Manufacturers of contact lenses may or may not want prescribers to be agnostic as to brand, but the U.S. Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) contact lens rule requires that prescribers give the prescription to the customer when the eye exam is complete.
If the Feb. 16 hearing before the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee is anything to go by, it’s almost a given that the bipartisan Pharmacy Benefit Manager (PBM) Transparency Act will eventually be passed by the Senate. But its journey through the Republican-controlled House could be more uncertain in light of growing concerns about an “activist agenda” at the FTC.
Taking aim at big pharma’s current penchant for acquisition over in-house innovation, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) is asking the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to consider the impact a biopharma merger, whether it’s proposed or a done deal, may have on future innovation.
If the U.S. FTC has its way in banning all noncompete employment agreements, a lot of biopharma and med-tech companies are going to have to rethink how they protect sensitive information and business strategies.
Acting on its new promise to restore “rigorous enforcement” of the U.S. ban on unfair methods of competition, the FTC filed an amicus brief Nov. 10 supporting Avadel CNS Pharmaceuticals LLC’s motion to delist a Jazz Pharmaceuticals Inc. patent from the FDA’s Orange Book.
An administrative law judge has decreed that the acquisition of Grail Inc., by Illumina Inc., would not represent a suppression of competition in the market for multicancer early detection (MCED) tests, clearing a way for an acquisition that was initially valued at more than $7 billion.
Illumina Inc., of San Diego, is struggling to complete the regulatory side of its acquisition of Grail Inc., of Menlo Park, Calif., thanks in part to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission’s (FTCs) ongoing review of the transaction. However, Illumina is also facing stiff winds in Europe where the General Court of the European Union rejected the company’s bid to push the deal through despite the opposition of the European Commission (EC).
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has been moving aggressively on privacy issues in connection with health data in the past two years, but the agency has issued an advisory of sorts to collectors of these data points. The FTC said July 11 that it intends to crack down on violators in an effort to protect data privacy.
The U.S. FTC isn’t waiting to complete its investigation into potentially anticompetitive practices of pharmacy benefit managers to crack down on some of those schemes.
News that the U.S. FTC is finally going to reexamine the role of pharmaceutical benefit managers (PBMs) and their impact on prescription drug prices and availability is playing to applause from several sectors that have been complaining for years about PBM practices.
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