When the CDC in 2016 created their version of opioid dosing guidelines, no one with any authority or visibility stood up and stated that the CDC did not have any statutory authority to create those guidelines and they had no statutory authority to cause any prescriber to follow those guidelines. Because they were JUST GUIDELINES, and the FDA has the statutory authority to create dosing guidelines FOR ALL Rx MEDICATIONS. Then 30 odd states’ legislatures decided to codify the CDC guidelines, which are not based on any clinical studies. Apparently, State medical licensing boards, pharmacy licensing boards, and/or any of the state boards that license various mid-level medical professionals pushed back.

It would seem that people who are attorneys seem like they operate under the saying, “no one is above the law… except those who are in charge of enforcing our laws”

Maybe someone needs to call this issue to the attention of Trump, Kennedy, and Musk. Maybe they need to look at defunding the DEA?

Citations:

1. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-administration/federal-workers-future-uncertain-court-finds-firings-illegal-rcna196506
2. https://www.npr.org/2025/02/12/nx-s1-5294666/trump-white-house-constitutional-crisis-judges
3. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/judge-reinstatement-federal-agencies-probationary-employees/
4. https://www.yahoo.com/news/judge-orders-fired-probationary-federal-163400103.html
5. https://cbsaustin.com/news/nation-world/trump-administration-argues-lower-courts-wield-excessive-national-influence-supreme-court-appeals-policy-birthright-citizenship-executive-orders-mass-firings
6. https://apnews.com/article/trump-judges-rulings-constitutional-crisis-presidential-power-a9c593cf3f9faec23a03f4a5123fefdb
7. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cgj5w052x3xo
8. https://news.yahoo.com/trump-admin-fight-court-order-193113669.html
9. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-administration/judge-orders-federal-agencies-reinstate-thousands-probationary-workers-rcna196275
10. https://time.com/7268018/court-orders-trump-rehire-probationary-workers/

Answer from Perplexity: pplx.ai/share

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This video is from 1996, from an action taken by a Humana medical reviewer in 1987. Back then, many healthcare companies would call themselves Managed Care companies. Some out in the community often referred to these entities as “Mangled Care”. This video seems to explain why many within healthcare referred to some of these healthcare providers were referred to as mangled care.

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Why independent pharmacies are pushing back on Medicare’s drug price negotiation program

https://www.healthcare-brew.com/stories/2025/02/18/why-independent-pharmacies-are-pushing-back-on-medicare-s-drug-price-negotiation-program

Over 90% of independent pharmacy owners worry the program would severely hurt their finances, one survey reported.

Independent pharmacies are sounding the alarm on Medicare Part D’s drug price negotiation program.

The program, created under the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), lets the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) work with drugmakers to set lower costs for select Part D drugs in hopes of lowering healthcare costs for patients.

But up to 93.2% of independent pharmacy owners said they either will no longer carry Part D drugs or are considering not carrying them, as owners anticipate the negotiation program would “cause massive financial losses,” according to a survey of 8,000 pharmacy owners and managers conducted by the the National Community Pharmacists Association (NCPA), a trade group representing the nation’s roughly 19,000 independent pharmacies.

How it works. Under the current payment model, pharmacies pay drug wholesalers for medications, then pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) reimburse the pharmacies a previously agreed-upon amount for each claim covered by a customer’s health insurance plan. It usually takes about 14 days for PBM reimbursement to reach pharmacies, according to Ronna Hauser, SVP of policy and pharmacy affairs at NCPA.

Under the new model, pharmacies will still pay wholesalers the same price to buy the drugs, but PBMs will reimburse pharmacies based on the updated negotiated prices, Hauser told Healthcare Brew. The negotiated drug prices are anywhere from 38% to 79% lower than the original list prices, according to the White House.

Drugmakers will then make up the difference. For example, if a pharmacy spends $500 to buy a drug, a PBM may pay the pharmacy $200, and then the drugmaker would reimburse the other $300 in the form of a manufacturer refund.

The new rules state drugmakers are required to reimburse pharmacies within 14 days of receiving confirmation that a prescription was dispensed to a Part D beneficiary, according to CMS. But pharmacy owners are concerned it will take longer as the new payment system gets set up, Hauser said.

