Pharmacy chain Walgreens Boots Alliance and health insurance company Humana are discussing a potential deal in which each company would acquire ownership stakes in the other, the Wall Street Journal reports.
Why it matters: It appears that talks of a Walmart-Humana deal have cooled. But like other large health care industry deals, a Walgreens-Humana equity partnership would fight off threats from companies like Amazon to own more health care purchases, and threats from the aging baby boomer generation.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued a broad Food Safety Alert Tuesday advising people, restaurants and stores to throw out any form of romaine lettuce due to reports of a new outbreak of a dangerous strain of E. coli bacteria.
What's new: There have been 32 cases reported in 11 states so far, with 11 hospitalizations and no deaths, the CDC says. While it's the same virulent strain of the E. coli 157:H7 that caused an outbreak that ended on June 28 (also connected to romaine lettuce), this one has a different DNA footprint, the CDC says. The current outbreak genetically matches one alerted in two provinces of Canada today as well.
A government panel issued draft recommendations Tuesday stating that anyone at high risk of contracting the HIV virus should receive a daily prophylactic pill, called PrEP, that's been shown to reduce HIV transmission via sex by up to 90% and via drug needles by up to 70%.
Why it matters: Around 1.1 million Americans live with the HIV infection, including about 15% who are unaware they have it. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that there were roughly 1.1 million Americans at high risk who were eligible for PrEP in 2015, but found that only 38,879 used the highly effective medicine.
The amount Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center spent on pharmaceuticals in the first nine months of this year jumped 28% from the same time last year — hitting a total of $655 million, according to new financial documents. That was a big reason why the New York City cancer hospital’s surplus fell.
The bottom line: A spokesperson for MSK said the higher drug spending was mostly a result of the hospital’s patients using more drugs — more people got chemotherapy treatments, and new outpatient centers meant new drug expenses. MSK is somewhat of an outlier. But other major hospital systems like Providence St. Joseph Health, Hackensack Meridian Health, Bon Secours Mercy Health and Vanderbilt University Medical Center recently have reported similar trends of drugs eating up more of their expenses.
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Ia.) will chair the Finance Committee next Congress, meaning that the position being vacated by pharma ally Sen. Orrin Hatch will be filled with someone much less defensive of the industry.
What we're hearing: "PhRMA is probably crying in a corner right now. Winter is coming," a senior GOP Senate aide told Axios. And a former GOP aide mused, "If the administration, Democrats in the House, and Grassley all want to go in a direction, does pharma have the resources to get Republicans to stand on the wall against this coming invasion?"
