cleveland Clinic’s chief executive, Dr. Toby Cosgrove, is retiring from one of the most influential health systems in the country in January. His imminent departure come at a time when hospitals are contending with an array of financial pressures, including rising pharmaceutical costs and government reimbursements that don’t cover costs. (Ross, 11/1)

Bloomberg: Six Ways Amazon Could Invade The Pharmacy Business
The pharmacy market is one of the biggest potential new targets for Amazon.com Inc. The online retail giant moved into the roughly $800 billion U.S. grocery market in June by buying Whole Foods Market Inc. Drugs, a $450 billion industry in the U.S., are likewise most often sold from brick-and-mortar stores. Shoppers filling prescriptions frequently pick up toiletries, beauty supplies and dish soap—all retail items Amazon already sells. And the distribution chain for drugs has lots of middlemen whose markups Amazon can seek to undercut. (Langreth and Soper, 11/7)

The New York Times: CVS Will Offer Next-Day Delivery Of Prescription Drugs
CVS Health said on Monday that it would begin offering next-day delivery of prescription drugs and same-day service in some big cities next year, reflecting the company’s worries about potential competition from Amazon. CVS Health also said its retail sales declined in the third quarter of this year, a dip that the company said occurred because of the three major hurricanes that forced many stores to close. (Thomas, 11/6)

Forbes: States Focus On Incentives Of Wholesalers And Pharmacies In Drug Price-Fixing Probe
The 45 states that recently made sweeping allegations of price-fixing against 18 generic pharmaceutical companies are also focusing on how pharmacies and drug wholesalers, like Walgreens Boots Alliance, McKesson, Cardinal Health, and AmerisourceBergen, benefit from higher drug prices. The expanded 235-page complaint that state attorneys general hope to file in federal court in Philadelphia against generic drug makers claims drug wholesalers and distributors that purchase drugs have agreements with generic manufacturers that push the distributors to not restrain drug prices for the benefit of their customers. (Vardi, 11/6)

Stat: Merck Finds A Silver Lining In Its Last Big Alzheimer’s Failure
Combing through the data of its most recent setback in Alzheimer’s disease, Merck (MRK) sees a glimmer of hope that a once-failed drug might come through for patients in the earliest stages of disease. (Garde, 11/2)

Stat: What Payoff? Patent Settlements Between Brand And Generic Drug Makers Are Declining
The number of so-called pay-to-delay deals declined in fiscal year 2015, the second consecutive year that a drop occurred since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled these controversial agreements can be subject to antitrust scrutiny, according to the latest tally by the Federal Trade Commission. The FTC has kept a watchful eye on these deals, which involve settlements of patent litigation between brand-name and generic drug makers, over concerns that some violate antitrust laws. The agency, which has gone to court several times to argue this point, has in the past claimed these deals cost U.S. consumers an estimated $3.5 billion annually. (Silverman, 11/1)

Bloomberg: Hurricanes Blow Through U.S. Economy: Cars, Drugs, Phones, Food
Hurricane Harvey flooded Houston. Irma blew all around Florida. Then Maria devastated Puerto Rico. In addition to the dozens killed by the storms and millions of lives uprooted, there were an array of effects on companies — much damage, but also many opportunities to get busy cleaning up, making repairs and trying to get life back to normal. The effects are still rippling through corporate earnings, as with Tuesday's reports from companies including Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. and Avis Budget Group Inc. (Butters and Saraiva, 11/7)

Stat: Q&A: An Open-Data Evangelist Preaches Creative Cooperation To Speed Drug Development
When Dr. Atul Butte thinks data, the word “big” can’t do it justice. He was honored by President Barack Obama’s administration as an “open science champion of change” in 2013 for his work at Stanford University to sift 400 trillion molecular, clinical, and epidemiological data points to find new medicines and disease-fighting insights — and to speed the process by making the data as public as possible. (Piller, 11/3)

The Washington Post: Could Donated, Unused Drugs Help Cash-Strapped Seniors? A D.C. Council Member Thinks So.
A D.C. Council member is pushing a plan to allow individuals to donate many prescription drugs for use by needy patients. The proposal sponsored by Brandon T. Todd (D-Ward 4) is for a two-year pilot program in which individuals, health-care facilities and pharmaceutical companies would be permitted to donate unused but unexpired prescription drugs that the D.C. Department of Health would store and redistribute based on requests from health-care workers. (Gerber, 11/6)

The Wall Street Journal: Drug Advertisers Suspend Deals With Outcome Health
Several major advertisers are halting their business with Outcome Health following allegations that some employees of the prominent Chicago startup misled clients. Outcome Health streams “point of care” advertising to screens and tablets that it places in doctors’ offices. One of Outcome’s largest customers, Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. , said it has opted not to renew an ad agreement for 2018. Bristol-Myers had been expected to pay Outcome roughly $20 million this year, according to people familiar with the deal. (Vranica and Winkler, 11/5)

