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The Hidden Causes of Autoimmune Disease (Dr. Arland Hill) — How to Reverse It: RWP6. Dr. Arland Hill is a Functional Medicine Clinician and Author of "Platform Food, Function, Freedom.com." Dr. Hill has an in depth conversation with Dr. Ben Weitz about Autoimmune Diseases. Dr. Arland Hill explains the primary reasons why there has been an increase in the rate of autoimmune diseases in the United States. The mass food production has significantly altered what is now classified as food as compared to that prior to the 1940's. The combination of drastic changes in our diet and increased toxin exposure in a post-industrialized society has contributed to the rise in autoimmune disease. An important variant is the effect of stress. Stress breaks down the body's systems, which can create dysregulation in the immune system. This opens the door for leaky gut syndrome and can manifest in autoimmune issues. Environmental and food toxins coupled with increased stress levels can be the perfect breeding ground for autoimmune diseases to develop. However it is important to note that each of these individual factors can cause autoimmune disease to manifest on their own. Western medical doctors treat diseases by providing medications that suppress the immune system such as corticosteroids, chemotherapy agents and newer injectables. TNF alpha blocking agents like Humira and Remicade block the immune system, which is needed to maintain homeostasis, fight off and prevent the disease processes from beginning. These drugs have very serious side effects that include depressing the immune system and worsening the effects of infections and cancer. The Functional Medicine approach treats autoimmune diseases by looking at the underlying factors that lead to the immune system being deregulated. These factors can include disease processes such as leaky gut, food sensitivities, toxins, mold, heavy metals, nutritional deficiencies, infections, etc. Functional Medicine looks at the best strategies for correcting this by identifying the cause and catalyst of those agents. Once you identify the cause and remove the factors that negatively affect the G.I. and immune system, a strategy to intervene can be formed. A nutritional strategy to repair and restore the gut is recommended. By reestablishing the mucosa tolerance and re-balancing the bacterial landscape, gut health is rebuilt and the immune system can function and respond unimpaired. The podcast will cover these topics in more depth and detail. You will learn more about how toxins behave. For example, how BPA and heavy metals found in plastics insert itself in the metabolic pathway and disrupt it by misplacing nutrients. You will also learn how to test for autoimmune disease and learn the role infections play in increasing our risk. More importantly, you will learn how to improve your health and nutritional deficiencies. Dr. Arland Hill can be reached at Dr.ArlandHill.com Dr. Ben Weitz is also available for nutrition consultation by calling his office at 310-395-3111.
This week, we close out our three-part series on pharmaceuticals with a must-listen encore episode. After detailing the scope of the drug price crisis with Mark Cuban and how we can re-use drugs to treat rare illnesses with David Fajgenbaum, we now turn to a leader who is actively changing the dynamic: Paul Markovich. Now the CEO of Ascendiun (the parent company of Blue Shield of California), Paul argues that healthcare affordability isn't just a patient pocketbook issue - it's a massive economic crisis for the nation. In this episode, Paul and Claudia discuss:His conviction that reducing healthcare costs is essential to averting a national fiscal crisis.The argument for a new national mandate on health data sharing to improve efficiency and care.Paul's candid advice on what it takes to be a brave leader in a dysfunctional system.The path is long and challenging, but as Paul Markovich shows, solutions are possible - if the right players are willing to take accountability for their role in the market:“Almost everybody in the entire value chain, whether it's health plans or hospitals or all the way through, they want to explain why healthcare is so expensive and why there's this inflation rate as if that absolves them of any responsibility to make it different. And so, what I really want is accountability, and a level of accountability that just doesn't exist yet in our industry, to say, “Hey, we own this”. Relevant LinksPart 1: Listen to our episode “New Life for Old Drug with David Fajgenbaum”Part 2: Listen to our episode “Lessons in Disruption with Mark Cuban”Rethinking how Americans get affordable medicationsCalifornia's new data sharing law Blue Shield of California (BSC) announcement of new Humira biosimilar BSC investment in nonprofit Civica for lower cost genericsBSC's new prior authorization platform with SalesforceAbout Our GuestPaul Markovich is president and chief executive office of Ascendiun, a nonprofit corporate entity as part of the new parent to the family of organizations that includes Blue Shield of California.Paul Markovich was president and chief executive officer at Blue Shield of California, a nonprofit health plan with $25 billion in annual revenue, serving 6 million members in the state's commercial, individual, and government markets. Paul launched and led numerous initiatives to drive innovation and help reimagine health care, including funding support for a statewide provider directory to make it easier for Californians to find physicians and facilities in their
Pharmacy benefits shouldn't feel like a black box. We sit down with Susan Thomas, Chief Commercial Officer at Lucy Rx, to unpack why drug costs keep rising and what it takes to build a benefit that serves patients and plans—not middlemen. Susan started as an oncology nurse and moved into PBM leadership, and that dual lens shows up in everything we cover: from the real-world stress of waiting days for an oral chemo to the hidden economics of rebate chains and vertically integrated networks.We dig into the two biggest levers for change. First, formulary autonomy: instead of being locked to a single, opaque GPO, a marketplace approach lets employers compare multiple rebate contracts, see drug-level net cost, and choose the best path for categories like Humira biosimilars or GLP-1s. That shift enables utilization management that protects value without opening the floodgates. Second, network independence: when PBMs own specialty and mail, steering is inevitable. By contracting with integrated health systems for specialty and modern mail partners for home delivery, plans can speed