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A high-profile Massachusetts drug price transparency bill appears headed for the legislative graveyard. With just days to go before lawmakers were set to adjourn for the year, on July 31, the bill had not seen a vote. If it fails, it would join about a dozen similar bills introduced in legislatures by consumer advocates in 2015 and 2016, sometimes with help from the insurance industry. The bills were fiercely opposed by the pharmaceutical industry. (Appel, 7/25)

A senior senator wants to know if Medicare's prescription drug benefit is vulnerable to manipulation by pharmaceutical companies that set very high prices for medications. In a letter Monday to Medicare's top administrator, Iowa Republican Sen. Charles Grassley, said policymakers must ensure the Part D prescription program serving some 38 million beneficiaries "is free from exploitation," and asked if it meets that test as currently structured. (Alonso-Zaldivar, 7/27)

Eli Lilly & Co. reported Tuesday that revenue rose more than expected in the most recent quarter, as sales of new drugs padded increases in established products. “Lilly is in the midst of one of the most productive periods of new product launches in our company’s history, with new medicines making a substantial contribution to our revenue growth for the first half of the year,” Chief Executive John Lechleiter said. Recently released drugs, including diabetes treatment Trulicity and cancer drug Cyramza, helped push 10% volume growth in the quarter. (Steele, 7/26)

Nearly 40 percent of the spots that ran during ABC, CBS, and NBC’s broadcasts of the convention touted pharmaceutical companies, prescription medications, or over-the-counter drugs. Lots of those ads also popped up on cable networks CNN and Fox Business. All told, about 60 such spots ran during convention broadcasts over the week, according to the data from iSpot. (Robbins, 7/22)

As prices for prescription drugs keep rising, several organizations have developed different ways to assess the value of new medicines based on such attributes as cost, quality of life, and effectiveness. But a new survey finds that even as health plans continue to criticize drug prices, they have not yet embraced these new tools. None of the 11 plans queried actively rely on these new methods and a majority do not expect to do so next year either, according to the survey conducted by Avalere Health and released today. The tools are being developed by four groups — the American Society of Clinical Oncology, the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review, the National Comprehensive Care Network and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. (Silverman, 7/26)

“If you had chickenpox, then the shingles virus is already inside you.” That’s what Terry Bradshaw says in that TV commercial, the one where he basically performs a home invasion on three middle-aged football fans and then frightens the bejesus out of them with medical scare talk. The ad promotes Zostavax, a vaccine sold by Merck & Co. that helps prevent shingles in people 50 or older. And when I first saw it, I found myself in the unusual position of actually agreeing with a Big Pharma company. ... It was the start of a hallucinatory journey that underscored, in its own small way, just how hard it is for patients to navigate today’s medical-industrial complex. In recent years, medical experts and policy makers have been telling us we need to become better health care consumers and think of medicine in the same way we think of other products and services we buy. I found that was almost impossible to do. (Krasner, 7/26)

With both U.S. presidential candidates promising action on drug prices, November’s election could trigger a sea change in the industry, Novartis CEO Joe Jimenez figures. In an interview with the Financial Times, Jimenez predicted that pricing pressures in the U.S. will only increase when a new administration takes over, whether that administration is helmed by Democrat Hillary Clinton or Republican Donald Trump. (Staton, 7/20)

Last September, U.S. regulators faced a dilemma: whether to allow importation of drug ingredients from a Chinese factory with a history of poor quality controls, or face shortages of treatments for American cancer patients. Six months earlier, visiting Food and Drug Administration inspectors had uncovered what the agency later called “broad data manipulation” at the factory, located in Taizhou, about 200 miles south of Shanghai. Information about the potency and purity of some product batches had been deleted, making it difficult to investigate a significant increase in customer complaints, the FDA said in a warning letter to the plant’s owner, Zhejiang Hisun Pharmaceutical Co. The agency issued an indefinite ban on the factory in September, a first for Hisun, one of China’s leading exporters of pharmaceuticals products. Yet to avoid possible shortages of drugs, the FDA allowed the plant continue exporting about 15 ingredients for use in finished drugs in the U.S., including nine key cancer medicine components. Hisun says that it takes quality seriously and has complied with requirements. (Edney, 7/22)

Can Gilead Sciences pull another rabbit out of the M&A hat? The biotech became a Wall Street darling thanks to an $11 billion deal that landed the blockbuster Sovaldi and Harvoni hepatitis C treatments, but the drugs are no longer delivering the same revenue growth that have excited investors. (Silverman, 7/26)

The US Department of State is being accused of inappropriately interfering with efforts by the United Nations and two countries to ensure access to affordable medicines for poor people. In a blunt letter sent on July 20, dozens of patient advocacy groups charged that State Department officials questioned the premise of a UN panel devoted to exploring wider access, pressured the Colombian government not to sidestep the patent on a Novartis cancer drug, and pressed India to adopt policies that could result in higher drug prices and eliminate the production of lower-cost generics. (Silverman, 7/25)

Generic drug price hikes have come under close scrutiny lately, as reports continue to surface of significant and seemingly inexplicable increases, often for widely used drugs like levothyroxine or digoxin, a heart medicine, whose out-of-pocket costs to consumers have been modest for years. What gives? Health care professionals like your pharmacist often blame drug manufacturers, claiming they raise prices simply because they can, said Dan Mendelson, president of Avalere Health, a consulting firm. There’s no question that happens. But there are other reasons that generic drug prices may increase as well. (Andrews, 7/26)