The Associated Press: 3 Guilty In ‘Future Pharma’ Scheme To Sell Fake Drugs Online
A third person has pleaded guilty to conspiracy to make and distribute anabolic steroids and fake drugs to treat infertility, acne and erectile dysfunction. They were marketed online under the brand name “Future Pharma.” United States Postal Inspectors found fake ingredients were shipped from China to Alabama and Florida between 2015 and 2017 and manufactured into drugs labeled as Viagra, Cialis, Accutane and Clomid. (11/6)

Bloomberg: Teva’s Credit Rating Cut To Junk By Fitch
Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. Chief Executive Officer Kare Schultz is finding himself in the hot seat in his first week on the job with rapidly shrinking options to halt the slide in the Israeli company’s securities after its debt was cut to junk overnight. Fitch Ratings cited the “significant operational stress” that the world’s biggest maker of copycat drugs faces at a time when it needs to pay down debt, and pared its rating by two levels to non-investment grade late on Monday. Teva’s debt obligations are almost three times its market value following an ill-timed $40 billion acquisition last year of Allergan Plc’s generics business. (Linsell, Benmeleh and Koons, 11/7)

Stat: Amgen And Genentech Are The Latest Drug Makers To Lay Off Workers
Two of the largest drug makers – Amgen and Genentech – are both cutting numerous jobs in coming weeks, adding to a growing number of layoffs in the pharmaceutical industry this year. Amgen plans to eliminate about 200 R&D positions, mostly in California, by the end of the year as the company makes “organizational changes” to its R&D apparatus, a spokeswoman confirmed. The cuts are being made at facilities in Thousand Oaks, Ca., and South San Francicso. The move comes eight months after Amgen reassigned about 100 R&D jobs from Thousand Oaks to South San Francisco and Cambridge, Ma. (Silverman, 11/4)

Stat: Is Pharma Keeping Its Promise About R&D Spending In Canada?
A spat has erupted in Canada over the amount of money that drug makers spend each year on R&D in the country and it comes as the government takes a closer look at coping with high prices. Earlier this week, a government agency called the Patented Medicine Prices Review Board released a report showing that industry R&D investment was 4.4 percent of Canadian sales in 2016. This is a problem for the pharmaceutical industry, which committed 30 years ago to maintain annual R&D spending in Canada at 10 percent or more each year. (Silverman, 11/3)

Reuters: Brexit With No Deal Risks Chaos In Drug Supply, Report Warns
Crashing out of the European Union without a deal would cause major problems for Britain's health service and risk "chaotic disruption" to medicine supplies, according to a report on Tuesday. The Nuffield Trust, an independent health charity, also warned that Brexit without a deal on future relations with the EU would lead to worsening staff shortages in the National Health Service (NHS). (Hirschler, 11/7)

The Hill: Orphan Drugs Are Not Driving Health Care Spending So Let's Invest In Them
As the debate over health care costs and drug prices intensifies, one of the issues that has been raised relates to the cost of orphan drugs — drugs for patients with rare diseases. Such drugs are often identified by critics as being more costly than drugs for more common diseases, despite the counterpoint that the volume of such sales is, by definition, low. Thus, we often hear that orphan drugs are significant contributors to rising health-care costs in the U.S., out of proportion to their contributions to health care. (Peter L. Saltonstall, 11/1)

Cleveland Plain Dealer: Issue 2, Ohio's Drug Pricing Initiative, Fails - Now Congress Should Rein In The Drug Industry
Ohio Issue 2 on drug prices failed Tuesday night for the right reasons. As we spelled out in editorials opposing the issue, it was confusing, unworkable and prone to expensive litigation that Ohio simply didn't need. Still, the death of Issue 2 -- which, if successful, would have been the nation's first voter-initiated law aimed at controlling drug prices -- should not spell the end of attempts to lower drug prices and curb the pharmaceutical industry's oversized market power. (11/7)

The Detroit News: Anti-Drug Firestorm Is Dishonest
Have drug companies been lying about their development costs to justify high prices? You’d be forgiven for thinking so, given the media’s portrayal of a new study published in the prestigious journal JAMA Internal Medicine. The study reaches a shocking conclusion — it costs just $648 million to develop a cancer drug. The prevailing estimate, from Tufts University, is $2.7 billion. This finding sparked media condemnation of the drug industry. Business Insider declared that the study “undermines Big Pharma’s justification for charging high drug prices.” Bloomberg warned the industry is “ignoring its price problem.” (Sandip Shah and Helen Shao, 11/5)

Bloomberg: Valeant's Turnaround Is Still A Work In Progress
Looks like we've got a new candidate for a Valeant Pharmaceuticals International Inc. inflection point. Valeant reported third-quarter earnings and revenue Tuesday morning that beat (lowered) analyst expectations. And for the second quarter in a row, the company defied analyst expectations by maintaining earnings guidance, despite having divested several assets. Shares jumped 15 percent on the news. (Max Nisen, 11/7)

The Wall Street Journal: Why Mallinckrodt’s Woes Matter To All Drug Makers
Mallinckrodt may not be the best-behaved company in the drug industry, but investors in all pharmaceutical makers should take notice of Tuesday’s nasty stock slide. Third-quarter adjusted earnings of $1.97 a share topped analyst estimates, but sales of $794 million were down about 10% from last year. The stock fell more than 20% Tuesday. It is down about 50% so far this year and about 80% from the all-time high in 2015. The two big problems for Mallinckrodt are industrywide issues involving drug prices and the opioid crisis. (Charley Grant, 11/7)