therapy, reduce waste from 30-day auto-ships, and improve member experience at a lower overall cost.We also talk fiduciary duty, policy momentum, and technology. Employers need verifiable net-cost math—not averages—to defend decisions in a post–J&J lawsuit world. Washington's scrutiny is rising, and incumbents are signaling changes, but structural misalignments remain. On the tech front, AI-driven reporting and specialty navigation are already here, while precision medicine and pharmacogenomics promise to target high-cost drugs to the patients who will benefit most. The question is whether the industry will embrace smaller, smarter populations when volume shrinks and outcomes improve.If you care about cutting pharmacy spend without compromising care, this conversation is a practical roadmap: ask for drug-level net cost, insist on formulary choice across GPOs, require independent specialty and mail, and set utilization criteria that put patients first. Subscribe, share this episode with a colleague who manages pharmacy benefits, and leave a review with the one PBM metric you wish you'd had sooner.This episode is sponsored by Benepower, the platform of choice for a modern benefits experience. Benepower is an AI-powered benefits platform offering access to top products and services, enabling consultants and employers to create customized plans, optimize usage, and measure effectiveness. www.benepower.com
Arthur Wong examines AbbVie (ABBV) following the healthcare company's earnings beat in its 3Q. He discusses the pharmaceutical pipeline, its oncology segment and current offerings like its autoimmune medication Humira. Arthur discusses the relationship between weaker consumer sentiment and patients willingness to spend on expensive medical treatments. He also talks about the industry trend to negotiate lower drug-costs with the Trump administration. He says tariffs and "MFN" Pricing (Most Favored Nation) are the biggest headwinds for pharmaceutical companies.======== Schwab Network ========Empowering every investor and trader, every market day.Subscribe to the Market Minute newsletter - https://schwabnetwork.com/subscribeDownload the iOS app - https://apps.apple.com/us/app/schwab-network/id1460719185Download the Amazon Fire Tv App - https://www.amazon.com/TD-Ameritrade-Network/dp/B07KRD76C7Watch on Sling - https://watch.sling.com/1/asset/191928615bd8d47686f94682aefaa007/watchWatch on Vizio - https://www.vizio.com/en/watchfreeplus-exploreWatch on DistroTV - https://www.distro.tv/live/schwab-network/Follow us on X – / schwabnetwork Follow us on Facebook – / schwabnetwork Follow us on LinkedIn - / schwab-network About Schwab Network - https://schwabnetwork.com/about
I'm thrilled to share some incredible insights from our latest episode featuring Sandeep Dayal, a top marketing strategist and managing director of Sorrenti Marketing Group. Sandeep's journey from engineering to consulting with global giants like Pfizer and McKinsey, and his expertise in cognitive branding, offers a treasure trove of wisdom for anyone interested in leadership, marketing, and human behavior.Here are the key takeaways from our conversation:
Sain baina uu! Today, travel medicine specialists Drs. Paul Pottinger ("Germ") and Chris Sanford ("Worm") answer YOUR travel health questions, including:Did RFK Jr. demand a journal retract a vaccine article?Humira and Mongolia--how to prepare?What's up with chikungunya vaccines this week?Can I get Salmonella infection from a pet bearded dragon?How to reduce drowning risk, and what to do if you rescue a struggling swimmer?Dental injuries in the wild–what to do in the Canadian wilderness?Heat exhaustion vs heat stroke?We hope you enjoy this podcast! If so, please follow us on the socials @germ.and.worm, subscribe to our RSS feed and share with your friends! We would so appreciate your rating and review to help us grow our audience. And, please send us your questions and travel health anecdotes: germandworm@gmail.com. And, please visit our website: germandworm.com. Our Disclaimer: The Germ and Worm Podcast is designed to inform, inspire, and entertain. However, this podcast does NOT establish a doctor-patient relationship, and it should NOT replace your conversation with a qualified healthcare professional. Please see one before your next adventure. The opinions in this podcast are Dr. Sanford's & Dr. Pottinger's alone, and do not necessarily represent the opinions of the University of Washington or UW Medicine.
The Vizient Summer 2025 Spend Management Outlook (SMO) provides an integrated perspective on trends, factors and future expenses providers will face across the various dimensions of healthcare. In this episode, Dr. Carina Dolan and Dr. Jeni Hayes join host Carolyn Liptak to discuss pharmacy insights from the SMO including declining drug price inflation and how autoimmune conditions have surpassed oncology in total pharmacy costs. They also touch on pediatric spend drivers, biosimilar competition, and the impact of novel therapies. Tune in to VerifiedRx for practical insights to help pharmacy leaders plan for what's ahead. Guest speakers: Carina Dolan, Pharm. D., MS Pharm, BCOP Associate Vice President, Clinical Oncology, Pharmacoeconomics and Market Insights Vizient Jeni Hayes, PharmD, MS Pharm, BCPS Senior Clinical Manager, Market Intelligence Vizient Host: Carolyn Liptak, , BS Pharm, MBA Verified Rx Host Show Notes: [01:13-02:41] Key pharmacy trends emerging from the Summer SMO [02:42-04:00] Current pharmacy trends [04:01-05:55] Pharmacy spend for autoimmune conditions has exceeded that of oncology [05:56-07:36] Key takeaways [07:37-08:47] Significant trends in this latest therapeutic insights update [08:48-10:04] Challenges in gene and cell therapy space [10:05-11:33] The Therapeutic Insights webpage for pediatrics [11:34-13:41] Other reflections from the SMO [13:42-14:49] How to locate the SMO Links | Resources: Vizient Spend Management Outlook Vizient Therapeutic class insights Subscribe Today! Apple Podcasts Amazon Podcasts Spotify Android RSS Feed
De prijs van het medicijn Humira van de Amerikaanse farmaceut Abbvie ligt onder vuur. Volgens de stichting Farma ter Verantwoording is de prijs van het medicijn veel en veel te hoog waardoor het bedrijf een miljardenwinst maakt. En die winst zou "buitensporig" zijn en gaat, volgens Farma ter Verantwoording, ten koste van de zorg. De zaak zou deze week voorkomen bij de rechtbank van Amsterdam, maar de rechtbank heeft besloten géén uitspraak te doen, omdat de zaak niet-ontvankelijk is. Maar wanneer is een medicijn te duur, en wie bepaalt dat? Te gast is ziekenhuisapotheker en klinisch farmacoloog bij het Radboud UMC, Rob ter Heine.
