Authors

A New Cholesterol-Lowering Drug at What Price?

kgreenwood 1 Comment

By Kate Greenwood
[Cross-posted at Health Reform Watch]

This summer, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is expected to approve the first entries in a new class of drugs that lower patients’ low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol levels by more than half, even those patients who are already taking other cholesterol-lowering medication. The new drugs are biologics—monoclonal antibodies—that target, and inhibit, the gene proprotein convertase subtilisin–kexin type 9 (PCSK9). In mid-March, the New England Journal of Medicine published the results of important studies (here and here) of the two PCSK9 inhibitors that the FDA is expected to pass judgment on this summer. These studies—of Repatha (evolocumab), which is sponsored by Amgen, and Praluent (alirocumab), which is sponsored by Sanofi and Regeneron—suggest, but do not definitively establish, that PCSK9 inhibitors will reduce not just LDL levels, but also a patient’s chance of a major cardiovascular “event”, like a heart attack or stroke.

The race to approval between Amgen and Sanofi and Regeneron has been dramatic. (Pfizer also has a monoclonal antibody PCSK9 inhibitor in development, but it has lagged behind the two leaders.) As John Carroll reported at FierceBiotech last summer, Sanofi and Regeneron jumped ahead of Amgen when they purchased a priority review voucher from BioMarin for $67.5 million dollars. BioMarin was awarded the priority review voucher, which shrinks the time the FDA takes to approve a drug from ten months to six, because it developed and sought approval for a treatment for a rare pediatric disease. Per the Wall Street Journal, “[t]he voucher was the first to be issued under the pediatric incentive program, and also the first to change hands.”

As I mentioned earlier this week here, speculation has begun about what the price of the new PCSK9 inhibitors will be. Weighing in favor of a high price, the evidence of their efficacy is impressive and growing. The drugs hold particular promise for patients who cannot tolerate statin medications, or whose cholesterol cannot be controlled by statins alone. And, they are biologics, which are more expensive to produce than small-molecule drugs. On the other hand, PCSK9 inhibitors are not without safety concerns. In addition, patients will have to inject themselves with the new drugs, which some will find undesirable (although some might prefer a once- or twice-a-month injection to a daily pill regimen). Finally, the new drugs will have to compete with generic statins.

Payers are very concerned. Read More

Recommended Reading: New Empirical Analysis of False Claims Act Whistleblower Litigation

kgreenwood Leave a comment

By Kate Greenwood
[Cross-posted at Health Reform Watch]

Late last year, the Columbia Law Review published David Freeman Engstrom’s Private Enforcement’s Pathways: Lessons from Qui Tam Litigation, the fourth in a series of articles Professor Engstrom has written on the growth and evolution of qui tam litigation. (My colleague Associate Dean Kathleen Boozang wrote about the first three at Jotwell, here.) Private Enforcement’s Pathways, like the articles that precede it, brings a welcome dose of data and empirical analysis to a controversial area of the law, the debate over which has at times generated more heat than light.

Professor Engstrom’s analysis rests on a database he built containing information on the roughly 6,000 unsealed FCA cases that have concluded in a litigated judgments or settlement since 1986. In response to Freedom of Information Act requests, the Department of Justice provided information on the judicial district in which each case was filed, the date that DOJ decided whether or not to join each case, and the outcome of each case (including the amount, if any, that the government recovered and the whistleblower’s share of that recovery). DOJ also provided the date of filing for the 3,000 cases filed since 1986 that remain under seal, as well as for the 6,000 unsealed cases. From PACER, Professor Engstrom retrieved information on the parties, law firms, and individual lawyers involved in each unsealed case. Read More

A “Money Blind” for Research into Maternal-Fetal Medication Risk?

kgreenwood Leave a comment

By Kate Greenwood
[Cross-posted at Health Reform Watch]

A week ago, the Food and Drug Administration announced the results of a review of the medical literature it conducted in response to “recent reports questioning the safety of prescription and over-the-counter (OTC) pain medicines when used during pregnancy.” The literature, FDA determined, is inconclusive. FDA found that all of the studies had “potential limitations in their designs” and that “sometimes the accumulated studies on a topic contained conflicting results that prevented us from drawing reliable conclusions.” As a result, the FDA chose not to update its current recommendations. The agency emphasized, though, that the use of pain medication should be “carefully considered” by pregnant women and their physicians.

