https://www.statnews.com/pharmalot/2016/08/02/drug-price-transparency-pharmacy-benefits-manager/
Purdue Pharma pays off pharmacy benefit managers [PBMs] responsible for ensuring favorable treatment for OxyContin with rebates they a greed to make the drug available without prior authorization and with low copayments.
Drug Pricing
the pharmacy benefits management model – their role in drug pricing – who tracks drug distribution?
In their contracts with drug makers, a PBM may classify a rebate they’ve negotiated as a type of fee, allowing them to keep it rather than pass it on to their clients, according to Linda Cahn, an attorney who advises health plans. This places the client at a big disadvantage because the contracts are proprietary, which makes it hard to know what the rebates really look like in the first place.
Similarly, contracts may also allow PBMs to loosely define what is considered a brand-name or generic drug. As a result, some may be incorrectly categorized, which means clients may not receive appropriate discounts. And the difference can be substantial. Cahn said average discounts for brand drugs range from 15 percent to 21 percent, and average discounts for generics run from 72 percent to 82 percent. “The PBMs play a labeling game,” she explained. “So the clients have no idea how much money they are leaving on the table.”
The largest PBM’s are Express Scripts, CVS Caremark and United Healthcare’s OptumRX — which collectively manage about 70 percent of the pharmacy benefits in the United States.
PBMs = Middle Men = Rebates Scam
$3 billion per year on pharmaceuticals.
these companies stand at the crossroads where lists of preferred medicines are compiled for health plans and prices for these drugs are negotiated. A key issue is the extent to which pharmacy benefits managers are transparent about rebates that are received and passed to clients.
Health Transformation Alliance wants to rewrite their contract with a PBM company to eliminate any undisclosed drug company rebate that a PBM might keep for themselves.
Month: October 2016
Wall Street 2016: Firms Managing Pension Money Spend Millions To Support Governors, Despite Pay-To-Play Rule
At the close of an election cycle that has seen more than $1 billion spent on state and local races, one of the government’s top regulators delivered a stark warning: Law enforcement is stepping up efforts to protect public pension investments from being influenced by campaign cash, he said. With millions of teachers, firefighters, police officers and other public workers relying on those pensions for their retirement, the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Andrew Ceresney said the threat of corruption must be taken seriously.
“If political contributions or improper payments to government officials play a role in the selection of investment professionals, the fairness of the process by which public contracts are awarded is undermined,” Ceresney told a gathering of current and former regulators in mid-October. “These practices, known as ‘pay-to-play,’ also distort the process by which professionals are selected and may result in pension funds receiving inferior services and paying higher fees, thereby harming retirees and the taxpaying residents of the states.”
Ceresney, who is head of the SEC’s division of enforcement, said his team is now working with other federal law enforcement agencies to do “all we can to shine light in this opaque area.” His warning spotlighted the fact that — six years after the SEC enacted its pay-to-play rule — financial executives have found ways around the strictures as they seek lucrative deals to manage portions of the nation’s $3 trillion public pension system.
http://www.ibtimes.com/political-capital/wall-street-2016-firms-managing-pension-money-spend-millions-support-governors
Online Trackers Follow Our Digital Shadow By 'Fingerprinting' Browsers, Devices
Online Trackers Follow Our Digital Shadow By ‘Fingerprinting’ Browsers, Devices
http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2016/09/26/495502526/online-trackers-follow-our-digital-shadow-by-fingerprinting-browsers-devices
how fingerprinting can follow you across devices
This is best seen if you think about you as a traveler with two different devices, let’s say your laptop and your mobile phone. What some website or tracker is going to observe is that there are two different devices over and over again connecting from the same networks, from the same set of IP addresses. … Over time, that allows this online tracker to put together a profile of the behavior of those two devices and infer statistically, with a very high degree of confidence, that this pattern of coincidences could not have happened by chance — it must be because these two devices belong to the same individuals. …
For the most part, these are very new and interesting technologies, but also creepy from a privacy perspective and more-or-less unregulated.
On the uses of online tracking The most obvious consequences are certainly going to be online ads that you see and targeted offers that you get. Occasionally, we know that websites have been experimenting with price discrimination based on your online activities and trying to infer if you’re a more affluent or less affluent type of consumer online. That’s not so widespread yet, but there are a few studies that have revealed that it does happen from time to time. …