What if everything we've been taught about chronic inflammation and disease is fundamentally flawed? Dr. Thomas Lodi challenges conventional medical wisdom by explaining how inflammation isn't something to be suppressed, but rather understood as the body's intelligent response to unmet biological needs.Diving deep into the biochemistry of chronic inflammation, Dr. Lodi reveals how pharmaceutical drugs like Humira target inflammatory molecules like TNF-alpha but create dangerous imbalances in the process. Meanwhile, natural substances like vitamin C and curcumin accomplish similar biochemical effects without the severe side effects, while simultaneously supporting immune function and overall health. This isn't merely theoretical—studies show dramatically lower inflammatory markers in people who adopt natural human diets centered around uncooked plant foods.The conversation takes a fascinating turn when Dr. Lodi examines how our language shapes our perception of health and illness. By using terms like "disease" and "cure," we unconsciously adopt a framework that sees the body as making mistakes rather than adapting perfectly to its environment. This linguistic prison limits our understanding and options for healing. "There are no diseases and therefore no cures," he explains. "These are the body adapting to situations where biological needs aren't being met."From practical advice on EMF protection to insights about graphene oxide in consumer products, this episode equips listeners with knowledge to navigate today's complex health landscape. The message becomes clear: true healing happens not by finding the perfect pill, but by providing your body everything it needs while removing what harms it. As Dr. Lodi succinctly puts it, "There's only one way to obtain health, and that's by living healthy. You can't buy it, coerce iSend us a text Join Dr. Lodi's Inner Circle membership and unlock exclusive access to webinars, healthy recipes, e-books, educational videos, live Zoom Q&A sessions with Dr. Lodi, plus fresh content every month. Elevate your healing journey today by visiting drlodi.com and use the coupon code podcast (all lowercase: P-O-D-C-A-S-T) for 30% off your first month on any membership option. Support the showThis episode features answers to health and cancer-related questions from Dr. Lodi's social media livestream on Jan. 19th, 2025Join Dr. Lodi's FREE Q&A livestreams every Sunday on Facebook, Instagram, and Tiktok (@drthomaslodi) and listen to the replays here.Submit your question for next Sunday's Q&A Livestream here:https://drlodi.com/live/Facebookhttps://www.facebook.com/DrThomasLodi/Instagramhttps://www.instagram.com/drthomaslodi/ Join Dr. Lodi's Inner Circle membership and unlock exclusive access to webinars, healthy recipes, e-books, educational videos, live Zoom Q&A sessions with Dr. Lodi, plus fresh content every month. Elevate your healing journey today by visiting drlodi.com and use the coupon code podcast (all lowercase: P-O-D-C-A-S-T) for 30% off your first month on any membership option. Learn to Thrive with ADHD Podcast Welcome to the Learn to Thrive with ADHD Podcast. This is the show for you if you're... Listen on: Apple Podcasts Spotify Join Dr. Lodi's informative FREE Livestreams...
From compromised vaccines to failed clinical trials, the stakes of biopharma cold chain failures are dangerously high. Each year, the industry loses $35 billion due to temperature excursions and environmental deviations in transit. But the cost to patient safety? Incalculable.In this episode, we examine the hidden weak points in cold chain logistics and why manual processes and siloed systems are no longer acceptable. Drawing from The cold truth: Why biopharma needs integrated cold chain monitoring tech, we uncover how IoT devices, smart packaging, and ERP-integrated platforms are transforming temperature-sensitive logistics—from warehouse to drone-based last-mile delivery.What You'll Learn in This Episode:1. The Hidden Cost of Cold Chain Failures$35B in annual losses from temperature excursions and environmental mishandling20% of pharma products are damaged by temperature issues aloneNearly half of surveyed companies experience multiple excursions yearly2. Why ‘Almost Perfect' Isn't Good EnoughMany advanced therapies use a stability budget—once it's gone, efficacy is lostSome products (e.g., Humira, Enbrel) must avoid both overheating and freezingVibration and humidity sensitivity add even more complexity3. The Limits of Manual & Legacy SystemsFragmented cold chains and outdated spreadsheets lack end-to-end visibilitySome companies still do not consistently use basic temperature monitoringRegulatory compliance requires verifiable, real-time control4. Integrated Tech as the New StandardSmart tags, RFID, and IoT devices feed data into centralized ERP systemsReal-time monitoring of temperature, vibration, humidity, and TORPredictive alerts and proactive interventions reduce spoilage risk5. The Future of Cold Chain LogisticsAdoption of TOR-based warehouse picking strategiesDeployment of agentic AI for self-optimizing logisticsProof-of-concept drone delivery of ultra-cold products (e.g., -70°C) by MerckShift toward reusable thermal containers and TCO-driven decision-makingKey Takeaways:Cold chain integrity is critical for both product viability and patient safetyIntegrated monitoring platforms provide provable control—essential for complianceCompanies adopting these solutions have cut losses by up to 20%The rise of agentic AI and real-time monitoring marks a new era in biopharma logisticsGlobal regulations must evolve to keep pace with tech and therapeutic complexitySubscribe to our podcast for expert insights on supply chain innovation, life sciences logistics, and pharmaceutical compliance. Visit The Future of Commerce for the latest on how tech is transforming healthcare delivery. Share this episode with supply chain leaders, pharma execs, and regulatory professionals.
