‘I Left The Pharmacy And Sat In My Car And Cried’: Soaring Insulin Prices Force Patients To Go Without Or Ration Drugs

The Washington Post: Insulin Is A Lifesaving Drug, But It Has Become Intolerably Expensive. And The Consequences Can Be Tragic.
At first, it seemed like the stomach flu. Weeks before his 24th birthday in May 2015, Alec Raeshawn Smith was overcome by troubling symptoms. His body ached, his stomach hurt and he wasn’t sleeping well. Laine Lu, a co-worker at his restaurant job, urged him to see a doctor. “This is not normal,” she recalls telling him. “Go get checked out.” His mother, Nicole Smith-Holt, worried too. He called her when he decided to go to a health clinic near Minneapolis. He said, “Seriously, Mom, I think something is really wrong with me.” (Stanley, 1/7)

The Washington Post: New Congress: Democrats Look To Unlikely Ally On Drug Pricing In Donald Trump
Prescription drug companies and their legions of Washington lobbyists are strapping in for their rockiest year on Capitol Hill in at least a decade, as newly empowered House Democrats prepare a raft of bills to check U.S. drug prices. Democrats surged to power in the 2018 midterm House elections promising to protect Americans from ever-increasing prescription costs. They are buoyed by populist anger in individual states and a potential — if unpredictable — ally on the issue in the White House. (Rowland, 1/4)

Stat: Vermont Projects Modest Savings From A Plan To Import Drugs From Canada 
As Washington grapples with rising drug costs, the state of Vermont is edging closer to adopting a program that would designate wholesalers to buy medicines from across the border in Canada. The Vermont Agency for Human Services late last week completed a report showing the scheme could save up to $5 million annually on just 17 medicines for which two of the state’s three commercial health insurers spent the most money earlier this year. The forecast included a potential 45 percent mark-up on medicines. (Silverman, 1/7)

Stat: Price Hikes On Existing Medicines Account For Lion's Share Of Higher Drug Costs
Amid intensifying debate over the rising cost of medicines, drug makers are often criticized for regularly raising prices, a tactic that sparks outrage given that the actual value of the drugs remains unchanged. Now, though, a new study of manufacturers’ list prices has quantified the extent to which price hikes have not only raised costs in recent years, but have also outpaced inflation by leaps and bounds. (Silverman, 1/7)

NPR: Drug Costs Driven Largely By Price Increases, Not Innovation
The skyrocketing cost of many prescription drugs in the U.S. can be blamed primarily on price increases, not expensive new therapies or improvements in existing medications as drug companies frequently claim, a new study shows. The report, published Monday in the journal Health Affairs, found that the cost of brand-name oral prescription drugs rose more than 9 percent a year from 2008 and 2016, while the annual cost of injectable drugs rose more than 15 percent. (Kodjak, 1/7)

Stat: California Governor Moves To Bolster Negotiating Power For Lower Drug Prices
In what is being billed as a first-of-its-kind move, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed an executive order calling for state officials to negotiate prescription drug prices on behalf of the 13 million people covered by Medi-Cal, the state Medicaid program, and allow private insurers to participate as well. Currently, prescription drug purchasing for all but 2 million Californians is currently handled by private insurers that run managed care plans for the state program. Negotiations will now be handled by the state Department of Health Care Services and all state agencies are directed to purchase drugs together. (Silverman, 1/8)

The Wall Street Journal: Biotech Proposes Paying For Pricey Drugs By Installment
A Boston-area biotech says it may have a found a way to handle the expected seven-figure cost of its experimental gene therapy: paying on installment. Bluebird Bio Inc. is developing plans to sell its first gene-replacement therapy, for a rare inherited blood disease, on a five-year installment plan, with each annual payment contingent on its treatment’s continued effectiveness. (Walker, 1/8)

Boston Globe: For Biotech, 2019’s Not A Sky’s-The-Limit Year
The stock market’s sharp decline in the last quarter of 2018 has many Americans worried. But the tumble was particularly brutal for the state’s high-flying biotech sector, which relies on investors’ appetites for risky ventures that take years to yield new medicines — and often never do. (Saltzman, 1/7)