In effect, pharmacies find themselves having “to float thousands of dollars every month waiting for refunds from the manufacturers,” NCPA CEO B. Douglas Hoey warned in a statement.

Osborn, who used to serve as NCPA’s president, is among those considering not stocking Part D drugs in his pharmacies, he said, which could lead to some patients in his community being unable to receive their prescriptions.

“It will be a hardship mostly on the patients because if they want to use us…they’ll have to find another place to get that one medicine,” Osborn said. “Hopefully they’ll stay with us, but that’s a risk.”

The financial effects. Part D drugs typically make up a significant portion of business for many independent pharmacies—about 35% on average for NCPA members, Hauser said.

If drugmakers reimbursed pharmacies seven days after the pharmacies receive their PBM reimbursements , pharmacies would have roughly $10,800 less cash on hand per week, according to a February analysis from healthcare consulting firm 3 Axis Advisors, commissioned by the NCPA. Annually, the analysis projected independent pharmacies could lose up to $46,475 in revenue. 

Hauser said the NCPA and other pharmacy organizations have brought these concerns to CMS since the price negotiation program was first created in 2022. NCPA has asked CMS to freeze the program until they can find a way to implement it that wouldn’t cause financial hardship on pharmacies. While the agency has acknowledged the issues, it has claimed it doesn’t have the authority to change the IRA’s statutes, according to Hauser.

When asked for comment, CMS directed Healthcare Brew to a statement the agency released in January, saying it was “committed to incorporating lessons learned to date from the program and to considering opportunities to bring greater transparency in the negotiation program.”

Healthcare Brew reached out to several drugmakers with medications on the negotiated prices list that’s going into effect Jan. 1, 2026, but did not receive responses.

A broader implication. Approximately 10% of independent pharmacies in rural areas closed between 2013 and 2022, and Osborn said he’s concerned the new payment system will lead to even more closures.

“Here we are trying to maintain pharmacist access in rural environments, and now we’re going to make it to where it’s going to be even less accessible,” he said. “I worry about these rural locations that we could lose.”

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https://www.pharmaciststeve.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/kaiser.pdf

Above is a link to a synopsis of the nearly 600-page agreement between 40+ state AGs and the three major drug wholesalers – who control about 80%-85% of all Rx med distribution to pharmacies. This agreement was not to see the light of day, and it took 1-1.5 yrs for someone to leak it. These 3 wholesalers agreed to restrict the number of controlled meds sold to pharmacies.  There is no concern about the pts that have a valid medical necessity for some of these meds. Up front, these wholesalers don’t have a legal right to know what meds they sell to pharmacies and what patients are dispensed to.  The questions that I have are this, 100 dose limit, a policy of the pharmacy, or multiple pharmacies have colluded to do this 100 dose limit. Did the 3 drug wholesalers in this agreement collude to impose this limit on all community pharmacies?

My opinion, one of the primary functions of the practice of medicine is the starting, changing, or stopping a pt’s therapy. Given that, any entity that is restricting the availability of any medications to pts, could be guilty of practicing medicine without a license. Could this rationing be a violation of the Interstate Commerce laws?

private pharmacies are being told. They cannot dispense more than 100 opioid pills to each patient. He had to call so many patients even if they are on palliative care this also applied to them.. i’m unclear where to try to address this I have given copies of the recent Illinois bill that was passed regarding opioids to see if someone  would sponsor a similar bill, but I’m trying to figure out. Why would the private pharmacies be told they cannot dispense more than 100 opioid pills per month to each patient? this very kind young pharmacist had to call all of his customers and let them know they could no longer get more than 100 pills dispensed. And whoever told him this was how things had to be did not discriminate. It was across-the-board whether you’re on palliative care or not. The medical condition, diagnosis, terminal or not, the reason didn’t matter. 100 pills max.

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The drug war might be the perfect no-win scenario

By Trish Randall

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/12/the_drug_war_might_be_the_perfect_nowin_scenario.html

For reducing illicit drug use, violence, or property crime, drug prohibition has been as unsuccessful as alcohol prohibition was for initiating Utopia.  But as a method for propagating bureaucracy, it’s been wildly successful.

Albert Einstein never said, “Insanity is doing the same thing, expecting a different result.”

It was in 1981, long after Einstein’s death, that versions of the slogan first appeared in publications of the 12 Step groups Al-Anon and Narcotics Anonymous.