Preena: Welcome to the Weinberg in the World Podcast, where we bring stories of interdisciplinary thinking in today's complex world. My name is Preena Shroff and I'm your student host of this special Weinberg in the World episode. I'm a third year student majoring in neuroscience and global health studies with a minor in data center. Today I have the pleasure of speaking with Natasha Phillips, who graduated from Weinberg College in 2000 with a Bachelor of Arts in sociology and biology. Natasha currently serves as chief marketing officer for GE Healthcare, leading teams that help healthcare providers design treatment plans for their patients. Natasha, thank you so much for being here with us today. Natasha: Thanks for having me, Preena. It's a pleasure. Preena: We are so excited to learn about your work in healthcare marketing, but would love to start out with how your career path was shaped by your time at Northwestern. Maybe you can tell us more about your undergraduate experience, what were some impactful classes, extracurriculars, or mentorships opportunities that you had which impacted your post-graduate career? Natasha: Yeah. You're making me think a little bit, because I got to go back in time. As an undergraduate, I was super lucky, having both a biology and a sociology major, it gave me the ability to see a very wide range of classes. I wasn't 100% sure actually what I wanted to do. I knew I was somewhat interested in the sciences. I didn't actually know I would be that interested in the social sciences, but I took a couple of classes. One in particular was the Sociology of Race and Ethnicity with Charlie Moskos, which actually made me decide to ... That was the reason I became a sociology major. I just got super lucky, I loved that class. It's funny, if I ever had a second life, I always say I would have loved to have gone back and been a sociology professor. But I didn't take that path, I went more with the actual biology side of things. I was weighing, do I want to do research? I actually was really interested in molecular biology, primarily because in the late '90s, which is a very long time ago to our students who are listening, but for me that was a time very formative because they were sequencing the human genome. There was a lot of promise in the space, not only of biology, but more specifically molecular biology and how it is linked to genetics and genomics as we think about the impact on healthcare. That really interested me to the point where I really was considering actually getting my PhD in molecular biology. Some of my favorite classes were the ones in which I had exposure to research, because I got to see the importance of just the impact that research can have. And the ability to be able to find a practical application, even if it's on a very specific question, to really contribute to the body of knowledge. Ultimately ended up being unsure what I wanted to do right after undergrad, so I went into healthcare consulting in which I wanted to be able to figure out, do I want to go towards the more business side of healthcare and thinking about commercializing healthcare and science from the industry side of things? Or to the academic side and actually get my PhD, and think about contributing to science and healthcare in that realm. I did have exposure, both in consulting as well as in research. I started in a research program at the University of Chicago in molecular biology after doing consulting so I could see both sides. And ultimately, actually, that was when I made the decision to focus much more so on the business side of it and to get my MBA, and to move into healthcare marketing. That led me into the career in which I've had today, in which I've been very lucky to have over 15 years working at very large multinational healthcare companies, primarily in sales and marketing roles, bringing innovation in healthcare to people all over the globe. Preena: Absolutely. Wow, yeah. I think your path is actually not only a common path that students seek out, but also something that students might end up finding themselves in, even if they do experience a career switch in their life. That's really interesting to hear about. I have another question for you, more specifically job-oriented. Healthcare is constantly evolving, so maybe you can tell us a little bit about how your marketing approach has changed since you began your career? Natasha: Yeah. I love that question, Preena, because what really is happening is healthcare is evolving and the function of marketing is evolving constantly. I am really lucky that, both in the subject matter that I basically have decided to focus in, which is healthcare and ultimately the innovation around healthcare, but also have a really cool and exciting function that continues to evolve. I was lucky enough during my ... Maybe I'll start with the functional part, I'll start with marketing first, and then I'll talk about healthcare. The basic function of marketing has changed significantly over the past 20 years as I've been a marketer, primarily with the advent of digital and social media. It continues now to evolve, as we think about personalized marketing and AI, and what that's going to do. I would say the main changes that I've seen over time has been from a very I would say structured, one size fits all, if you think about it like mass media type of marketing in which there was a time in which you had one singular message and one singular way of approaching individuals, and not a lot of channels to reach them. To now, moving to almost a fully personalized marketing experience, where you have the ability with technology today to be able to say, even if you have thousands of targets, how do you understand the fine differences. There's got to be some generalization amongst those targets, but there's also some fine differences in how people consume their information, care about interacting with your brand, and want to be able to either become loyal brand advocates or detractors. How do you understand what those insights are to create an ongoing personalized journey that evolves over time with the individual as their media consumption and interest in whatever product you're selling changes? That's been one of the coolest innovations to think about, as we think about the function. If I look at healthcare, I've been lucky enough to see innovation across a variety of different segments within healthcare. I'd seen the advent of biologics. If we think about innovation from a healthcare point of view, in basically the last 20 years or so, we've seen drugs like Humira, which started the biologic class and has now exploded into one of the largest categories or segments within healthcare. And the significant impact that that has had on millions of patients, and has changed diseases all the way from skin conditions to much more serious autoimmune type of conditions. I've been lucky enough to see innovation on the diagnostic side, in which I've seen the advent of brand new technologies, including things like multi-plexing. Of taking a single sample, and instead of wanting to get one