Feds sue CVS

The Department of Justice says CVS’s Omnicare subsidiary fraudulently billed Medicare, state Medicaid programs, and Tricare for drugs for people in assisted living facilities and group homes — without prescriptions.

According to a civil complaint filed in Manhattan federal court, Omnicare would often assign new numbers to prescriptions after the original prescriptions expired or ran out of refills.

The company, say the feds, called them “rollover prescriptions” and they’re taking it to court. And no, this is a different False Claims Act suit than the one Omnicare settled in 2017 for $8 million, in which it admitted using a system that dispensed one medication but billed for another.

Don’t drink, don’t smoke, what do ya do?

Vape, especially marijuana, if you’re a teen.

Teenagers are drinking less alcohol, smoking fewer cigarettes and trying fewer hard drugs, new federal survey data shows. But these public health gains have been offset by a sharp increase in vaping of marijuana and nicotine.

Practical Skills Refresher Course — now with labs!

Will you be taking your Georgia licensing exam later this year? Do you know someone who will? (Maybe a graduate? Maybe a pharmacist moving to Georgia?) Then brush up on the practical skills you need to have.

GPhA’s crazy-popular program — the “Practical Skills Refresher Course” — is coming in 2020 on four days in four locations. It’s a concentrated, four-hour refresher on terminology, measurements, and the procedures you’ll put into practice. You can just imagine how useful this will be.

NEW: Labs! For 2020 we’ve added “Practical Skills for the Lab” — lab time with an instructor to watch you and provide feedback, in a simulated testing environment. If you’re a student pharmacist or a transfer to Georgia, you want this course. You NEED this course. Click here for more info and to register NOW!

Millions for opioids, but…

While states and the federal government are earmarking money to fight the opioid epidemic, an old friend is making a big comeback: meth. But now it’s stronger, it’s killing more people than opioids do, and most anti-drug money can’t be used to deal with it.

Today’s meth is far more potent than earlier versions, but because it isn’t an opioid, many federal addiction treatment funds can’t be used to fight it.

Two diabetes notes

1. Younger people (age 10 to 24) with type 1 diabetes are more likely to consider suicide; 16.3% in a study even attempted it. Takeaway: “Young people with type 1 diabetes should be screened for suicidal thoughts.”
2. Obesity and cholesterol have been used as predictors of type 2 diabetes, but Swedish researchers found a better one: doing a blood-lipid profile — looking at the concentrations of 77 lipids. Having the right balance of lipids can reduce risk considerably.

Great flu news!

Getting the flu reduces your chance of getting the common cold!

[W]hen flu activity increased in the winter, infections with the cold rhinoviruses decreased. When researchers looked at individual patients, they found people infected with influenza A were 70 percent less likely to also be infected with rhinovirus, compared with patients infected with other types of viruses.

Some sweat when the heat is on (but the live longer)

A study of two studies found that eating hot chili peppers might help you live longer.

When considering heart disease, the authors found that regular consumers of chili peppers had a 34% lower risk of cardiovascular mortality than those who rarely consumed chili peppers.

And this is independent of the rest of your diet. Even if you’re not a healthy eater, “chili pepper has a protective effect.”

Bonus: This was done by legit scientists and published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

It’s been way too long since we had a ranitidine recall

Glenmark to the rescue!

Meanwhile, in Opposite Land

Her portion of her employer’s health plan was so expensive, she quit her job to be eligible for Medicaid. Rising healthcare costs are hitting employers — especially of smaller businesses.

The average premium paid by the employer and the employee for a family plan now tops $20,000 a year, with the worker contributing about $6,000 […] More than a quarter of all covered workers and nearly half of those working for small businesses face an annual deductible of $2,000 or more.

More organs, more transplants

CMS is proposing an overhaul of the rules governing organ transplants that it says will make more than 6,000 more organs available every year. The proposal includes independently evaluating organ procurement organizations (OPOs) — apparently some of them underreport the number of potential donors to make their procurement numbers look better.

[CMS Administrator Seema] Verma said she expects much of the growth in available organs will come from OPOs increasing their recovery rates for less-than-perfect organs. In many cases these are from older deceased donors, she said.

It would also increase reimbursement to living donors by including money for child care, elder care, and other costs.

Maybe you can figure this out

One proposal from HHS for lowering drug prices would be to allow drug makers to get permission to import cheaper versions of their own medication from Canada, get a new NDC, and re-sell them in the U.S.

[HHS Secretary Alex] Azar insisted that drugmakers are interested in selling cheaper versions of their medications — something they’re often blocked from doing after getting locked into pricing agreements with pharmacy benefit managers.

“What drug companies have told us — and we’ll have to see if they live up to this — if they could get a new national drug code, they could issue that drug at a lower list price,” Azar said.

The obvious danger of this plan is an irreparable tear in the fabric of space-time if delivery trucks get caught in an infinite loop at the border while the value of their cargo fluctuates wildly.