In sports and music, repetition is expected to yield different results.  It’s called practice.  Why wouldn’t participants work the steps again and again hoping for future success?

There’s another saying, so commonly believed to be first of the 12 Steps, it’s even used in ads for rehab facilities.  “The First Step is admitting you have a problem.”

The actual Step 1 is, “We admitted we were powerless over alcohol and our lives have become unmanageable.”  Admitting there’s a problem is a proactive approach.  Admitting powerlessness and the inability to manage one’s life is defeatist.

We should ask what qualifies as failure and what “same thing” is being repeated.  For decades, drug prohibition has become increasingly militarized.  Ever-increasing resources go to police drug units, multijurisdictional projects, drug courts, incarcerating hundreds of thousands, and rehab facilities.  Medical professionals have been deputized to prevent medications from being diverted for recreation or performance enhancement (e.g., steroids for bodybuilding, Ritalin for studying).  Employers drug-test applicants and employees.

What would prohibition success look like?  Probably not like ever-expanding encampments encircled by trash, human waste, and syringes, visible in many cities.

There are almost 200,000 people incarcerated at a time for drug offenses and defendants in every state diverted to drug courts.  Every sizable community has agencies that connect residents with tax-funded rehab and multiple, free 12 Step meetings every day.

Except for the patent-owners ending Quaalude manufacture, illicit drug availability and demand persist.

Self-reported drug use counts among mitigating factors in criminal sentencing.  Prison “drug education” leads to increased privileges and points toward early release.  For federal inmates, a one-year sentence reduction for completing drug education is the only opportunity for time off.

Drug courts and rehab facilities actively protect clients from prosecution.  Subsequent arrests are not the statistics these anti-drug institutions are looking for.

Work, a reasonable social life, and some drug use sound like an implausible lifestyle to modern ears.  But count alcohol as mind-altering, and we’re describing over 80% of Americans.  For decades after the Harrison Act of 1914, many medical professionals criticized the legislation because prosecution and criminal records would ruin the lives of otherwise functional people.  There are actually data from federally funded studies.  In the 1920s, over 800 self-identified addicts voluntarily participated in years of research.  Subjects were examined in minute detail, from organ function to blood chemistry to excrement.  There were a few results slightly out of range, as expected when numerous tests are performed on hundreds of healthy people.  During these studies, before antibiotics, one subject contracted and survived pneumonia.  Almost all the subjects were employed.

Sure, there are criminals who use drugs.  Criminals also eat cheeseburgers, drive cars, and surf the internet.  Criminals camp in public spaces using tents, tarps, and sleeping bags.  If the government offered shorter sentences to defendants, and time off to inmates, for admitting that blue tarps caused their offenses, how quickly would reports surface linking tarp use and criminal acts?

Dedicated funding for drug enforcement, drug courts, and drug treatment does not coincide with a measurable decrease in availability or demand for illicit drugs, nor does spending on police in general.  Increasing police resources does decrease crime that inflicts harm on others.  A study by Princeton University Professor Steven Mello found that federal funding for 7,000 new police officers in 2009 led to substantial, measurable reductions of violent crime, larceny, auto theft, robbery, and murders, with no increase in arrest numbers and no spillover to other communities.  Meanwhile, drugs are so available that inmate drug testing and positive results are routine.

Maybe we have no vision of what a drug war win would look like because there are too many people for whom the best possible situation is prohibition continued indefinitely.  Thousands of bureaucrats have comfortable careers, air-conditioned offices and good retirement packages, and secure positions of power in the DEA, FBI, FDA, OCDETF, SAMSHA, NIMN, ONCDP, NIDA, etc., as well as similar agencies at the state level.

We know the first step: admitting the problem.  Next would be dismantling policies not only that have failed, but for which there appears to be no template for success.

Here are some ideas that could be implemented at the same time as ending drug prohibition: 1. change self-administered intoxication from a mitigating factor to an aggravating factor in criminal sentencing; 2. stop using the word “criminals” as evidence of a link between drug use and crime; 3. divert all federal funding earmarked for drug enforcement to hiring more police; 4. take care of the seriously mentally ill, including long-term residential care, a priority.

