Healthcare benefits

The bill passed Monday would require pharmacies to notify doctors and sometimes patients when a cheaper biosimilar drug is substituted for a brand-name medicine. It also would forbid a pharmacist from substituting the biosimilar drug if the physician says no.

Some of the cheapest drugs, he points out, can do the most damage in terms of personnel issues.

Misuse of drugs like OxyContin is driving up the cost of insurance claims, and abuse of opioids is killing more people than cocaine and heroin combined.

Previous Truven research reported that $125 billion to $175 billion in annual spending in the publicly and privately insured population could be classified as abuse and fraud of the system.

In the trial of 72 people whose depression hadn’t responded to at least two antidepressants, patients taking ketamine were twice as likely to report improvement than those on a placebo.

Children of such women were more likely to have scores in the lowest quartile for verbal ability, reading accuracy and reading comprehension than those whose mothers had sufficient iodine levels, according to the study published today.

Meanwhile, doctors are protesting new guidance for the diagnosis of some mental disorders, including autism, contained in the revised edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

Republicans and the drug industry have urged a repeal of the board, and Obama hasn’t yet appointed any of its members. A spokeswoman for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, the industry’s Washington-based lobbying group, didn’t immediately comment on the decision.

Of the 12 cancer medications approved by the Food and Drug Administration last year, 11 cost more than $100,000 annually, the physicians said in an article in Blood, the journal of the American Society of Hematology, published online.

The epilepsy drug was also tied to a three-fold increase of autism spectrum disorder, which includes Asperger syndrome and other developmental disorders, according to research published Tuesday.

About 232,000 women will be diagnosed with breast cancer this year and an estimated 40,000 will die of the disease, according to the National Cancer Institute.

Tuesday’s study found 13% of those ages 18 to 64 reported not taking their medications as prescribed to reduce costs compared with 5.8% of those 65 and older.

Hearing arguments this week in Washington, the justices voiced skepticism about the so-called pay-for-delay agreements, which the Federal Trade Commission says cost buyers as much as $3.5 billion a year.

Diabetes medications are multibillion-dollar drugs and the percentage of Americans diagnosed with the disease continues to grow, but there is evidence that major pharmaceuticals are causing pre-cancerous changes.

Express Scripts, however, says the decline was offset by an 18.4% rise in spending on specialty medications. The aggregate trend for 2012 was a bump of 2.7%, similar to that of 2011.

Opioid abuse and physician dispensing of repackaged drugs top the list of concerns for PBMs that handle workers’ compensation claims.

Two new FDA-approved weight loss drugs help patients lose weight but only in conjunction with diet and exercise.

Most pharmacy benefit managers don’t use warning systems to flag high use or potential abuse of narcotics. But you can, with a good eye and simple calculator.

Speed, convenience and the growing doctor shortage have patients flocking to ultra-convenient clinics, but not those at the world’s largest retailer: critics say Wal-Mart clinics are poorly promoted and too slow with prescriptions.

A new study indicates there could be treatment differences when a patient is seen in person versus an e-visit. While follow-up rates were comparable, physicians in e-visits did order different care.