Anthem wants out of contract – perhaps just to bring operations in-house.
read full article ›A couple weeks ago, I imagined a "dream team" of people who could break the mold and come up with a more fair, sustainable way for pricing drugs. The goal: Improve access to medicines, improve patient outcomes, and maintain profit incentives for companies to keep developing innovative new ones.
read full article ›As outrage over the potent, but pricey hepatitis C treatments escalates, payers are feeling the heat. Concerned that patients face harmful coverage restrictions, a fresh crop of lawsuits was recently filed by consumers against both insurers and the Medicaid program in the state of Washington. At the same time, the New York Attorney General accelerated an investigation of several carriers over the issue.
read full article ›One of the big ideas in biotech today is that you can prevent severe, chronic migraineheadaches. This story has a lot of juicy ingredients: intriguing biology, bona fide medical value, and a potentially broad impact on millions of people. But if the drugmakers in this emergingcategory overplay their hand, and don’t paycareful attention to the new drug pricingreality, it could become a train wreck.
read full article ›Cardiologists bemoaned high cost of new drugs and high hurdles for reimbursement at the American College of Cardiology annual meeting; will outcomes data save the day?
read full article ›While Mick Kolassa may be a household name to hard-core blues lovers, he's hardly one to the patients and politicians who complain about avaricious drug companies. But long before 2014's "Michissippi Mick," his first album, Kolassa helped revolutionize the way the industry decides what to charge, and how it justifies commanding premiums for game-changing remedies.
read full article ›Uptake of Novartis AG's heart failure drug Entresto in the US has been slow following approval in July 2015, partly due to the time it has taken to secure insurance coverage, but physicians also complain about other insurance barriers, a new survey by BioMedTracker shows.
read full article ›According to EY, the biotech industry has experienced explosive growth over the past few years, but that appears to have slowed in 2015. On its own, a 13 percent increase in biotech revenue looks impressive – unless it’s compared to the 18 percent increase in 2014.
read full article ›J&J plans to rely on its broad portfolio to contract favorably in a 'post-biosimilar world,' but cross-category bundling is generally discouraged by payers.
read full article ›How Amgen, Sandoz IP battles may unleash a flood of Humira, Enbrel biosimilars
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