Our Founders trusted us with deadly weapons, uncensored ideas, freedom to believe whatever we like and to associate with whom we choose.  Attempts to restrict products with effects on mind, mood, or performance, inserted into the system designed to protect our freedoms, have not only failed to solve the problem they were adopted to address but have created a self-perpetuating system.  The only consistent outcome of these restrictions has been the entrenchment of the thought-stopping cliché that we cannot just allow drug use. 

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Cruel & Unusual Pain Treatment

Trish Randall @trishrandall312428

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Walgreens Seals $10 Billion Take-Private Deal With Sycamore

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/walgreens-seals-10-billion-take-private-deal-with-sycamore/ar-AA1ApjdU

Walgreens’s almost centurylong run as a public company is coming to an end. The embattled drugstore chain has struck a deal to be taken private by Sycamore Partners in one of the biggest leveraged buyouts in recent memory.

Sycamore has agreed to pay $11.45 a share in cash for Walgreens Boots Alliance, representing an equity value of around $10 billion and 29% above where the stock was trading last year. Shareholders could also receive up to an additional $3 a share down the road, based on proceeds from selling the company’s primary-care assets.

The total value of the deal, including debt and the potential future payouts, would be almost $24 billion. The companies expect the deal to close in the fourth quarter of 2025.

The sale is the culmination of a decade of struggles for a historic American retailer with thousands of pharmacies that are fixtures on neighborhood street corners. The market value of Walgreens Boots Alliance surpassed $100 billion in 2015 but had been battered in recent years. Walgreens originally went public in 1927.

The company’s new owners will now have the chance to fix the business out of the public eye.

“Going private is going to let us be more focused, more nimble, more long-term in our decision-making, in the context of the challenges that we continue to face,” said Chief Executive Tim Wentworth. “That gives us both the time and the ability to focus in a way to transform Walgreens.”

Wentworth, who took over as Walgreens CEO in October 2023, had embarked on a turnaround effort. The company has said it plans to shed around 1,200 stores over three years.

But its shares had generally continued to languish, with investors skeptical about the long-term growth prospects of a company built around the difficult retail-pharmacy business.

Wentworth said the deal is a good one for shareholders and allows them to avoid the risk as the company works to change its trajectory.

The retail struggles

Fixing the company won’t be easy.

Walgreens had failed to stay ahead of forces reshaping retail and healthcare, including the rise of e-commerce and the growing power of the drug-industry players known as pharmacy-benefit managers, which negotiate pricing with pharmacies and manufacturers.

While Amazon.com and others stole business from the front of the Walgreens stores, pharmacy-benefit managers squeezed margins on the prescriptions dispensed at the back of the stores.

The combined assault made the stand-alone retail pharmacy business a tough sell to investors. When the company cut its longstanding dividend, investors grew even more frustrated.

Stefano Pessina, a veteran dealmaker, merged Alliance Boots with Walgreens in 2014 in a bid to cement a global pharmacy behemoth. The combined company was still built on retail pharmacy, though.

Walgreens missed on an attempt to connect with a health insurer, the strategy pursued by rival CVS Health. A later plunge into primary-care clinics also failed to turn the tide.

Pessina stepped down as Walgreens’s CEO in 2021 and remains chairman and the biggest individual shareholder, with about a 17% stake in the company. As part of the deal with Sycamore, Pessina has agreed to roll his stake entirely back into the business and maintain a significant ownership.

Wentworth launched a strategic review after he took over. The new CEO said the takeaway was that retail pharmacy was central, but it needed to change.

Wentworth said Sycamore, which has a long history in the retail business, was the right partner because it brings expertise and a record of overseeing turnarounds. The company will remain based in the Chicago area.

A big bite for Sycamore

The Wall Street Journal first reported in mid-December that Sycamore was in talks for a deal and earlier this week reported that talks were advanced.

The transaction would rank among the largest leveraged buyouts globally in the past decade, at a time when there have been fewer such big deals with public-company valuations and interest rates remaining elevated.

The deal also includes a so-called go-shop period for Walgreens to solicit other potential suitors for 35 days.

Sycamore is a retail specialist but has never tried as big a deal as Walgreens, which will test its strategies. The firm has been discussing splitting up the company’s business divisions and financing them individually, according to people familiar with the matter. It is a playbook Sycamore has followed in the past, including when it bought office-retailer Staples in 2017 for $6.9 billion.