answer, you can get anywhere from 25 to 30 answers of which virus of which disease somebody has. And the impact that that has had not only on just healthcare, but on infectious disease and vaccines in other parts. For me, what has actually kept me so motivated in healthcare for so long is it isn't just an idea. I get to be part of the teams, and it's a cross-functional team that includes everybody from scientists, research and developers, operations, medical affairs, clinical affairs, marketers, salespeople, finance people, and everybody, I'm sure I'm forgetting some functions. It is such a complex effort to bring innovation like this to market and sometimes can take 10 to 15 years, but when it happens you actually see significant change in healthcare. For me, that's the ability to think even 30, 40 years from now, some of the either diagnostics, devices, or drugs that I've helped to bring to market will really have an impact. Either because it continues to improve healthcare or it was the precursor of future innovation that's going to continue to come because we've paved the way for it, so it's really cool. Preena: Absolutely. That's really incredible. And the way you're able to work with people of many different fields and backgrounds, and then learn from them as well is a really incredible experience, and I hope defines a lot of students' careers in the future as well. Natasha: Yeah. I think just to add to that, the one thing to really keep in mind is I love the interdisciplinary approach that a really good college in arts and sciences like Weinberg does. Because for me, that kind of thinking, although I didn't understand it at the time because I was just a student and I had no clue what I was actually going to do, is something that to this day in my career I think back to and I leverage. It's helped to make me successful, especially in a very large matrix cross-functional organization. It's something that, as all of you who are students potentially listening to this and are thinking, "What might I do in the future?" Really leverage the opportunities that you have to do that kind of interdisciplinary type of work because it will make you much stronger in whatever field you decide to do. Preena: Yeah, absolutely. Going off of that, a bit in the other direction, but what is a common misconception about working in the healthcare marketing industry? Natasha: That is a great question. This is maybe a little controversial, but I'm going to say it. I think there is this perception of big, bad pharma and big, bad healthcare. I think it's something that is an understandable point of view and one which requires probably much more dialogue than what we can answer here. But I'll just leave people with this one thought. Which is if you think about most of the major innovations that have come to healthcare over the last 30 years, whether it's drugs to treat high blood pressure or hypertension, or innovations in diagnostics as I mentioned to be able to not just understand what's happening from blood count, but to be able to look at the molecular and cellular level to treat rare diseases and everything in the middle. Much of that innovation, while it is funded and founded in the basic research that happens at academic and other institutions, has really been driven by the industry. Whether it's the pharmaceutical industry, the med device industry, the diagnostic industry. That requires significant investment and significant time. It also requires a very high failure rate. In some cases, if you have 100 compounds or 100 ideas that you're bringing through, less than 1% of them will sometimes make it to market. There is a significant amount of investment that needs to happen. While there's always optimizations that could happen, I always implore people to think about the fact that the drug that your mother or father is taking today, or that your brother or sister is taking for asthma, didn't exist probably even 20 or 30 years ago because we didn't have the funding and innovation that was coming necessarily maybe from companies that has been pushing that forward. While there is a lot of discussion to be had about healthcare and the rights to healthcare, I think companies like mine, whether it's my current company or previous company, have played a very important role in really helping to improve overall health and healthcare as we think about the impact on people's lives. I just ask people to be open to the fact that there's always a variety of different vantage points and it's always a great healthy dialogue to have. Preena: Of course, yeah. From what you said, it sounds like it's a bit of a trade-off and it's really important to discover where you fit in within that sphere, and learn how to interpret your work and your path in that direction as well. Just realizing what impact you're making and picturing that longterm. Natasha: Yeah, exactly. Preena: Okay. Then, I was also going to ask you about the student perspective, thinking about students today. How would you recommend students cultivate a personal brand? A lot of times people say networking. How do students network authentically, both online and in-person so that they can find the right opportunities or even the right opportunities can find them? Natasha: Yeah, I think it's a really great question. I very much will reiterate the importance of networking because I think that's foundational and fundamental to everything that we do today. In fact, many of you who got into very competitive colleges probably had to figure that out as you were even thinking about how to get into the school that you're in today. That thought process needs to continue as you think about getting your first job, or maybe you're getting your next pre-professional school that you're focused on. I would take that networking to the next step to say I think some of the most effective networking has two really good components. I find this, because I have a lot of people who maybe reach out to me, either through my network or because they're looking for learning about marketing or healthcare, or other topics that maybe I've had some experience with. The first of those two things is really having a genuine brand, and one in which you really own and feel passionate about. The most interesting and coolest networking that I do, even with students today, are the ones in which people are very purposeful about what they are interested in, what they care about, what their brand is. It's probably hard to even think about me as a college student, what is my brand? But you have a brand. You may not know it yet, but you definitely have and can develop a brand. That brand should be whatever you feel truly passionate and genuinely interested in, because that will only I would say help you have much more successful networking and much more genuine connections with the people that you are trying to connect with. Even if that individual maybe doesn't understand or isn't that maybe close to the topic, you'd be shocked how just that genuine authenticity is going to help drive really stronger connections in networking that are going to help