Stat: Revolutionary New Cancer Therapies Come With Big Risks. Drug Makers Must Be Prepared
Personalized cell therapy may have come of age with the recent approvals of two novel drugs, Kymriah and Yescarta, that genetically manipulate patient’s own immune cells to fight their cancers. Yet pharmaceutical companies face many challenges, including several key ethical and social issues, if they are to make these new therapies a success. (Aaron D. Levine, 11/8)

Bloomberg: AbbVie Overpromises
AbbVie Inc. has gotten some wins lately. But it may be guilty of over-celebrating. The company provided boosted long-term sales forecasts last week, commemorating strong third-quarter sales of its lead drug Humira and a deal with Amgen Inc. that will protect the drug's future. But as we've seen this earnings season, forecast overreach can come back to bite. (Max Nisen, 11/3)

Forbes: Abbott's Generic Pharmaceutical Business To Continue Growth Led By Emerging Markets
The generic pharmaceuticals business has been trending well for Abbott Labs for some time now. It accounts for around 15% of the company’s value, according to our estimates. In Q3 2017, the segment saw double-digit growth in revenues, led by a ramp up in emerging markets, including Brazil, Russia, India and China. Abbott has a broad line of branded generic pharmaceuticals manufactured worldwide, and marketed and sold outside the U.S. (11/6)

Los Angeles Times: Killing The Medical Expense Deduction Will Hit The Middle Class — And Hard
Republicans drafting their tax cut proposal have been awfully cavalier in particular about one deduction they’re proposing to repeal: the deduction for medical expenses. A fact sheet issued by House Ways and Means Committee Republicans when they unveiled their tax plan denigrated this deduction as one of "a myriad of provisions that many will never use and others may use only once in their lifetime." ... Tell that to Bill Storey. “This would be a massive hit,” Storey, 61, told me Tuesday. He and his wife, Joan, 64, had to retire from their jobs a few years ago as a technology professional and schoolteacher, respectively, at a St. Louis-area school district—he to take care of a sick parent, and she because a heart condition made it impossible to continue working. Now their medical expenses reach about $37,000 a year. (Michael Hiltzik, 11/7)

St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Demise Of Insurance Program Is Devastating To Millions Of Children
A month has passed since Congress allowed the funding for the Children’s Health Insurance Program to expire. While states are using available funds to keep the program in place until Congress acts, eventually if they do not act this could lead to the demise of one of the most successful government programs ever implemented. The CHIP program covers more than 9 million low-income children across the U.S. In Missouri, roughly 90,000 children are covered by CHIP and more than 600,000 by a combination of CHIP and Medicaid. (Timothy McBride, 11/7)

The Washington Post: Let This Sick 10-Year-Old Girl Stay In The Country
Ten-year-old Rosa Maria Hernandez is finally and thankfully back home with her family. Federal officials who had detained the undocumented immigrant with cerebral palsy as she was recovering from surgery were essentially shamed into doing the right thing — the humane thing. Let’s hope that continues so that a fragile little girl who poses no threat to anyone is allowed to stay in the country where her family has made a home and where she is able to receive the best treatment. (11/7)

Richmond Times-Dispatch: To Beat The Opioid Crisis, Virginia's Next Governor Should Think Like Portugal
Virginia’s next governor will confront many pressing needs but few burning oil platforms — except one. The opioid crisis just keeps getting worse. ...According to the latest report from the state medical examiner’s office, drug overdoses have been the leading cause of unnatural death in the commonwealth for the past four years. (A. Barton Hinkle, 11/7)

Georgia Health News: How To Help Our Infants Survive — And Have Better Lives
Georgia’s fetal death rate is well above the national average, and the state ranks 47th in the country for infant mortality. Seventy percent of Georgia infants who die before their first birthday were born low birthweight (LBW, less than 5 pounds, 8 ounces). It is no surprise that Georgia ranks 45th for its LBW rate. (Merrilee Gober, 11/7)

The Washington Post: The Killer Responsible For More Yearly Deaths Than AIDS, Malaria And TB Combined
A major study published last month in the Lancet, a British medical journal, found that there is a global killer responsible for more yearly deaths than AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis combined: pollution. The problem is pervasive, affecting every country on the planet. It is expensive, costing the globe a whopping $4.6 trillion a year — about 6 percent of global gross domestic product — in hours not worked, premature deaths, health spending and eroded quality of life. The study associated pollution with 1 in 6 premature deaths, 9 million people in 2015. Even if the numbers are off a bit, the magnitude is striking. (11/7)

The Wichita Eagle: When Seeing The Doctor Means Immediately
Consider a company called Teladoc, which provides access to a doctor through a computer screen, telephone or mobile app. The waiting time, a company official tells me, is between eight and 10 minutes. That beats any doctor’s office I have ever been in, even with an appointment. ... Virtual medicine, led by companies like Teladoc, is not the wave of the future, but of the present. (Cal Thomas, 11/8)