Quick Hits on Everything from Alopecia to 340B to Elon Musk (?)

It’s moving day at the Curve offices, so I’m going to be brief:

• Pfizer won approval for its alopecia areata pill, Litfulo. It’ll carry a list price of $49,000 a year, which the company released reactively to the media. USA Today noted that “It falls in line with other dermatologic treatments.”

• While we’re talking pricing, I posted thoughts on LinkedIn over the weekend on Sarepta’s communications approach to the cost of its $3.2 million gene therapy for Duchenne muscular dystrophy med, Elevidys. The tl;dr summary: they nailed the PR element.

• New York, California and four other states filed a brief in the FTC’s lawsuit to stop the Amgen-Horizon tie-up. The states are taking the side of the FTC, though the brief from the states didn’t advance any new arguments. This is still a long shot for the antitrust warriors.

• If I wasn’t in the middle of moving all of my worldly possessions exactly six miles south, I would read the National Alliance for Healthcare Purchaser Coalitions’ “Addressing Pharmacy Benefit Management Misalignment” document more closely. It’s a roadmap for how employers can better deal with PBMs, and given that there is a lot of evidence that employers usually bring a knife to that gun fight, a deeper look is probably warranted.

• The 340B program increases spending. This is fairly close to an established fact, and a new JAMA Health Forum piece adds another piece of evidence in support, showing that newly minted 340B hospitals have higher spending on outpatient oncology drugs.

• Americans really want GLP-1 obesity drugs. Half of everyone polled by STAT/Harris said they’d pay $100 a month for the meds. About one in six are up for paying $500 a month. Of course, nearly everyone still thinks that insurance companies should foot the bill.

• A couple of Trump administration vets have anti-IRA pieces out in The Hill. Here is one by Joe Grogan. And here is Tomas Philipson’s missive.

• Musk, Cuban, prescription drugs, ivermectin, Twitter. No idea what to make of this, other than to say we’re living in weird times.