Walgreens includes its namesake Walgreens retail business in the U.S., the UK-based pharmacy chain Boots, the specialty pharmacy group Shields Health Solutions and the U.S. healthcare provider VillageMD.

If Sycamore is successful in shedding the assets of the VillageMD primary-care business, Walgreens shareholders could be paid up to an additional $3 per share, or about $2.7 billion, the companies said Thursday. Wentworth said the idea was to give shareholders a way to benefit from improvements in some of the primary-care businesses, which would ideally be sold at higher values after their operations are bolstered.

Even with the plan to shed assets quickly, the deal is a giant for Sycamore, leading it to tap a number of banks and private-credit firms for funding. There are more than a dozen parties already lined up to provide financing, according to people familiar with the matter.

Walgreens currently has around $9 billion in debt as well as opioid-related liabilities and other items that Sycamore had to account for in the total $23.7 billion price tag.

The Walgreens deal should also offer some hope for dealmakers and private-equity firms that have been sitting on the sidelines and waiting on an M&A rebound. There weren’t any deals announced in the U.S. in February that cleared $10 billion. It was the first month without such a deal since January 2023, according to data provider LSEG.

Centerview Partners served as Walgreens’s lead banker, and the law firm Kirkland & Ellis was the company’s legal adviser. UBS Investment Bank was the lead banker to Sycamore, with Davis, Polk & Wardwell acting as legal counsel. Morgan Stanley also advised Walgreens, and Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Citi and Wells Fargo also helped advise Sycamore.

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Our next “health crisis” may be on the horizon. CMS is trying to save $$ on our national “medication cost”, which is admirable, but their apparent solution may cause a massive creation of “pharmacy desserts”.  When we opened our independent pharmacy in 1976, about 45,000 pharmacies – abt 80% were independent pharmacies.  I don’t remember the exact number but Walgreens had < 1,000 stores. Today they have about 8,500 stores and at one time they had gotten up to abt 11,000 stores. They recently stopped paying dividends on their stocks after doing so consistently for 90+ yrs. I read recently where it is reported that Walgreens is looking at taking the company PRIVATE, no longer being a publicly traded company.

Walgreens was founded in 1901 when Charles R. Walgreen Sr. purchased a drugstore on the south side of Chicago where he had been working as a pharmacist13. The company grew rapidly over the next two decades, and in 1927, Walgreen Co. became a publicly traded company when it listed its shares on the New York Stock Exchange.

Here is a list of the publicly traded companies that have paid dividends > 100 yr-:

• York Water (YORW): This company holds the record for the longest dividend-paying streak, having paid dividends for 208 years

• Procter & Gamble (PG): Has been paying dividends since 1891, which is over 133 years.

• Coca-Cola (KO): Has been paying dividends since 1893, over 131 years.

• Colgate-Palmolive (CL): Has been paying dividends since 1895, which is 129 years.

• General Mills (GIS): Has been paying dividends since 1898, over 126 years.

• Exxon Mobil (XOM): Has been paying dividends since 1882, although its future dividend sustainability is questioned.

• Eli Lilly (LLY): Has been paying dividends since 1885, over 139 years.

• Consolidated Edison (ED): Has been paying dividends since 1885, although its future dividend sustainability is also questioned

While the total number of active stocks fluctuates, an average of 6,000 at any given point in time, would be a good estimate.

Alarm Bells are Ringing: Medicare Drug Price Negotiation Program Will Fail Without Changes

https://www.drugtopics.com/view/alarm-bells-are-ringing-medicare-drug-price-negotiation-program-will-fail-without-changes

If CMS doesn’t reconsider its mandate, which forces independent pharmacies to go deep into a hole and lose money, many of them will close.

On either side of the political aisle, you’ll find a desire to reduce prescription drug cost for Americans. Former President Biden made the Medicare Drug Price Negotiation Program a centerpiece of his health care agenda. President Trump has already formalized his commitment to preserving the Medicare cost-savings program.

Recently, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced the next 15 drugs to be negotiated. They are all popular brand-name drugs for common illnesses, including blockbuster semaglutide (Ozempic). Independent pharmacists support lowering prescription drug costs; however, as we notified the last administration and stress now following a new national survey and a research report, the program as it is currently designed is doomed to fail.