One of the reports that triggered the FDA’s review was no doubt this study, published in JAMA in April 2014, which found an association between prenatal exposure to acetaminophen and a higher risk of developing attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. The study led to headlines like Acetaminophen Use While Pregnant Leads to ADHD, Study Says and Mom’s Tylenol Use, Dad’s Age Are Latest Suspects on ADHD Front. At the New York Times’ Motherlode, KJ Dell’Antonia wrote: “If there is a pregnant woman out there willing to take Tylenol after reading this research — or just the associated headlines — I’d be surprised.” But there are serious risks associated with other pain medications, too. Tylenol has long been considered a relatively safe option. Even white-knuckling it is not risk free. As the FDA pointed out in its announcement, untreated severe and persistent pain increases the change that a pregnant woman will develop anxiety, depression, and high blood pressure.

Read More

The Ethics of Using Placebo Controls in Ebola Clinical Trials

kgreenwood Leave a comment

[Blogger’s Note: I am very pleased to share this post by my colleague at Seton Hall Law, Carl Coleman. This post was cross-posted at Health Reform Watch.]

By Carl H. Coleman

With well over 5,000 global deaths from Ebola already reported, drug developers are working fast to begin human clinical trials of promising experimental treatments.  Earlier this month, US government officials announced plans to launch a study of multiple Ebola interventions at the NIH Clinical Center, Emory University, and the University of Nebraska.  Shortly thereafter, the international relief organization Médecins sans Frontières (MSF) announced that it would soon begin testing of three experimental interventions at its treatment centers in West Africa, in collaboration with a coalition of European partners and the World Health Organization.

As predicted in an earlier blog post, a major area of contention in these trials involves the ethical acceptability of using placebo controls.  Plans for the US study are to give some participants the experimental drugs and others placebos, with everyone receiving the best supportive care available, such as fluid replacement and medications to fight off other infections.  In the MSF trials, by contrast, none of the participants will be given placebos; instead, everyone will receive one of three different experimental interventions.

From a methodological perspective, it is easy to see why the designers of the US study have chosen to use placebos.  Placebo-controlled trials are widely considered the “gold standard” of clinical research.  Using placebos makes it possible to identify the extent to which observed outcomes in participants are the result of the experimental intervention, as opposed to factors such as access to better health care facilities, receipt of supportive care, or psychological expectations (the so-called “placebo effect”).  Read More

Addressing the Dearth of Data on Fetal Death: The Role of Hospitals*

kgreenwood Leave a comment

By Kate Greenwood
[Cross-posted at Health Reform Watch]

As I have blogged about before, including last year here, research and public health interventions aimed at preventing stillbirth are stymied by a dearth of data. In an article in this month’s Maternal and Child Health Journal, Erica Lee and colleagues at New York City’s Bureau of Vital Statistics evaluate data collection by New York City hospitals before and after the city’s implementation, in 2011, of the 2003 United States Standard Report of Fetal Death. The Standard Report aids reporters by setting forth “a series of checkboxes for potentially fatal fetal and maternal conditions.” Unfortunately, Lee’s research reveals a persistent and widespread failure to collect basic information when a baby dies in utero.

