Just a day after the U.S. FTC released an interim report on harmful pharmacy benefit manager (PBM) practices and appeared before a House subcommittee that encouraged the commissioners to take enforcement action, the agency reportedly was preparing to file suit against the country’s three largest PBMs over their practices in negotiating insulin and other drug prices.
Having secured a 40% price cut and a commitment to not enforce a patent protecting a tuberculosis drug, South Africa’s Competition Commission decided not to prosecute a complaint accusing Johnson & Johnson (J&J) and its subsidiary, Janssen Pharmaceutica (Pty) Ltd., of anticompetitive conduct.
In the recently cast shadow of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Loper Bright decision that unraveled Chevron deference for federal agencies, the FTC’s broad rule banning noncompete employment clauses is on shaky ground. The first tremor hit July 3 when the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas temporarily enjoined the FTC Noncompete Rule that is scheduled to go into effect Sept. 4 on the grounds that the agency overstepped its authority.
Just because a statement turns out to be false doesn’t mean it was intended to be, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit said in tossing a stockholder class action against Frequency Therapeutics Inc., now part of Korro Bio Inc.
The redacted interim report released July 9 of an ongoing FTC investigation into pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) shed little, if any, new insight into PBM practices and how they impact availability and pricing of prescription drugs in the U.S.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the FDA already are getting a glimpse of the post-Chevron world and how the Supreme Court’s June 28 unwinding of the 40-year-old Chevron deference could rein in agency policies that defy Congress’ expressed intent.
In a 5-4 decision June 27, the U.S. Supreme Court scuttled a Purdue Pharma LP’s bankruptcy plan that would have discharged any claims against the Sackler family, which owned and controlled the company that made billions of dollars from its sales of Oxycontin (oxycodone).
In reviving another case involving drug label carveouts, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit insisted that its June 25 decision in Amarin Pharma Inc. v. Hikma Pharmaceuticals plc will not kill so-called skinny labels that allow generics to come to market when some of the brand’s indications still have patent protection.
Novo Nordisk A/S’ CEO Lars Jørgensen is set to be the next executive in the U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee’s pharma parade of shame. HELP Chair Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) announced June 24 that Jørgensen will testify before the committee Sept. 24 about his company’s U.S. pricing of its blockbuster semaglutide drugs, Ozempic and Wegovy.
Even though the U.S. FTC recently claimed a court victory in its campaign to shut down the listing of device patents for drugs in the FDA’s Orange Book, 80% of the listings targeted in the commission’s first round of warning letters remain in place more than seven months later.