The Associated Press: Eli Lilly Giving Price Info On Advertised Drugs Via Website
Drugmaker Eli Lilly has started posting price information online for drugs advertised on TV. On Tuesday, the company began running TV ads for a popular diabetes drug that don't give the price but direct viewers to the website. The site gives Trulicity's monthly list price of $730.20, the average out-of-pocket costs based on insurance and details on financial assistance programs. (Johnson, 1/8)

The Washington Post: Should You Switch To A Mail-Order Pharmacy? Here Are The Factors To Consider
CVS does it. Walgreens does it. Now Amazon is getting in on the act. They’re all dispensing drugs by mail. With nearly 3 in 5 American adults taking at least one prescription drug, odds are your health insurer has steered you toward a mail-order pharmacy. And, if they haven’t, they probably will soon. "It’s all about convenience. You don’t have to leave home or wait in long lines. Plus, it’s easy to get all your medication refilled and shipped at one time and is usually more affordable,” says Mohamed Jalloh, a pharmacist and the official spokesman for the American Pharmacists Association. (Daily, 1/8)

NPR: Temperature Extremes May Threaten Some Mail-Order Meds
Take a look at your prescription bottles. Most say, "Store at room temperature" or "Keep refrigerated." But what happens when drugs are delivered by mail? Were those instructions followed as the medicine wended its way from the pharmacy to your doorstep? Those questions haunt Loretta Boesing, who lives in Park Hills, a small town in the hills of eastern Missouri, where weather can vary dramatically from season to season. (Smith, 1/7)

Stat: Sanofi To Exit Immuno-Oncology Collaboration With Regeneron 
The days of Regeneron’s broad immuno-oncology collaboration with Sanofi are numbered. The two companies agreed to wind down a partnership, launched in 2015, sooner than is strictly necessary, they announced Monday. Sanofi will pay out the rest of its committed investments plus termination fees — about $460 million. Originally, the deal was set to expire in 2020, but included an option to extend certain programs for up to three more years. (Sheridan, 1/7)

Columbus Dispatch: CVS Buying Ohio Pharmacy Chain, Closing All But Three
Ritzman stores in Akron and Berlin will continue operating with the same staff, but now under the CVS name, a statement by Ritzman said. Also, the chain will end its participation in a pharmacy at Northeast Ohio Medical University, which will review how it will handle its pharmacy business. (Schladen, 1/7)

The CT Mirror: Pharma Cash Flows To Doctors For Consultant Work Despite Scrutiny
The financial relationships between pharmaceutical and medical device companies and doctors, as well as teaching hospitals, have been disclosed since 2013, under the Affordable Care Act. The law is intended to provide transparency into the business connections between health care providers and the industry. The law is also driving some doctors—like infectious diseases specialist Dr. Roger Echols of Easton—to give up their license to practice medicine. (Srinivasan, 1/6)

Stat: In A Slump, Moderna Makes The Case For Its Big-Money Valuation
Moderna Therapeutics had record-setting success raising money from private investors, but the much-discussed biotech has struggled to convince the public markets of its industry-upending potential, and its stock price has slumped nearly 30 percent in the weeks following what was biotech’s largest-ever initial public offering. That left Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel, speaking before a standing-room crowd at the industry’s premiere gathering on Tuesday, with a curious task: convincing investors that his $5 billion company is actually undervalued. (Garde, 1/8)

Stat: With Approval For New Drug, Alexion Aims To Switch Patients From Soliris
Alexion Pharmaceuticals secured approval Friday from the Food and Drug Administration for a new drug called Ultomiris that will be used to treat an ultra-rare blood disease and ultimately replace the biotech’s current blockbuster, Soliris. The initial Ultomiris approval granted by FDA is to treat patients with paroxysmal nocturnal hemoglobinuria, or PNH — a rare, inherited disease in which red blood cells are destroyed by over-activation of the complement system, a part of the body’s immune system. (Feuerstein, 12/21)

Reuters: GlaxoSmithKline To Look For Early-Stage Assets-CEO
GlaxoSmithKline Plc will actively look to buy early-stage assets and partner with companies, the drugmaker's chief executive officer said on Tuesday. Britain's biggest drugmaker is also likely to evaluate licensing deals and would continue to invest in early-stage HIV treatments, CEO Emma Walmsley said at the JP Morgan healthcare conference in San Francisco. (1/8)