Might as well face it you’re addicted to ___

Imagine you woke up today and thought, “I wonder what the five most addictive substances on Earth are,” but you were feeling too lazy to click on an entire article explaining the methodology.

Wouldn’t you be happy to read this: 1) Heroin, 2) cocaine, 3) nicotine, 4) barbiturates, 5) alcohol.

You’re welcome!

Remember: Nominate someone for a 2019 GPhA award

Don’t forget, it’s that time of year — time for you to nominate a pharmacy professional for one of GPhA’s prestigious awards:

• The Distinguished Young Pharmacist Award
• The Excellence in Innovation Award
• The Generation Rx Champion Award
• The Larry Braden Meritorious Service Award
• The Bowl of Hygeia

Get more information on what each of these awards represents, then nominate someone to receive one — all at GPhA.org/awards!

Drug pricing ups and ups

Johnson & Johnson became the latest major drugmaker to raise its prices for 2019, after foregoing increases for the last part of 2018. The company said its average increase will be 4.2 percent, although most prices went up by six to seven percent. (The U.S. inflation rate is about 2.3 percent.)

And no, despite what you may have heard, drug prices did not decline in 2018. Quite the opposite.

A recent analysis of brand-name drugs by the Associated Press found 96 price increases for every price cut in the first seven months of 2018. At the start of last year, drug makers hiked prices on 1,800 medicines by a median of 9.1 percent, and many continued to increase prices throughout the year.

Opioid deaths hit new milestone

For the first time, death from opioid overdoses have surpassed those by automobile accidents in the U.S. And, according to the CDC, they’re particularly skyrocketing among women.

New sleeping pills

Taking a benzodiazepine to sleep can mean sleeping through a smoke alarm or mass murder. Now some researchers are developing a new kind of drug called DORAs. They put people to sleep … but also let them wake up when they need to, and not feel woozy all day, either.

(That’s the news story. Click here for the published paper.)

Hospitals play games with new pricing rule

Hospitals are now required to post their prices online where patients can access them. So they’re doing that — but in a way that no one can understand.

The data, posted online in spreadsheets for thousands of procedures, is incomprehensible and unusable by patients — a hodgepodge of numbers and technical medical terms, displayed in formats that vary from hospital to hospital. It is nearly impossible for consumers to compare prices for the same service at different hospitals because no two hospitals seem to describe services in the same way. Nor can consumers divine how much they will have to pay out of pocket.

Elsewhere: Louisiana’s idea for hep-C drugs

Louisiana wants to try a new way of paying for hepatitis C drugs: The Netflix model, in which the state pays a provider a flat rate per year for all the hep-C meds it needs.

The long(ish) read: “Bennies”

“The Lost World of Benzedrine — Favored by artists and mathematicians, the drug powered a great deal of innovation in the 20th century.”