Clearing the Decks: Walgreens Gets Sold, Makary on Drug Prices, and the Economic Impact of Clinical Trials

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It’s been a week, no? 

I’m going to keep today lightweight. The news flow has slowed -- at least for a moment -- so this is an exercise in deck-cleaning: 

• Walgreens is selling itself to private equity for $10 billion. Perhaps the more noteworthy part of all of this is the analysts who are shocked that the price isn’t lower. It doesn’t matter if you’re an independent pharmacy or Walgreens, the outlook is grim right now.

• Marty Makary did pretty much as expected in his confirmation hearing to lead the FDA. It’s worth flagging that he touched on drug pricing a couple of times. Once to extol the pricing transparency of over-the-counter drugs and once to support, in fairly vague terms, patent reform. IP is definitely one of the great battlegrounds of the next five years or so, but the devil will be in the details.

• The impact of biopharma R&D is huge but often somewhat invisible. Sure, we know what companies are spending, but it’s not like that money just vanishes into some big machine that spits out approved drugs. It flows, in large part, to clinical trial sites across the country, which means that there’s an economic impact across the map. A new PhRMA-backed effort from TEConomy breaks down the state-by-state effects of all that spending -- $60+ billion in economic impact -- and it’s worth clipping and saving if you work on state-level biopharm issues.

• Over on LinkedIn, I’m trying to resurrect the old Twitter practice of Follow Friday. LinkedIn does a lousy job of exposing people to good, new followers, so I’m trying to help it along. Today’s gang all write health care newsletters. 

• Lilly has two more telehealth partners for its “pharm to table” offering (which is what health doyenne Halle Tecco calls LillyDirect and its peers): TeleDoc and LifeMD. I have a draft of a more exhaustive look at this space that I’ll try to publish next week … there are a lot of moving parts here.

• Modern Healthcare published a whole bunch of testimonials from health plans that have good things to say about partnering with Mark Cuban’s Cost-Plus Drugs. On the one hand, it reads like a puff piece. On the other hand, I haven’t heard of anyone who isn’t happy with that model, so this may be an objective take on things. 

• I totally missed this, but after Merck slashed the list price on Januvia, CVS Caremark dropped it from its formulary. I get that there are all kinds of wild net price actions happening in that space and that the story may not be simple, but it sure looks like an effort to punish companies trying to select for low price rather than the gross-to-net bubble.

Cost Curve is produced by Reid Strategic, a consultancy that helps companies and organizations in life sciences communicate more clearly and more loudly about issues of value, access, and pricing. We offer a range of services, from strategic planning to tactical execution, designed to shatter the complexity that hampers constructive conversations. 

To learn more about how Reid Strategic can help you, email Brian Reid at [email protected].