1,000

The year’s not halfway done and the U.S. has hit the 1,000-case-of-measles mark. Really, what more is there to say?

First-world problem?

Nearly five percent of American seniors report having to skip or ration their medication because of cost. It’s especially true for those who only have Medicare and not Medicare Advantage, Medicaid, or private coverage.

Deze kop is in het Nederlands

The Dutch are nothing if not innovative, and they’ve come up with a way to help citizens spot drug labs: Giving them “perfume” that smells like MDMA so they’re learn to recognize it.

[Police] are offering samples to the public, to get them familiarized with the smell of the drug, so that when they casually walk by a drug lab producing the illegal substance, they can notify authorities about it.

The price of doing business

Insys is the latest opioid maker to settle with the government rather than go to trial. It agreed to pay $225 million for mail fraud and violating the False Claims Act “which involves defrauding the federal government through drug sales to health care programs like Medicare.”

Notably, this is not a drop in the bucket for the company. Insys only had $146.6 million in total revenue in all of 2017.

The Chinese threat to drugs

The trade war with China doesn’t just mean Americans are paying more in tariffs on Chinese goods. An expert* claims “China Can Weaponize Prescription Drugs To Hit US In Trade War.”

“In five to ten years we were at risk of losing our generic drug industry because China will use the same playbook and undercut our own producers and drive them out of business.”

* We were ready to make fun of her, but she really is an expert on the topic!

ACA rates don’t look like they’re jumping too high

Initial rate filings from health insurers seems to show that “massive premium hikes may be a thing of the past” as the market settles down.

The emperor is not as forgiving as I am

The Chinese government is about to start looking more carefully at the financial reports of drug companies. One hopes it doesn’t find anything … misleading.

The Chinese government will audit 77 randomly selected pharmaceutical companies over the next two months, including the local arms of major players like Sanofi, Bristol-Myers Squibb and Eli Lilly, in an attempt to monitor prices in the drugmakers’ supply chain and potentially target profit margins.