Dozens Of Hospitals Want In On New Nonprofit Generic Drug Company Aiming To Curb High Costs

Politico: Nonprofit Generic Drug Venture Could Include Third Of Hospital Market
A nonprofit generic drug company led by some well-known U.S. hospital systems and the Department of Veterans Affairs is trying to expand the market for inexpensive medicines — fast. The nonprofit aims to fulfill two needs. It wants to produce generic drugs that are in short supply. And it's trying to create more competition for pricey, older off-patent drugs so that they become more affordable. (Karlin-Smith, 3/19)

Stat: Are Consumers Overpaying At The Pharmacy Counter? 
Americans may be overpaying for their prescription medicines nearly one-quarter of the time, although the average amount was relatively modest — less than $8. And there were more overpayments involving generic drugs than brand-name medicines, according to a new analysis. Of about 9.5 million prescription insurance claims filed from January to June 2013, 2.2 million involved overpayments, and these totaled $135 million, or $10.51 per person, according to the analysis that was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. And about 17 percent of the claims resulted in an overpayment exceeding $10. (Silverman, 3/16)

Boston Globe: Everyone Wants To Kill Generic Drug Loophole -Except Drug Makers And Some GOP Leaders
In recent years brand-name drug makers realized they could block generic competition by refusing to sell samples of their products to companies that wanted to make the lower-cost copies. All they had to do was cite safety rules that restrict sales of certain drugs with dangerous side effects. (Rowland, 3/19)

Stat: HHS Is Urged To Investigate A Gilead Hepatitis C Patent For Failing To Disclose Federal Funding 
An advocacy group asked the Department of Health and Human Services to investigate whether a key hepatitis C patent held by Gilead Sciences (GILD) failed to disclose federal funding for grants that were used to develop the blockbuster Sovaldi treatment. In making its request, the advocacy group cited a federal database purportedly showing a patent awarded to Pharmasset, which developed Sovaldi, had received funding from the National Institutes of Health for four grants. The grants were provided between 2003 and 2006, and the patent was issued in June 2011, a few months before Gilead bought Pharmasset for $11 billion. (Silverman, 3/15)

Stat: NIH Urged To Probe Aegerion Patents For Failing To Disclose Federal Funding
An advocacy group has asked the National Institutes of Health to investigate whether several patents held by Aegerion Pharmaceuticals failed to disclose federal funding for grants that were used to develop a pricey cholesterol treatment. In its request, the advocacy group cited a federal database showing six patents were awarded to the University of Pennsylvania, where an academic researcher used NIH grants to develop a drug called Juxtapid, which was later licensed to Aegerion Pharmaceuticals. The school has received more than $68 million in grants for research led by Dr. Daniel Rader, who chairs the genetics department at the Perelman School of Medicine, and at least $293,000 pertained to his work on Juxtapid, according to Knowledge Ecology International, the advocacy group. (Silverman, 3/20)

Bloomberg: Drug Distributors Sink On Pricing, Opioid Litigation Concerns
Investors are running for the exit in anticipation of federal action against drug companies blamed for the opioid crisis. Drug distributors including Cardinal Health, AmerisourceBergen and McKesson extended losses for a second day as President Donald Trump pledged to lower drug prices "very substantially in the not-so-distant future." He said the Justice Department is considering “major" federal litigation against the companies involved in the crisis. (Darie, 3/20)

Stat: Massachusetts Court Says Merck — And Pharma — May Be Sued Over Generic Warnings, Sometimes 
In a setback to the pharmaceutical industry, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court decided that consumers who claim harm from a generic medicine can sue brand-name drug makers for intentionally failing to update warnings that generic companies are obligated to place on product labeling. The ruling came in a lawsuit filed by a man who charged that he suffered side effects, notably sexual dysfunction, after taking a generic version of Proscar, a Merck (MRK) drug used to treat enlarged prostates. And he maintained that two years before he took the generic, which was sold by Mylan (MYL), Merck changed Proscar labeling in other countries to warn about persistent erectile dysfunction, but had not done so in the U.S. (Silverman, 3/19)

