Mo money, mo money

Big news, especially for independent pharmacies. The other day we told you they’d been getting getting the short end of the stick when it came to Covid vaccine reimbursement. Guess what? The Biden administration has almost doubled (!) Medicare reimbursement from $23 to $40 per shot.

Look at Mills! Look at Mills!

In the space of just a couple of months, the U.S. went from lagging the world in Covid-19 response to just about leading it*. What happened? It wasn’t just us doing things right — it was Europe screwing up.

Bureaucracy (“the E.U. first tried to make sure all 27 of its member countries agreed on how to approach the negotiations”), poor spending choices (“A single additional lockdown, like the one Italy announced this week, could wipe out any savings”), and vaccine skepticism.

* Israel, the UAE, and Britain are a bit ahead

Techs: Don’t miss your chance for that hot vaccination training

Who knew how popular these sessions would be? Good news: We’ve added a tech vaccination training session: Saturday, March 20, from 9:00 am to noon at GPhA’s World Headquarters in Sandy Springs.

Help end the pandemic! Get officially trained to vaccinate so you can (under a pharmacist’s supervision, of course) give out Covid-19 vaccines. Click here for details — and see you there!

Psst: There’s self-study involved, so do it quickly and get ahead of the game.

More Georgians can afford healthcare

Georgia Health News reports on how “Many Georgians to get insurance price break thanks to Covid bill”:

The subsidy boost could be especially helpful for people in southwest Georgia, an area that has some of the highest premiums in the nation, said Laura Colbert of the consumer advocacy group Georgians for a Healthy Future.

“Every consumer who shops for coverage will get a better deal than they were able to get even a few weeks ago,’’ she said.

Three easy pieces

If you were staring into the fridge thinking, “What three things can an independent pharmacy do to compete with Amazon?” you’re in luck: Forbes has an answer.

How about we throw you some more money?

Purdue Pharma’s latest offer to end the thousands of opioid-crisis lawsuits it’s facing: The Sackler family has offered to pay about $4.3 billion — a billion more than its last offer — “to reimburse states, cities, and tribes for the costs associated with the long-running opioid crisis in the U.S.” But it would be on an undetermined schedule and wouldn’t start until 2024.

The plan would effectively dissolve the company, but the people responsible would not be help criminally liable.

“Two dozen state attorneys general immediately rejected the plan.”

Moderna begins testing on kids

The company has begun testing its mRNA vaccine on young children. If it’s effective, imagine schools going back to normal.

Pfizer is ready to hike its vaccine prices

If Covid-19 becomes like the flu — requiring regular shots — well, Pfizer is ready.

[Pfizer execs] said there would be a chance for Pfizer to raise prices for the vaccine when Covid moves from a pandemic state to an endemic situation and the virus circulates continually in pockets around the globe.

[W]ith the resumption of “normal market conditions” over time, there would then be a chance for the company to take advantage of opportunities from “a demand…and pricing perspective.”

A target for pancreatic cancer

So it’s like this: Something like 90 percent of pancreatic cancers are resistant to immunotherapy. Why? Stony Brook University researchers think they’ve figured it out.

Apparently it’s all about a gene called KRAS, which does double-nasty-duty for the tumor — they help it grow, and they help it evade the cytoxic T-cells trying to attack it.

That means they’ve just found a juicy target for research: “[T]reatment of cancer will be improved by simultaneously inhibiting KRAS and activating immune pathways suppressed by the cancer.”

The Long(ish) Read: mRNA Explainer edition

The new mRNA vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna are an entirely new kind of vaccine. So what’s the deal, why are they different, and why do you need a second dose? Answers, courtesy of the Conversation.