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Residents of North Pasadena, Texas, struggling with food insecurity obtained “prescriptions” for healthy food from their clinic providers and boosted their intake of fruits, vegetables, lean protein, beans, and whole grains, in another example of the food as medicine movement that also illustrates some of the challenges with these efforts.

This week, the top managed care stories included Purdue Pharma filing for bankruptcy; new data showing the number of people who get screened for HIV at least once falls far short of what CDC recommends; findings that most US hospital markets are now highly concentrated.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi unveiled her plan to lower drug prices by giving the government the ability to negotiate prices for up to 250 of the costliest drugs, including insulin; slapping pharmaceutical companies with penalties if they refuse to negotiate; and seeking Medicare rebates from drug makers if they raise prices beyond inflation.

As rising drug costs continue to take up a larger portion of the total cost of care, practices in the Oncology Care Model find themselves in control of a shrinking portion of total costs, according to anecdotes from an academic medical center and a community-based practice during the National Comprehensive Cancer Network’s Policy Summit held September 12 in Washington, DC.

Amgen recently announced early phase 3 CANDOR study data, showing the triple-drug combination of carfilzomib (Kyprolis), along with dexamethasone and daratumumab (Darzalex, sold by Janssen), met its primary end point of progression-free survival in patients with relapsed or refractory multiple myeloma, with a 37% reduction in the risk of progression or death.