Stat: Tens Of Millions Of People Continue To Lack Access To Hepatitis C Medicines 
Nearly 71 million people around the world are infected with hepatitis C but access to effective medicines remains elusive and, as a result, only a fraction were able to obtain treatment, according to a new report from the World Health Organization. Globally, the number of people who initiated treatment rose between 2015 and 2016, from approximately 1 million people to 1.5 million people. And so, the WHO issued a rallying cry to find ways to provide medicines to the tens of millions of people who are going untreated. (Silverman, 3/15)

The Wall Street Journal: CVS To Hire Former Eli Lilly CFO To Run Pharmacy Benefit Business
CVS Health Corp. tapped a former Eli Lilly & Co. finance chief to run its pharmacy benefit business as the drugstore giant works to complete an acquisition of insurer Aetna Inc. Derica Rice, a longtime Eli Lilly chief financial officer, is set to take over at CVS Caremark on March 30, according to an internal CVS memo reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. Mr. Rice will succeed Jonathan Roberts, who was promoted last year to the role of chief operating officer at CVS Health. (Terlep, 3/20)

Stat: Drug Makers Are Paying Fewer And Fewer Fines For Their Bad Behavior
Nearly a decade ago, numerous drug makers paid huge fines for various fraudulent practices, but a falloff that began a few years ago has since accelerated dramatically, according to an analysis by Public Citizen, the consumer advocacy group. Pharmaceutical companies paid roughly $2.9 billion to settle 38 cases involving federal and state civil and criminal charges in 2016 and 2017. This was quite comparable to the $2.9 billion paid for 39 settlements covering the previous two-year period, but much less than the 117 settlements totaling $9.8 billion during 2012 and 2013. (Silverman, 3/14)

Stat: The Anxious Launch Of Luxturna, A Gene Therapy With A Record Sticker Price
The treatment, developed after decades of research, is called Luxturna, and it is sometimes referred to as the first “true” gene therapy to be approved by the Food and Drug Administration. Cancer treatments such as Kymriah and Yescarta are also sometimes described as a kind of gene therapy, but they involve removing a patient’s cells, genetically modifying them, and sending them back into the body to fight the disease. With Luxturna, a doctor injects a virus underneath the retina, where it delivers a healthy, lab-grown copy of the RPE65 gene into the cells. If the therapy works for these patients, it could help restore some of the images they have been missing. (Boodman, 3/21)

Chicago Tribune: Daughter's Epilepsy Controlled By Drug, Then Insurer Stopped Covering It. Bill Would Ban Such Midyear Changes.
It took four years for Joanne Guthrie-Gard to find the right seizure medication for her daughter, whose epilepsy, during the worst of it, caused her to have 20 seizures a week. ...The family’s insurance plan covered the new drug. Until it didn’t. About four months in, Gard was told to go back to the original drug or pay out of pocket for the extended-release version, which at the time cost about $10,000 for a three-month period. (Elejalde-Ruiz, 3/14)

Minnesota Public Radio: Bill Could Help Reduce Cases Of Minnesotans Overpaying For Prescription Drugs
Insurance companies negotiate discounts for their members with pharmacy chains, just as they do with health care providers. Sometimes, though, a pharmacy's standard price is less than the insurer's negotiated rate. ... A bill up for a hearing in front of a Minnesota Senate committee would ban disclosure prohibitions that can stand in the way of pharmacists laying out best price options for their customers. (Zdechlik, 3/19)

Kansas City Star: Low-Income Seniors Struggle For Prescriptions Without MORx
Prunty is one of about 63,000 Missouri seniors who lost their MORx coverage, which helped people who made too much money to qualify for Medicaid but not enough to afford their medication. Without that coverage, some seniors may end up stopping their medications or spreading out the dosage, said James Stowe, director of aging and adult services for the Mid-America Regional Council. (Kite, 3/18)