About hospitals and healthcare systems
Aspirus Health, St. Luke's Duluth unveil plans to form 19-hospital Midwest nonprofit system “St. Luke’s Duluth in Minnesota is working on a deal to join Wisconsin-based nonprofit Aspirus Health, representing the latest in a string of Midwest hospital consolidation deals currently in the works.
The organizations announced Wednesday that they have signed a letter of intent for the two-hospital Minnesota system to become an affiliate of the 17-hospital Aspirus Health. They said they expect the deal to close in early 2024 pending due diligence, regulatory reviews and other approvals.”
About pharma
FDA clears first over-the-counter oral contraceptive “The FDA on Thursday approved Perrigo's Opill for over-the-counter (OTC) use, making it the first hormonal oral contraceptive available in the US without a prescription. "When used as directed, daily oral contraception is safe and is expected to be more effective than currently available non-prescription contraceptive methods in preventing unintended pregnancy," stated Patrizia Cavazzoni, director of the FDA's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research.”
A Small Number of Drugs Account for a Large Share of Medicare Part D Spending FYI. Eliquis is by far the most costly as far as total spending.
Chamber of Commerce asks judge to block Medicare drug price negotiations before October
—The U.S. Chamber of Commerce on Wednesday asked a federal judge in Ohio to block Medicare’s new powers to negotiate drug prices before October 1.
—The Chamber argued that the negotiations violate the due process clause under the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
—Drugmaker Abbvie, a chamber member, is worried its blood cancer drug Imbruvica will be selected for price negotiations this fall.
Leqembi could cost Medicare up to $17.8B “Eisai and Biogen, the manufacturer of Leqembi, estimated around 100,000 individuals will be prescribed the drug by year three of its approval. At this rate of uptake, it would cost Medicare $2.7 billion each year, KFF found.”
And, in a related article: How are insurers handling the Alzheimer’s drug Leqembi and related scans? A week after the Food and Drug Administration granted full, traditional approval to a new Alzheimer’s treatment, insurers are finalizing their plans to cover it as well as associated scans and diagnostic tests.
Medicare will cover most patients eligible for Leqembi, a new treatment developed by Eisai and Biogen to help slow the progression of Alzheimer’s disease. The drug, which has modest benefits, has potentially serious side effects for some patients including brain swelling and bleeding.
Medicare told STAT that it would cover brain scans and genetic testing that will help screen for and monitor potential side effects. Medicare already covers one amyloid PET scan per lifetime, but the agency is reconsidering that policy and plans to release a new proposed policy ‘soon,’ an agency spokesperson said.”
CVS Caremark, GoodRx team up on prescription discounts “The two companies announced on Wednesday the launch of Caremark Cost Saver. In the program, eligible Caremark members will able to automatically access GoodRx's pricing, which will allow them to pay lower prices on generic medications when applicable.”
Recursion Announces Collaboration and $50 Million Investment from NVIDIA to Accelerate Groundbreaking Foundation Models in AI-Enabled Drug Discovery “Recursion plans to utilize its vast proprietary biological and chemical dataset, which exceeds 23 petabytes and 3 trillion searchable gene and compound relationships, to accelerate the training of foundation models on NVIDIA DGX™ Cloud for possible commercial license/release on BioNeMo, NVIDIA’s cloud service for generative AI in drug discovery. NVIDIA will also help optimize and scale Recursion foundation models leveraging the NVIDIA AI stack and NVIDIA’s full-stack computing expertise. BioNeMo was announced earlier this year as a cloud service for generative AI in drug discovery, offering tools to quickly customize and deploy domain-specific, state-of-the-art biomolecular models at-scale through cloud APIs. Recursion anticipates using this software to support its internal pipeline as well as its current and future partners.”
About the public’s health
Johnson & Johnson sues researchers who linked talc to cancer “J&J alleges researchers used ‘junk science’ to disparage company's products…
J&J's subsidiary LTL Management, which absorbed the company's talc liability in a controversial 2021 spinoff, last week filed a lawsuit in New Jersey federal court asking it to force three researchers to "retract and/or issue a correction" of a study that said asbestos-contaminated consumer talc products sometimes caused patients to develop mesothelioma.”
About healthcare IT
Hacker claims to have posted HCA data for sale “A hacker has claimed responsibility for a data theft incident at Nashville, Tenn.-based HCA Healthcare and has allegedly stolen and posted more than 27 million records for sale on the dark web, DMagazine reported July 11.”