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During the Academy of Managed Care Pharmacy (AMCP) Managed Care & Specialty Pharmcy Annual Meeting, held March 25-28, in San Diego, California, managed care professionals from across the globe gathered to discuss opportunities and challenges facing stakeholders in pharmaceutical management, ranging from drug pricing reform to strategies to address the opioid epidemic.

Recent work looking at the response to immune checkpoint blockade (ICB) therapy given before surgery for advanced melanoma found increased infiltration of B cells, a type of white blood cell, in patients who responded to therapy compared with those who did not.

This week, the top managed care news included the Department of Justice siding with a federal judge in striking down the Affordable Care Act; FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb, MD, calling for stricter oversight of electronic health records; and a study finding that healthy eating in Medicare and Medicaid is cost effective.

Another federal district court judge has handed the Trump administration a major defeat this week in its attempts to redo rules about US health insurance, saying that its efforts to expand association health plans (AHPs) were “clearly an end-run” around the Affordable Care Act (ACA).

Coverage of our peer-reviewed research and news reporting in the healthcare and mainstream press.

An Idaho Senate committee killed a bill that would implement Medicaid work requirements in the state; the FDA is proposing requiring that women receive information on their breast density after a mammogram; and President Trump will reportedly submit a healthcare plan to Congress this year.

This week, drug maker Celgene resubmitted its New Drug Application (NDA) to the FDA for RPC-1063 (Ozanimod), seeking an indication for the treatment of adults with relapsing multiple sclerosis.

If used properly, artificial intelligence will restore the human connection between doctors and patients, says Eric Topol, MD.

Insurer Centene strikes a deal to acquire WellCare, creating a new giant in the healthcare market; a federal jury orders Monsanto to pay over $80 million to a plaintiff whose cancer was found to be caused by a common weed killer; surgeons perform a transplant using a kidney from a living donor with HIV.

A presentation of a meta-analysis at ENDO 2019 said losing weight can help improve migraines.

Electronic medical record data on patients with multiple sclerosis is generally consistent with research data and can be used to expand research opportunities, according to a new study.

A US District Court judge in Washington, DC, agreed with plaintiffs who argued that the HHS Secretary did not act reasonably in allowing states to create work requirements for beneficiaries to receive healthcare. Orders sending both state waivers back to HHS are expected today.

In an ongoing study, researchers seek to determine whether a staggered, "step up" intervention model could be more successful and cost-effective than standard care for achieving viral suppression in youths living with HIV.

Louisiana's Departments of Health and Corrections announced this week their selection of Asegua Therapeutics, a generics subsidiary arm of Gilead Sciences, as their pharmaceutical partner for the state’s “Netflix” subscription model for hepatitis C virus (HCV) treatment. Asegua won the deal over Merck and AbbVie, which each submitted bids for the subscription model.

A lack of diversity in cell lines used for laboratory studies means underrepresented populations and minorities might not benefit from precision medicines as quickly as people from European ancestry.

HHS Secretary Alex Azar and Attorney General Bill Barr opposed the Trump administration’s support to overturn the Affordable Care Act (ACA) through a federal lawsuit; OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma and its owners, the Sackler family, agreed to pay $270 million to avoid a state court trial in Oklahoma over the company’s role in the spread of opioids over the past 20 years; a New York county is banning unvaccinated children in public places in the wake of a measles crisis that has infected more than 150 people.

Individuals with an obstructive lung disease saw improvement in lung function when they replaced 30 minutes of sedentary time per day with strenuous or strength-building physical activity.

House Democrats introduced a bill that aims to protect the patient protections enshrined in the Affordable Care Act.

Earlier this week, the FDA released a draft guidance document titled, "Rare Diseases: Natural History Studies for Drug Development” with the intention of informing both the design and implementation of natural history studies that can be used to support the development of safe and effective treatments for rare diseases.

The Department of Justice now backs the ruling from a district court judge in Texas that said the entire Affordable Care Act (ACA) is invalidated without the individual mandate, which was removed when Congress reduced the penalty to $0.

Johnson & Johnson and Bayer, who jointly sell the blood thinner drug Xarelto, settled lawsuits that claimed the companies failed to warn about potentially fatal side-effects for $775 million; the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee have planned hearings in the coming weeks over the rising cost of insulin; the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Heart Association called for taxes, warning labels, and advertising curbs on soda in hopes to reduce consumption among children and adolescents.

Medical practices are leaving money on the table by not producing clean medical claims. Incremental improvement can improve cash flow and reduce accounts receivable days, important metrics to determine the health of a medical practice.

Here are 5 interesting findings from the March 2019 issue of AJMC®.

A review of studies assessing the impact of telemonitoring on chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) outcomes resulted in mixed findings.

United Parcel Service (UPS) is planning to test a service that will dispatch nurses to administer vaccines in a patient's home; survey results reveal that the majority of Americans think the government is spending too little on healthcare; and Biogen has halted 2 clinical trials testing an experimental treatment for Alzheimer disease.

A recent retrospective, single-center study sought to characterize symptoms associated with vestibular migraine attacks, symptoms in between attacks, psychiatric comorbidities, and interictal neuro-otologic examination findings.

Recently published consensus recommendations discuss analytical antiretroviral treatment interruption (ATI), including who can be included and excluded and when to restart antiretroviral therapy (ART).

This week, the FDA sent out an alert to various healthcare professionals and the public to warn about the risks associated with the investigational use of venetoclax (Venclexta) for the treatment of patients with multiple myeloma (MM). The alert is based on data from the ongoing phase 3 BELLINI trial evaluating the drug for this treatment.

A recent study found that patients with myeloproliferative neoplasms living in the United Kingdom, as well as their doctors, felt more burdened by the disease than other patients and providers in other parts of the world.