Our bills pass the house: Legislative update, week 7

Yesterday morning (that’s Monday, March 4), our two major bills — HB 323 (updating the Pharmacy Patient Protection Act) and HB 233 (the PBM anti-steering bill) both passed the House all but unanimously; there was a single ‘nay’ vote across both bills.

This is another huge step toward reining in PBMs and protecting patients in Georgia — now it’s off to the Senate.

Click here for Greg Reybold’s full legislative update on those bills and the other legislation we’re following.

Convention registration is open!

In case you missed the announcement on Friday, registration for the 2019 Georgia Pharmacy Convention on Amelia Island (June 13-16) is now open! We’ve got tons of CE, terrific keynoters, an incredible band for the President’s Bash, and it’s all at the amazing Omni Amelia Island Resort.

>> Early-bird registration ends March 15. <<

Head over to GPhAconvention.com now to check out the schedule, watch a video of the band, explore what the resort has to offer for your whole family, and — most important — register (and book your room!) today!

Our number two story

If you never thought you’d hear the phrase “The curative wonders of human feces,” let us shatter that illusion with the New York Times’s, “Drug Companies and Doctors Battle Over the Future of Fecal Transplants.”

At the heart of the controversy is a question of classification: Are the fecal microbiota that cure C. diff a drug, or are they more akin to organs, tissues and blood products that are transferred from the healthy to treat the sick? The answer will determine how the Food and Drug Administration regulates the procedure, how much it costs and who gets to profit.

Keep up with ARB recalls

Various lots of valsartan, losartan, and irbesartan have been recalled — by Camber, Macleods, Sandoz, and Torrent — due to contamination. The FDA has posted the information here, and you can click here for the full list of current recalls (PDF).

Put the needle down

When it comes to intravenous vitamins, if you’re getting your medical information from celebrities, you might want to re-think your life choices.

“A lot of my clients spend hundreds on IV therapy because they believe it has an instant effect. But the reality is that a lot of the time it will be flushed out of the body – so they’re mostly paying for quite expensive urine.”

Why list price matters

Drug list prices aren’t that important, we’ve been told, because of all the discounts, coupons, rebates and other complexities of pharma pricing. Like a new Corolla, no one’s really paying list.

But wait. As Modern Healthcare explains, list prices do matter more and more because many patients — including those on Medicare Part D — now have their copays determined by those list prices.

What could go wrong?

The government has quietly begun to allow (and fund) bird-flu research again after it was banned in 2014 over safety concerns. And by “safety concerns” we mean “the potential for a worldwide pandemic that would collapse civilization or at least be fodder for sci-fi movies for years to come.”

Mystery writers, take note

A new DNA test can distinguish between twins. So much for that murder-plot twist.