both you, as well as the network that you're creating, as you think about the fact that one day you're going to have a network and you're going to want to be able to pay it forward to students the way maybe people are helping you with your decisions and career today. The second one as you think about networking is a lot of times, networking and finding a good fit, whether it's a company or your next pre-professional program, or what you even want to do, is based on having a shared purpose with whoever you're networking with or whatever that institution is. I find the people who come and are most prepared for interviews, in addition to feeling very genuine and knowing what their brand is, are the people who are very clear on what my purpose, either as an institution is, or whatever group I'm part of. They understand that and it is very much akin to who they are, what they're looking for, what makes them passionate. That sense of shared purpose in networking I think is another way in which you can more successfully think about how do you take your decisions or whatever you're going to do next in your career path and be more successful in terms of what you want to do. Then the last thing I would say is don't feel super ... I know everybody's pressured to feel like they know exactly what they want to do and I understand that. I'm sure many of the people who are listening to this are very high performing, have always been very successful in life, have known exactly what they want to do. But there's a lot of benefit to maybe giving yourself the luxury of knowing you have a very long marathon ahead of you, as you think about the decision making in your career choices that you're going to make. If there's ever a time to be open to it, it's probably earlier in your career when you're maybe more willing to not only take some risks, but also be true to what you actually think will be interesting to you over a longterm career. Don't be afraid if it's not going to be a straight line. It might be a really curvy, cool path. At the time, it might feel a little discouraging, but don't be discouraged. Because I would argue, if I look back, some of my coolest decisions were the ones in which it wasn't this straight line, very clear path of what I wanted to do. But rather, I was either more open because of external circumstances or internal motivation to being a little bit more flexible and not so purposeful, and everything must be this in this timeframe. I think if you have some openness to that, it will really help you and probably put a lot less pressure on you as you're thinking about your career. Preena: Right. Yeah, that's really great advice. In terms of winding paths, switching over to your career and more of your day-to-day role, what would say is a challenge or challenges that you often find or encounter in your day-to-day role and how do you approach those? Natasha: That's a good question. My challenges in my day-to-day role. I'm fortunate in which I lead a functional team, so I have the benefit of having an amazing team that I work with every day across a variety of brands and products, across a very diverse portfolio. I've been lucky enough to do that at this current company, which is GE Healthcare, and the previous company I was at which is Abbott. Many times, if I think about the biggest challenges in my day-to-day, it really is around I would say three big areas. The first one is when you are such a large matrix company that is so dependent on your other functional teams, to ensure that you are all very clear on what the goal is, what you're all trying to accomplish, and that you're all rowing in the same direction, and have shared purpose and goals. Often times in our day-to-day, even in companies where you think everybody's on the same team, you can often find that there's actually sometimes a bit of misalignment or competing priorities. Sometimes that's because we're different functions or groups, sometimes it's because we're different segments. Sometimes it's just because we don't understand that shared goal. It's keeping everybody aligned to the mission, strategy, and vision. I would say as marketers actually, I feel like we are big drivers of that in an organization. It's something I always feel very responsible for and want to help my team feel very responsible for. That's the first one. The second one is we work in a very complex landscape. We're highly regulated here in healthcare. We want to do the right thing. Actually, I always tell people I'm so glad that we're highly regulated because the decisions we make actually impact life or death. It's actually for all the right reasons that we have very strict regulatory and approval processes, and then ongoing monitoring of all of our activities from our quality processes to our commercial processes and everything in between. But that can bring a lot of complexity. You've got to navigate a lot of sometimes tough legal and compliance discussions. But at the end of the day, the way we navigate them successfully as a team is really by reminding ourselves that the reason these regulations exist is to keep patients, our own family members who are consuming healthcare every day safe. We're able to do that. I feel we, despite sometimes difficult discussions, always get to the best answer in doing what's right for the patient and what's right for healthcare. Then the third thing, which is I think sometimes hard, is we all come to work every day because we actually care about healthcare and saving lives. That's sometimes really hard to remember when you get stuck in your day-to-day. You can be at a tough meeting, or a really hard strategy review, or a really hard finance review, or maybe you're missing your number in this sales goal. But at the end of the day, those hard days are really worth it because of what ultimately we're bringing to patients all over the globe. Again, there are these challenges, but over a long career I've been able to figure out how to successfully navigate them. So that I feel that even the challenges motivate me to come to work, and figure it out, and be better tomorrow. Better today and tomorrow than I was yesterday and in the past. I try to motivate my teams to think about that in the same way. Preena: Absolutely. Oh, yeah, that was very insightful. I think a lot of these can be applied to any fields, because a lot of times, in healthcare specifically, there is definitely life and death impacts. Then in other fields, people can have those same hard conversations and still need to have that resilience and build up that resilience to come back from that. Natasha: Very true. Very, very true. Probably very similar, just maybe different categories, but very similar discussions that would happen- Preena: Absolutely. Natasha: ... outside of healthcare, too. Preena: Yeah. Okay. Well, thank you very much for sharing this with us and thank you for joining us today. That is all the questions I have. We really value your time, and for coming on and speaking to all of our students. Thank you very much. Natasha: Thank you for having me. It was pleasure to talk to you.