In New York City, Lee found, “fetal death reports frequently supplied ‘intrauterine fetal demise’, ‘stillbirth’, or other inadequate terms as causes of death.” As Lee points out, words and phrases like this, which merely describe what happened without assigning a cause to it, do not inform public health research. In many cases, of course, what caused a stillbirth truly is unknown. Prior research suggests that this is true 10-40% of the time. In New York City, though, even after the implementation in 2011 of the Standard Report, the percentage of reports with ill-defined causes of fetal death remained troublingly high, at 61%. There was also substantial variation from hospital to hospital. The hospitals that were the best reporters assigned a specific cause 87% of the time, while the worst assigned a specific cause 0% of the time.

As Lee and her colleagues explain,

“public health research aimed at preventing fetal deaths is substantially limited by the data available, particularly poorly-defined and nonspecific causes of fetal death. These data quality concerns have forced researchers to conduct resource intensive cohort studies and/or time consuming chart audits to fully understand the causes behind fetal deaths rather than relying on the more readily-available and routinely collected fetal death records.”

Lee suggests that the variation that exists between hospitals represents an opportunity for improvement, which leads to the question of what policy levers could be used to bring all hospitals up the level of the top performers.  Read More

Doctors’ Decision-Making: Regression Proof?

kgreenwood Leave a comment

By Kate Greenwood
[Cross-posted at Health Reform Watch]

As I have blogged about before, last year, in Kaiser v. Pfizer, the First Circuit joined the handful of courts to have approved a causal chain of injury running from a pharmaceutical company’s fraudulent promotion, through the prescribing decisions of thousands of individual physicians, to the prescriptions for which a third-party payer paid.  To establish but-for causation in the case, Kaiser submitted an expert report and testimony from Dr. Meredith Rosenthal, a health economist at the Harvard School of Public Health. Dr. Rosenthal conducted a regression analysis to determine the portion of physicians’ prescribing of the drug Neurontin that was caused by the defendant’s fraudulent promotion, arriving at percentages ranged from 99.4% of prescriptions for bipolar disorder to 27.9% of prescriptions for migraine.

Pfizer argued that Dr. Rosenthal’s regression analysis should not have been admitted (and at least suggested that such an analysis should never be admitted in a third-party payer case) because regression analysis could not “take into account the patient-specific, idiosyncratic decisions of individual prescribing physicians.” Dr. Rosenthal’s report, the company argued, “merely demonstrated ‘correlation’ and not ‘causation.’”  The First Circuit disagreed, upholding the lower court’s determination that the challenged evidence was admissible under Federal Rule of Evidence 702, because “regression analysis is a well-recognized and scientifically valid approach to understanding statistical data” and because it “fit” the facts of the case.

Eric Alexander, a partner at Reed Smith, made a similar argument to Pfizer’s when he critiqued a decision issued in July in a third-party payer case in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. Writing at the Drug and Device Law blog, Alexander criticized the court for failing to address “the fundamental—to us—issue of whether an economist [Dr. Rosenthal was the plaintiff’s expert in that case, too] can ever determine why prescriptions were written.”  Alexander points out that “[t]o get to millions of dollars of revenue from prescriptions, many physicians have to prescribe the drug to many patients[,]” and those physicians can “pretty much do what they want[.]” Economists, Alexander argues, should not be allowed to by-pass this complexity and simply “assume” causation.

I would argue that, as idiosyncratic as physician decision-making may be, it is not uniquely so.  Read More

What’s Next If the FDA Holds the Line on Social Media?

kgreenwood Leave a comment

By Kate Greenwood
[Cross-posted at Health Reform Watch]

Earlier this week, the Food and Drug Administration announced that it was reopening the comment periods for the two draft guidances on the use of social media to promote prescription drugs and medical devices that it released in June:  Internet/Social Media Platforms with Character Space Limitations: Presenting Risk and Benefit Information for Prescription Drugs and Medical Devices and Internet/Social Media Platforms: Correcting Independent Third-Party Misinformation About Prescription Drugs and Medical Devices. Both guidances have drawn criticism from industry and observers, with the FDA being charged with, in the words of Pharmaguy at the Pharma Marketing Blog, “not being technically savvy enough to understand the nuances of social media and search engine advertising.”

