Hello, everyone, and how are you this morning? We are just fine, thank you, although we could do without the gloomy skies hovering over the Pharmalot campus. Nonetheless, our spirits remain sunny. After all, as the Morning Mayor taught us: “Every new day should be unwrapped like a precious gift.” So while you tug on the ribbon, we will quaff some cups of stimulation to get the day under way. Our choice today is bananas Foster. As always, you are welcome to join us. Meanwhile, here are a few items of interest to get you going. Hope your day goes well, and do stay in touch. …
Underscoring the opaque and confusing nature of pharmaceutical pricing, Amgen announced long-awaited pricing for its biosimilar version of Humira – the world’s best-selling medicine – and the numbers suggest the biggest winners may be health insurers and others in the supply chain, but not patients, STAT explains. Amgen will offer its medication, called Amjevita, at two different discounts – 5% and 55% – off the roughly $80,000 wholesale, or list, price. The maneuver reflects behind-the-scenes negotiations between pharmaceutical companies and the pharmacy benefit managers, or PBMs, that create formularies, or lists of medicines for which insurance coverage is provided.
In a victory for the pharmaceutical industry, a federal appeals court ruled drug companies have the right to limit discounts to hospitals that rely on numerous contract pharmacies as they participate in a U.S. government drug discount program, STAT tells us. The decision was made in response to lawsuits that were originally filed by three large drugmakers — Sanofi, Novo Nordisk, and AstraZeneca — in which they accused the federal government of unlawfully interpreting key provisions in the controversial 340B drug discount program. The matter is actually not resolved, though, because the same dispute is still being considered in two other appeals courts.
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