Eating out will kill you, plus PBMs blame indy pharmacies, multitasking science, and more

26 Jan 2022

Posted by Andrew Kantor

Stop the PBMs in the Georgia House

Here’s the deal: House Chairman and physician Mark Newton has introduced HB 867 — a bill that would require PBMs to calculate patient cost sharing for prescription drugs based on true costs to plans by taking into account rebates PBMs receive from pharmaceutical manufacturers.

PBMs do not like this AT ALL — and get this: They’re trying to point the finger at independent pharmacies for rising drug costs.

The bill is scheduled for a hearing tomorrow in Chairman Newton’s Special Committee on Access to Quality Healthcare. Below are the email addresses and phone numbers of that committee.

PLEASE reach out to those committee members ASAP and let them know:

You support HB 867, as it will reduce prices for Georgia patients at the counter by requiring PBMs to factor in rebates received when calculating a patient’s cost share;
If PBMs are negotiating rebates, patients should receive the benefit of those discounts at the counter. Their copays should not be based on the PBM’s inflated pricing; and
Community pharmacies do not benefit in any way from this legislation financially, but you support it becasue it reduces patient costs at the counter, increases drug pricing transparency, and it’s the right thing to do.

Special Committee on Access to Quality Healthcare
Click an email address to send a message, or give ’em call:

What’re you waiting for? Grab those phones and keyboards — and good hunting!

Yes, you can multitask on the move

New research proves that yes, you can walk and chew gum at the same time: (assuming you have a healthy brain).

In fact, to prove this to themselves — and to their former gym teachers — University of Rochester neuroscientists used a combination of virtual reality, brain monitoring, and motion capture technology.

“Our findings showed that the walking patterns of the participants improved when they performed a cognitive task at the same time, suggesting they were actually more stable while walking and performing the task than when they were solely focused on walking.”

So there.

NO MONOCLONAL ANTIBODIES FOR YOU!

The FDA has formally crossed bamlanivimab/etesevimab and casirivimab/imdevimab: (aka REGEN-COV) off the “use this for Covid patients” list. Neither antibody mix is effective against Omicron, so there’s no point in confusing the issue — or giving patients false hope.

A better, faster test

Home Covid tests are fast, but not accurate. PCR tests are accurate but not fast. So now bioengineers at the University of Washington have put the metaphorical chocolate in the peanut butter and developed a test they call Harmony.

[Harmony] is a diagnostic test that, like PCR tests for Covid-19, detects genetic material from the SARS-CoV-2 virus. But whereas conventional PCR tests can take several hours, the Harmony kit can provide results in less than 20 minutes for some samples and with similar accuracy.

“Similar accuracy” meaning Harmony was 97% accurate. Next: Scaling up manufacturing.

Who’s getting money?

Windgap: $39 million to fund work on a rival to EpiPen. Its claim to fame: It’s “half the size and has double the shelf-life of existing devices,” using a wet-dry approach: (i.e., it mixes the wet and dry ingredients at injection time).

Cellino Biotech: $80 million in financing to develop enginneered human stem cells — specifically, “the first autonomous human cell foundry” — for research and disease treatment: (and which doesn’t sound creepy at all).

Which came first, the autism or the substance abuse?

Old question: Are people with autism more likely to engage in substance abuse?

New question, asked by researchers at Mass General: How many people diagnosed with a substance use disorder have autism?

In fact, they found that yes, 20 percent of teens or young adults who look for help with substance abuse also appear to … well, you can’t say they have autism, but you can say they have “elevated scores on the Social Responsiveness Scale-2” — i.e., they have indications of being on the spectrum.

“[W]e need to get better at screening and certainly training in the presence of autism spectrum disorder, because many clinicians treat substance use disorder but don’t have specialty developmental training, particularly for issues around autism.”

Julia Child was telling you all along

When someone says, “Let’s eat out,” what they’re really saying is “I want to increase your risk of all-cause mortality.”: (Also, “I love butter and salt.”)

University of Iowa epidemiologists studied the records of 35,084 adults, and considered those who rarely ate out against those who did it often. And boy howdy was there a difference: A 49% higher chance of all-cause mortality for the eater-outers, and a 67% greater risk for cancer.

Frequent consumption of meals prepared away from home is significantly associated with increased risk of all-cause mortality. The association of eating meals prepared away from home with cardiovascular mortality and cancer mortality warrants additional investigation.

In fact, she’s trying to save your life

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