In the draft guidance on social media platforms with character space limitations, such as Twitter and sponsored links on Google and Yahoo, the FDA states that “if a firm chooses to make a product benefit claim, the firm should also incorporate risk information within the same character-space-limited communication.” The draft guidance would allow companies to limit the risks that are presented within a character-and-space-limited communication to those that are the most serious, as long as the communication also includes a direct hyperlink to a destination (for example, a landing page) that is devoted exclusively to a complete discussion of the product’s risks. The FDA emphasizes in the draft guidance that “[i]f an accurate and balanced presentation of both risks and benefits is not possible within the constraints of the platform, then the firm should reconsider using that platform for the intended promotional message (other than for permitted reminder promotion).”  In the first round of comments, PhRMA commented that the amount of information that companies are required to include in a single communication “would make the use of Twitter and comparable platforms impossible in all but the rarest cases.” With regard to sponsored links, PhRMA also noted that the guidance assumes that advertisers have more control than they in fact do over “the appearance – and order of appearance – of information on such platforms.”

It will be interesting to see whether and how the FDA responds to these comments, as well as to any additional comments filed during the period that comments are reopened, which ends on October 29th. If the agency holds the line (as I think it should) and continues to require that companies provide at least some balance between risks and benefits in all advertising and labeling, regardless of platform, companies will no doubt (continue) to look for alternatives.  Read More

Lessons from Miss Idaho: Greater Acceptance of (but Not Necessarily Greater Access to) Diabetes Devices

kgreenwood Leave a comment

By Kate Greenwood
[Cross-posted at Health Reform Watch]

Given the health law and policy topics that are this blog’s usual fare, some of you may have missed the fact that earlier this month the eighty-eighth annual Miss America pageant was held here in New Jersey, at Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City. And you may have also missed it (I did) when, this past July, Miss Idaho, Sierra Sandison, a Type 1 diabetic, became a social and traditional media sensation after she competed in the swimsuit competition with her insulin pump clipped to her bikini bottom, visible for all to see. Sandison started a hashtag, #showmeyourpump, inspiring Type 1 diabetics from around the world to post photos of themselves with their pumps.

Although Sandison was the first contestant to compete in the Miss America pageant with her pump visible, she is not the first contestant with Type 1 diabetes, or the first to rely on a pump. In 1998, both Deana Herrerra, Miss New York, and Nicole Johnson, Miss Virginia, had the disease, and both relied on pumps to control it. Johnson went on to be crowned Miss America 1999, with a platform of diabetes awareness. Johnson explained to the Philadelphia Inquirer that, before getting the pump, “‘I stuck myself four or five times a day. I was getting scar tissue. I was feeling depressed, and I thought, `I’m never going to have an iota of freedom.'” Since getting the pump, Johnson said, “‘Now, I control the diabetes.”’

Sierra Sandison’s decision to wear her diabetes pump on her hip both contributed to and was the result of a trend toward greater acceptance of medical devices and our need for them. (As Miriam Tucker reported at NPR, “Amputees are increasingly using visible prostheses rather than covering them up. And the ostomy community has its own version of the ‘show me’ campaign.”) Nicole Johnson told Tucker that “‘Our culture seems to be more accepting today, as opposed to when I was diagnosed in 1993.'”

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the increase in acceptance has not translated into easy or uniform access to the medical devices that help diabetics manage their disease, including insulin pumps, insulin pens, and continuous glucose monitors. Read More

Discrimination on the Basis of Health Status in Health Insurance: “Market-Norm or Necessity”?

kgreenwood Leave a comment

By Kate Greenwood
[Cross-posted at Health Reform Watch]

In recent months, advocates have alleged that discrimination on the basis of health status in health insurance continues, notwithstanding the Affordable Care Act’s attempts to level the playing field for people with chronic health conditions. How the government and industry should respond to the allegations is not clear, however, in part because what constitutes “discrimination” is not clear in this context. As Jessica Roberts has noted, there is an “intrinsic tension between an antidiscrimination framework and the practices of the private, for-profit health-insurance industry.” This tension makes it difficult to pinpoint where permissible cost-consciousness ends and impermissible discrimination begins.

