Electronic health record company Practice Fusion will pay $145 million after federal prosectors said the vendor accepted $1 million in kickbacks from an unnamed opioid manufacturer, and in return, Practice Fusion engineered its software to encourage more prescriptions of that company's opioids.
Why it matters: Several Practice Fusion executives not only booked the kickbacks as revenue, but also agreed to help peddle more of the company's painkillers during the height of the country's opioid epidemic that has killed tens of thousands of people.
Federal officials and New York state have sued Martin Shkreli for allegedly violating antitrust law when he raised the price of Daraprim by 4,000%, Bloomberg reports. Shkreli is already in prison on a separate charge.
Why it matters: Shkreli and Vyera Pharmaceuticals, formerly Turing Pharmaceuticals, became the face of out-of-control drug pricing. The lawsuit suggests that such behavior could have been illegal.
Conventional wisdom holds that big, self-insured companies do a better job controlling health care costs than firms that rely entirely on insurance companies to provide their workers’ coverage. But that’s not true.
Why it matters: Although a handful of big self-insured companies get a lot of attention for their cost-control efforts, the data tell a different story: Self-insured and fully insured companies are equally bad at controlling health care costs.
The Trump administration is working on a proposal to lower seniors' out-of-pocket costs for insulin, which have nearly doubled over the last decade.
Why it matters: Voters care deeply about prescription drug prices, and if the policy comes to fruition, it could both help seniors afford their insulin and give the administration political points.
