Top of the morning to you, and a fine one it is. The sun is peeking through the clouds covering the Pharmalot campus, where the official mascot is chasing after various creatures and the coffee kettle is brewing yet another cup of stimulation. Our choice today is chocolate raspberry. As always, you are invited to join us. Meanwhile, we have assembled the latest list of interesting items for you to peruse. We hope your day is meaningful and productive. And of course, do stay in touch. We relish the secret dossiers and saucy tips. …
In his latest bid to expand access to lower-cost medicines, Mark Cuban’s Cost Plus Drug Company will offer discounts to a coalition of 40 large private and public employers, a step that involves cutting out the usual middlemen in the opaque U.S. pharmaceutical supply chain, STAT says. The effort involves a partnership with the Purchaser Business Group on Health, whose members will be able to fold the medicines sold by Cuban’s company into existing health benefit plans. By doing so, the employers hope to offer employees a new option for prescription drugs while also capturing much of the data that is otherwise lost when employees turn to such alternatives as GoodRx for medicines.
Two years after an independent laboratory began pushing the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to analyze various medicines for traces of carcinogens, the agency sent inspectors to the company and cited it for failing to comply with federal law, STAT reports. In a Dec. 5 letter, the agency wrote Valisure that its online pharmacy failed to take several basic steps to ensure that suspect or illegitimate medicines were investigated and that distributors were alerted. Moreover, the FDA cited its laboratory for “methodological deficiencies” in testing medicines over concerns that the results may dissuade its customers from purchasing certain medicines.
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