Legislative Alert: Support the Georgia Medicaid Rx Carve-out

Despite efforts to reform Georgia Medicaid managed care, PBM and MCO practices threaten the viability of independent pharmacy in Georgia.

As Georgia pharmacist Nikki Bryant said at a Georgia House hearing in January of 2020, “Government contracts in this state funded by my tax dollars work to put me out of business.”

Along with underwater reimbursements, problems persist with patient steering and retroactive GER fees despite Georgia law.

In light of these ongoing issues, we are excited to announce that House Chairman and pharmacy champion David Knight is introducing a prescription drug Medicaid carve-out bill in the Georgia General Assembly next week.

Please reach out to your Georgia House representative via phone or email by noon this coming Monday, February 7 and let them know:

1. PBM and MCO practices are putting your pharmacy in jeopardy;
2. PBMs and MCOs continue to engage in opaque drug pricing and benefit management practices including retroactive fees and steering;
3. Representative David Knight is introducing a Medicaid Rx carve-out bill that would…
   • Take away prescription drug benefit administration from Medicaid MCOs;
   • Increase transparency and fairness by putting prescription drug benefits back info Medicaid FFS where most drugs are reimbursed at NADAC + a fair dispensing fee based on pharmacy costs to dispense; and
   • Increase transparency, reign in abusive practices, and treat pharmacies and patients fairly.

Finally, ask them to support Rx Medicaid carve-out efforts — and to cosponsor Representative Knight’s Medicaid prescription drug carve out bill!

Don’t know your rep? You’re not alone. Click here and OpenStates will find it.

Next, get your rep’s number by clicking here, and leave that important message!

The four dentists were right

How might you avoid a premature birth? Not catching Covid, for sure, but how about this: chewing gum — specifically, gum with xylitol. Researchers in Texas ran a study, and found that chewing the gum reduced gum disease, “which has previously been linked with a higher rate of preterm births.”

The preterm birth rate was 13 per cent in the gum-chewers, but 17 per cent in the comparison group. In another way of looking at the figures, for every 26 women who were given gum and advice, one preterm birth was prevented.

Xylitol kills the bacteria Streptococcus mutans, so that’s the going theory for why it works — more testing, of course, will be needed.

Common drug, common tumor

Cyproterone acetate — it’s a common drug for both men (inoperable prostate cancer) and women (alopecia or seborrhoea). But at high doses it’s linked to meningiomas. Those are benign brain tumors … mostly. If left unchecked (i.e., unremoved) they can cause various problems simply by putting pressure on the brain.

An international group of researchers conducted a study of 8 million patients, and found “a significant association between high dose usage [of cyproterone acetate] and increased risk of meningioma.”

“In light of these results, prescription of high-dose cyproterone acetate, especially for off label indications, should be considered carefully. Additionally, we suggest that routine screening and meningioma surveillance by brain MRI [be] offered to patients prescribed with cyproterone acetate.”

Make life easy

Setting your GPhA membership to auto-renew makes your life easier, and makes the poor, overworked staff’s lives easier too. Win-win!

Please, just click YES on your renewal application to select the option. And of course you can cancel at any time — we’re not monsters.

Blue light, special?

It may sound like something up there with “gargle bleach” or “shine light in your veins,” but apparently there’s evidence that a particular wavelength of blue light (425nm) might stop a Covid-19 infection.

How? According to a study, that wavelength inactivated every variant of SARS-CoV-2 and prevented it from binding to the ACE-2 receptors in the host.

So all you need to do is get under some blue light? Well, here’s your big caveat: The study was done by EmitBio, a company that sells lights to kill germs.

An obscure but helpful app

When it comes to checking on people with Covid who are living alone, futuristic remote monitoring might not be feasible to everyone. But Washington University researchers have discovered that many of today’s smartphones have an app that can work just as well.

In most devices it’s called “Phone” (or possibly “Call”) and it allows users to make a real-time voice call — not a text, not a video — to any mobile or landline number.

Using this app, the researchers found, worked as well as the more sophisticated monitoring — assuming it’s used properly.

A friendly phone call may provide enough reassurance to prevent some relatively well COVID-19 patients from making an unnecessary trip to an overcrowded emergency room, the researchers note.

The writers’ room needs some more time

It seems the writers are teasing ideas for next season, and they aren’t that impressive — kinda derivative, if you ask me.

New variant … but this one’s of HIV. Dutch scientists discovered it and say it “progresses to AIDS faster and may be more transmissible,” but also that available treatments work on it.

The flu … the bird flu, that is. It’s spreading in the U.S. Should we worry? (Spoiler: Yes if you’re a bird or raise poultry for work. As for people, the answer is an unequivocal maybe.)

Our furry friends

Chinese researchers have confirmed that hamsters — sneezing hamsters — were the cause of a Covid-19 outbreak in Hong Kong. That makes them the only animal other than minks that appear to be able to spread the SARS-CoV-2 virus to humans.

That doesn’t mean they’re the only animals that can be infected by the virus. The latest confirmed critters: red foxes, which can not only be infected, but “can shed virus in its oral and nasal secretion.”

Good news: It seems that coyotes cannot be infected.

The Long Read

You may have heard that CAR-T therapy for cancer works really, really well, to the point where it’s being called a cure for leukemia.

The big surprise, though, was that even though the cancer seemed to be long gone, the CAR T cells remained in the patients’ bloodstreams, circulating as sentinels. “Now we can finally say the word ‘cure’ with CAR T cells.”

But this is the Long Read because, well, they aren’t sure why it works so well for some people (but not all) — T cells are far from simple. Read “A Cancer Treatment Makes Leukemia Vanish, but Creates More Mysteries”.