There are 2 main problems. First, the federal program forces pharmacies to lay out thousands of dollars per week to acquire the drugs and then wait potentially weeks to receive refunds from the drugmakers. Second, it mandates that independent pharmacies serving Medicare Part D patients participate, even if doing so drives them out of business.

In the study, we found that pharmacies will face payment delays of at least a week beyond current terms; they will lose $11,000 per week in cash flow; and they could lose as much as $43,000 annually. As any small business owner knows, such disruption can put a company out of business.¹

The national survey found that more than 32.8% of independent pharmacists have already decided not to stock 1 or more of the drugs in anticipation of the financial hit.² Another 60.4% said they are considering not stocking 1 or more of the drugs. There are more than 18,000 independent pharmacies in the country, and many serve rural and under-served communities. Our survey indicates that if changes aren’t made to the program, only a fraction will participate. That will leave millions of Medicare patients stranded without the drugs they need.

If CMS doesn’t reconsider its mandate, which forces independent pharmacies to go deep into a hole and lose money, many of them will close. It could be a catastrophe for Medicare patients.

Many independent pharmacies are already teetering because of the predatory behavior of the 3 largest pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs), which control 80% of all prescriptions in the US. All 3 – CVS Caremark, Optum Rx, and Express Scripts – own or are owned by giant insurance companies like UnitedHealth Group and Cigna. They also own mail-order pharmacies.

The big PBMs and insurance companies impose billions of dollars in backdoor fees on independent pharmacies. They determine which pharmacies patients must use, they often steer patients to their own pharmacies, they decide how much patients must pay out of pocket, they frequently reimburse small pharmacies less than it costs them to acquire drugs and fill prescriptions, and they often reimburse those pharmacies less than they reimburse their own pharmacies.

Because of the conflicts of interest and self-dealing, made possible by vertical integration, pharmacies were struggling long before the new program. This could be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.

The alarm bells are ringing. Congress must act this year to ensure local pharmacies survive. There is strong bipartisan support for PBM reform, and President Trump has said many times he wants to “get rid of the middlemen.” President Trump has an opportunity to fix the glaring flaws in the Medicare Drug Price Negotiation Program. Otherwise, all the good intentions that inspired the program will be wasted.

B. Douglas Hoey is CEO of the National Community Pharmacists Association, which represents more than 18,000 independent pharmacies across the country.

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Anti-Obesity Medicines Are Not All Created Equally

https://thetimesweekly.com/2025/03/anti-obesity-medicines-are-not-all-created-equally/

The new FDA-approved weight loss medicines have changed the game for people with obesity, offering millions of people a chance to transform their health, prevent disease, and live longer lives. But as demand for these treatments soars, an illegal industry is growing alongside it. Criminal networks, counterfeiters, and rogue compounding pharmacies are taking advantage of patients’ needs, flooding the market with fake, unsafe, and untested knockoffs. In December 2023, the FDA seized thousands of counterfeit injection pens within the U.S. drug supply chain. A Tennessee woman’s home was also raided by police, where officers found more than 300 vials of counterfeit weight loss drugs—semaglutide and tripeptide—that she had been supplying to med spa clinics. After testing, one of the vials contained nothing but water. This is the reality of an unregulated black market. People think they are injecting medicine into their bodies that will improve their health, but they could be injecting poison—or nothing at all.

For counterfeiters and other profiteers, the market is ripe for exploitation — high patient demand and a rising obesity epidemic create the perfect conditions for their illegal trade to thrive. The result? A knock-off weight-loss drug market populated with med spas, online “telehealth” sellers, and unauthorized compounding pharmacies pushing dangerous counterfeit or untested compounded medications. The Black community is especially vulnerable given its higher prevalence of obesity. In 2023, non-Hispanic Black or African American adults were 30% more likely to be obese than non-Hispanic white adults, with 43 percent of non-Hispanic Black adults over the age of 18 classified as obese. As the Executive Director of the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives (NOBLE), I oversee an organization whose mission is to protect our communities from harm. Law enforcement officers are already seeing the rise of counterfeit weight loss drugs spread through our communities. Just as with illicit street drugs, enforcing the law is critical to get these dangerous products off the market. But equally critical is to stem consumer demand.