Send us a textWhat happens when your chronic illness becomes the catalyst for global exploration and environmental advocacy? This week we talk to Nicholas Mertens! Nick was diagnosed with Crohn's disease six years ago and he's turned his health journey into a platform for investigating how climate change impacts healthcare systems worldwide.While most college students rarely venture beyond their comfort zones, Nick has represented his university at United Nations climate conferences in Dubai and Azerbaijan, researched indigenous biodiversity in Australia, and traveled to eight countries across four continents—all while managing his Crohn's disease. The political science and environmental studies major shares his remarkable journey from diagnosis to long-term remission, revealing how these experiences shaped his understanding of global health challenges.The conversation takes fascinating turns as Nick details the practicalities of international travel with a chronic condition. From refrigerating Humira during 40-hour journeys to navigating customs with medication documentation, his strategies are invaluable for anyone with IBD considering travel. His culinary adventures prove equally enlightening—discovering his body tolerated exotic kangaroo meat perfectly while rejecting familiar McDonald's hamburgers in foreign countries. These unexpected reactions highlight the unpredictable nature of Crohn's and the importance of flexibility when managing the condition abroad.Nick's involvement with the Young Patients Autoimmune Research and Empowerment Alliance (YP-AREA) demonstrates his commitment to supporting other young people with chronic conditions. This growing organization creates educational resources specifically for adolescents and young adults navigating autoimmune diseases—demographics often overlooked in medical literature and research.Listen as Nick shares his powerful perspective on remission, defining it not by lab results but by quality of life and regaining control over your condition. His parting wisdom reminds us that climate change and healthcare are "inextricably linked," and understanding these connections is crucial for anyone living with chronic illness in our rapidly changing world.Links: Young Patients Autoimmune Empowerment Alliance (YP-AREA) Instagram YP- AREA YouTube- Video of the transitioning to adult care webinar they held with friend-of-the-show, Dr. Jordan ShapiroTraveling with prescription medications- US Customs and Border ControlTraveling with IBD- Crohn's & Colitis Foundation USAIBD Passport- nonprofit with advice on traveling abroad with IBDLet's get social!!Follow us on Instagram!Follow us on Facebook!Follow us on Twitter!
Good morning from Pharma and Biotech daily: the podcast that gives you only what's important to hear in Pharma and Biotech world.AbbVie, a pharmaceutical company, has criticized President Trump's drug pricing proposal despite reporting strong earnings this quarter. The company is facing challenges with declining sales of its drug Humira and a struggling aesthetics business. Meanwhile, Gilead is moving forward with the launch of its HIV drug despite macro pressures in the industry. FDA Commissioner Marty Makary's recent statements have been fact-checked, with some contradictions emerging.In other news, SpringWorks is potentially being bought out by Merck KGaA for $3.5 billion. Wacker Biotech is offering services for advanced therapies. Stay tuned for more updates on these developments in the pharmaceutical and biotech sectors.
Beatriz was diagnosed with Rheumatoid Arthritis. It began at 16 when she heard a crack in her knee while playing tennis. By 23, her knee became severely swollen with synovial fluid, making walking difficult. After multiple knee scopes and a diagnosis of villonodular synovitis, she eventually saw a rheumatologist who diagnosed her with rheumatoid arthritis. She began treatment with sulfasalazine, prednisone, and later methotrexate, but her condition worsened. When her doctor recommended Humira, she refused, scared by the side effects. She always wondered why she couldn't live normally and was determined to find a way to recover her health. After two knee replacements, she tried various approaches—gluten-free diet, veganism, juicing—all with limited success. She then discovered the Wim Hof method and began challenging herself with ice baths. Following her second knee replacement, she started keto and joined a CrossFit gym with physiotherapy. She trained consistently despite the pain, building a supportive community. Her health improved significantly—she could run again, her elbows straightened, and she reduced her medications. After three years on keto, when some symptoms returned, she switched to a carnivore diet. Under medical supervision, her inflammatory markers decreased, and her symptoms almost disappeared. She now follows a lion diet (primarily ruminant meat) and has her blood markers under control. Beatriz is now a health coach, pursuing certification in SMHP and Carnivore nutrition, using her journey to help others with autoimmune conditions. Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tichinavh/ Timestamps: 00:00 Trailer 01:31 Introduction 07:14 Keto journey inspired by coaches 10:27 Carnivore diet journey in Mexico 11:33 Carnivore diet: health transformation 15:55 Unique doctor's holistic approach 19:09 Appreciating life's simple joys 22:26 Managing keto diet inflammation 24:33 Two-meal, meat-centric diet 28:25 Carnivore diet eases joint pain 30:24 Ketosis boosts CrossFit performance 34:44 Avoiding doctors since 2020 36:22 Life's challenges and medical struggles 40:40 Challenges of advising family on health 41:50 Seeking doctors for metabolic health 45:40 Where to find Beatriz Join Revero now to regain your health: https://revero.com/YT Revero.com is an online medical clinic for treating chronic diseases with this root-cause approach of nutrition therapy. You can get access to medical providers, personalized nutrition therapy, biomarker tracking, lab testing, ongoing clinical care, and daily coaching. You will also learn everything you need with educational videos, hundreds of recipes, and articles to make this easy for you. Join the Revero team (medical providers, etc): https://revero.com/jobs #Revero #ReveroHealth #shawnbaker #Carnivorediet #MeatHeals #AnimalBased #ZeroCarb #DietCoach #FatAdapted #Carnivore #sugarfree Disclaimer: The content on this channel is not medical advice. Please consult your healthcare provider.