As has been widely reported, at the end of May, the National Health Law Program, along with the Tampa-based organization The AIDS Institute, filed an administrative complaint with the United States Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Civil Rights in which they allege that four qualified health plans offered through the federally-facilitated marketplace in Florida discriminate by “charg[ing] inordinately high co-payments and co-insurance for medications used in the treatment of HIV and AIDS.” The complainants go on to allege that because “[o]ther issuers vary tiering or place HIV drugs on more affordable tiers,” “the practice of placing all anti-retrovirals on the highest tier is not a market-norm or necessity.”

The complaint’s emphasis on whether the plans’ actions reflect a “market-norm or necessity” tracks the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ 2015 Letter to Issuers in the Federally-Facilitated Marketplaces, in which CMS writes that “to ensure nondiscrimination in [qualified health plan (“QHP”)] benefit design, CMS will perform an outlier analysis on QHP cost sharing (e.g., co-payments and co-insurance) as part of the QHP certification application process.” CMS goes on to specify that, with regard to prescription drugs, a plan will be considered an “outlier” if it has “an unusually large number of drugs subject to prior authorization and/or step therapy requirements in a particular category and class.”

As Sarah Rosenbaum has noted, “CMS does not provide a review methodology or define what is ‘unusually large’.” Even if it had, what if subjecting a large number of drugs to prior authorization or step therapy requirements did not make a plan unusual? Would that mean that doing so was not “discrimination”? Read More

An Autism Diagnosis: Still the Key to Unlocking Needed Services?

kgreenwood Leave a comment

By Kate Greenwood

Cross-Posted at Health Reform Watch

In a recent, very moving, post about her son’s diagnosis with autism at age eight, blogger Amy Storch writes: “I guess I should mention the obvious — district services for Autism are much more comprehensive than ADHD.” An autism diagnosis should not, as a matter of law, be the key that unlocks needed special education services. Both autism and ADHD “count” as disabilities under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (the relevant regulation is here), and the Act provides that a child with either diagnosis who needs special education services is entitled to an educational program “designed to meet their unique needs.” As a matter of fact, though, an autism diagnosis may mean—as it apparently does in Storch’s school district—a more comprehensive program. An autism diagnosis can also be the key to getting necessary services outside of the school setting, through private health insurance.

According to the advocacy group Autism Speaks, 37 states plus the District of Columbia and the United States Virgin Islands have enacted laws requiring state-regulated private health insurance plans to pay for applied behavior analysis and other therapies children with autism often need. As I blogged about previously here, some of these state insurance mandates are relatively broad—New Jersey’s law requires private insurers to cover applied behavior analysis for children with autism, but also to cover occupational, physical, and speech therapy for individuals with “autism or another developmental disability.” Other states’ mandates, however, are strictly limited to children on the autism spectrum. Daniela Caruso of Boston University School of Law writes about Florida’s decision to limit its insurance mandate to children with autism here, attributing it at least in part to advocates’ success persuading legislators to view autism through a “dual frame of beauty and invasion.”

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act’s requirement that individual and small group health insurance plans cover ten essential health benefits, and in particular its requirement that plans cover “rehabilitative and habilitative services and devices,” promised to ease access to applied behavior analysis and other therapies often needed by children by autism. Habilitative care is left undefined in the statute, but it is defined at HealthCare.gov as “[h]ealth care services that help you keep, learn, or improve skills and functioning for daily living,” for example “therapy for a child who isn’t walking or talking at the expected age.”

There is a wrinkle, however. Read More