Get ’em while they’re young

Oral surgeons may be overprescribing opioids to teens who have wisdom teeth removed — getting them addicted to the painkillers.

The Austin Buyers Club

Americans who can’t afford U.S. prices for medication are joining buyers’ clubs based overseas — and getting their drugs at a tiny fraction of the domestic price.

Take one Florida truck driver with Hep C, Jim Higgins, who couldn’t afford the drugs he needed:

Higgins, 59, found Freeman [who runs an Australia-based club] online. After sending the Australian his lab results, Higgins paid $650 though the website and soon a box of pills from India arrived on his doorstep. Within two months of starting the treatment in February, Higgins was relieved when tests showed hepatitis C was no longer detected in his blood.

Those are some nice patents you’ve got there…

…it’d be a shame if something happened to them, wouldn’t it? Democrats — and some Republicans — are looking taking away pharmaceutical companies’ monopolies as pressure to lower prices.

Healthcare spending growing, but not as fast

As gains in health coverage have been reversed over the past two years, that means that overall healthcare spending in the U.S. rose at a slower rate, according to CMS.

Growth in U.S. health-care spending slowed in 2017 to rates not seen since just after the 2007-09 recession, a deceleration tied to softer demand for medical services and weakness in health-care coverage gains after years of expansion.

Another EpiPen rival emerges

This one is coming from Novartis, which is set to launch its Symjepi syringes for $250 for a two-pack. The auto-epinephrine market has grown since Mylan jacked up its EpiPen prices by 600 percent over less than a decade, making the life-saving medication unaffordable for many people. Mylan’s manufacturing issues have also caused a shortage of its injectors, leading people to other brands. The drug of course is the same; the only difference is the injector.

Compounders: There’s a new certifier in town

The Pharmacy Compounding Accreditation Board looks like it’s gonna have competition from HFAP (the Healthcare Facilities Accreditation Program).

Plague find may rewrite history

A 4,900-year-old Swedish skeleton had the plague. That finding does a number of the entire history of Europe — and may explain a prehistoric population collapse.

Around 6,000 years ago, mega-settlements as big as 10,000 to 20,000 people sprang up in what is now Moldova, Romania, and Ukraine. The settlements were regularly abandoned and then burned. Perhaps, the new study argues, plague spread through these sites.

We thought you were going to help

The big tax cut that pharmaceutical companies got last year was supposed to help lower drug prices and encourage investment in the U.S. So some congressfolks would really like to know why much of that money went to pay raises and stock buybacks … and the companies are raising prices.

The long read: The new face of independent pharmacy

Independent pharmacies are looking to provide more healthcare as they reimagine themselves in a world with CVS/Aetna, Amazon, and the new pharma dynamic.