The Trump administration has an opportunity to help curb this rising demand. Currently, there is a proposed rule at the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare (CMS) rule that would provide coverage for FDA-approved weight loss drugs, thereby significantly increasing access to these innovative medicines. Unlike other chronic diseases, obesity treatments have been excluded from Medicare coverage. The result has been limited access to authentic medicines, creating a high demand for knock-off versions. While law enforcement must do its part to rein in bad actors, the new administration can help by finalizing the CMS proposed rule. Providing greater access to safe and effective medicines would go. A long way to put illicit suppliers on notice and out of business. No one should be exposed to the risks that come with untested, unregulated injectable medicines and I am confident President Trump will make the right decisions to protect American public health.

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Novo Nordisk unveils DTC pharmacy NovoCare, offers discounted Wegovy

https://www.mmm-online.com/news/novo-nordisk-dtc-pharmacy-novocare-discounted-wegovy/

The home shipments — which will be fulfilled by CenterWell Pharmacy — include Wegovy injections of 0.25 mg, 0.5 mg, 1 mg, 1.7 mg and 2.4 mg.

Novo Nordisk has officially entered the direct-to-consumer (DTC) platform game.

The Danish drugmaker unveiled NovoCare Pharmacy on Wednesday morning, offering home shipments of the popular GLP-1 Wegovy at $99 per month for cash-paying patients.

This is less than half of the current price for the drug for uninsured patients.

The home shipments — which will be fulfilled by CenterWell Pharmacy — include Wegovy injections of 0.25 mg, 0.5 mg, 1 mg, 1.7 mg and 2.4 mg.

In addition to the home delivery capabilities, the drugmaker said NovoCare will support patients with benefit verification, refill reminders as well as access to live support from a case manager.

“Novo Nordisk continues to advance solutions for patients that improve affordability and access to our medicines, whether they have insurance or not. Today, over 55 million people in the U.S. have coverage specifically for weight management medicines, and 90% of Wegovy patients with coverage pay $0 to $25 a month for Wegovy,” said Dave Moore, EVP of U.S. operations and global business development and president of Novo, in a statement. “With NovoCare Pharmacy, patients and prescribers alike have another option that provides convenient access to all doses of real, FDA-approved Wegovy at a reduced cost in our high-quality pen.”

In the release detailing the launch of NovoCare, the drugmaker acknowledged the prominence of compounded pharmacies and telehealth companies offering compounded versions of Wegovy and fellow GLP-1 Ozempic.

The company said NovoCare offers “reliable access to authentic, FDA-approved” Wegovy while alluding to the “dangers of fake or illegitimate” compounded semaglutide — the active ingredient in the drugs.

This comes on the heels of the FDA announcing an end to the shortage of Wegovy and Ozempic late last month after more than a year of ongoing scarcity challenges.

The launch also came nearly one month after Novo called out suppliers of compounded weight loss drugs in a print ad in The New York Times following Hims & Hers’ controversial Super Bowl ad.

In light of the announcement, Novo’s stock was trading up nearly 4% by noon.

Of note, Novo’s decision to offer discounted Wegovy also came one week after Eli Lilly announced that it would expand offerings of its hit weight loss drug Zepbound.

The drugmaker will now offer 7.5mg and 10mg doses of Zepbound, which uses the active ingredient tirzepatide, in single-dose vials.

The medications are available for $499 during a patient’s first month and refills that occur 45 days after through Lilly’s Self Pay Journey Program. Lilly also lowered the cost for its existing 2.5mg and 5mg vials.

With the introduction of NovoCare, Novo also now joins the ranks of Lilly and Pfizer in terms of Big Pharma companies that have rolled out DTC platforms within the past year.

In January 2024, Lilly debuted its LillyDirect service, which marked the first DTC push for GLP-1 drugs like Zepbound and Mounjaro.

A few months later, the company announced a partnership with Amazon to distribute select medications through LillyDirect.

Then, in August, Pfizer announced its digital DTC platform PfizerForAll.

In practice, PfizerForAll will provide patients with access to care services, prescription fills and options to save on medicines.

Through the site, consumers are able to make same-day in-person or telehealth appointments with independent healthcare professionals, sign up for home delivery of prescription medicines, OTC treatments or diagnostic tests, schedule vaccination appointments and pay for medicines or access Pfizer’s patient support services.

Pfizer directed consumers to visit the site at the end of its minute-long Super Bowl ad.

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