Today I'm joined by Oliver Phillips, COO of Qmerit. We break down the #1 EV problem dealers aren't talking about—and how to solve it, why Florida is quietly becoming an EV powerhouse, how EVs are cutting through the political noise, and a whole lot more. This episode is brought to you by: 1. OPENLANE - The world's leading online dealer marketplace for used cars, bringing you exclusive inventory, simple transactions, and better outcomes. Learn more @ https://www.openlane.com/ 2. Experian Automotive - Like most Car Dealership Guy listeners, you're constantly looking for the inside edge on the auto industry. So if you're ready to step up your game to the next level—outpacing the competition and building customer loyalty—there's only one place to go from here: Experian Automotive. They're the only ones with exclusive data across vehicles, consumers, and credit—plus expert data scientists who connect the dots to uncover the insights you need. Get the industry-leading insights from Experian Automotive today! Learn more by visiting @ https://carguymedia.com/4cfcLjZ 3. Qmerit - Selling EVs can have a lot of friction points. But home charging installation shouldn't be one of them. That's why dealers and automakers trust Qmerit—the go-to expert for home charging installations. Join Qmerit's dealership partner program and start earning referral incentives on every installation. Visit @ https://qmerit.com/carguy to learn more.
Good morning from Pharma and Biotech daily: the podcast that gives you only what's important to hear in Pharma e Biotech world. Today, we will discuss the upcoming challenge in the pharmaceutical industry of manufacturing oral GLP-1 medications, following previous issues with injectable GLP-1s. Companies like Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk are competing for dominance in the weight loss space with these medications. Additionally, we will explore the potential impact of Trump's proposed tariffs on EU pharmaceutical companies. Humira, once a top-selling drug, is now facing declining sales as doctors switch to biosimilars and new therapies. We will also touch on the potential benefits of single-use bioreactor technology in accelerating drug manufacturing. Lastly, there are updates on various companies' financial commitments and layoffs in the industry.
Biosimilars have been around for nearly a decade, but with Humira's list price of around $7,000, biosimilars for the drug are making an incredible splash in the pharmacy industry. With several biosimilars already launched in 2025 and more in the pipeline, many plan sponsors are wondering how to navigate the integration of these products into their pharmacy benefit strategies. In this episode, Employers Health's Mike Stull chats with Jeff Casberg, head of clinical pharmacy at IPD Analytics to discuss all things biosimilars, including how biosimilar launch dates and pricing are determined, cost savings associated with these products, the importance of biosimilar formulary positioning and more. Want to hear more from Jeff? Join us at the Annual Benefits Forum April 22-23 in Columbus, Ohio, where he'll present "The Impact of New Drugs and Therapies on PBM Spend."
Protect Your Retirement W/ a Gold or Silver IRA Today!! https://www.sgtreportgold.com/ CALL( 877) 646-5347 - Noble Gold is Who I Trust An earth shattering now discovery has been made beneath the pyramids in Giza, meanwhile the collective consciousness in the United States and around the world is rising as the western world awakens to all of the old world technology and harmony which has been stolen from us. Clayten Stedmann & Jeffrey Stegman from FLFE join me with the quantifiablles. And it's only woo if you're still asking your "doctor" if Humira is right for you. Try FLFE absolutely FREE for 2 Weeks, it covers your home & your cell phone! https://www.flfe.net/sgtreport/ EMF MITIGATION, INCREASED ENERGY, IMPROVED SLEEP & More. https://rumble.com/embed/v6op9wo/?pub=2peuz
Generics Bulletin editors Dave Wallace and Dean Rudge discuss the latest updates on Stelara (ustekinumab) biosimilars in the US, including recent launches, pricing strategies, and parallels with the biosimilar Humira (adalimumab) experience.
Good morning from Pharma and Biotech daily: the podcast that gives you only what's important to hear in Pharma and Biotech world. Novo Nordisk has launched a direct-to-consumer program for their drug Wegovy, offering it at a reduced price of $499 per month for uninsured or underinsured patients, less than half of the drug's list price. Meanwhile, rare disease biotechs are facing challenges as Congress has failed to renew the rare pediatric disease priority review program, creating uncertainty and concerns within the biopharma industry. Congress failed to renew the rare pediatric disease priority review program at the end of 2024, leaving rare disease biotechs in a difficult position. Companies spent $513 million on priority review vouchers in 2024. Delphia, a biotech company, launched a new precision medicine approach called Activation Lethality in May 2024. The top 10 best-selling drugs of 2024 included Merck's Keytruda and Abbvie's Humira. Pfizer is prepared to reshore manufacturing if tariff threats are realized. Other news includes BridgeBio Oncology's plan to go public, Abbvie's deal with Gubra, and GSK CEO Emma Walmsley's pay increase. Industry leaders will be discussing the future of orphan drug development and rare disease care at the upcoming World Orphan Drug Congress in 2025. Annalee Armstrong, senior editor for Biospace, invites readers to suggest topics for future coverage and provide feedback to improve their Biospace experience.
Good morning from Pharma and Biotech daily: the podcast that gives you only what's important to hear in Pharma and Biotech world. Bristol Myers Squibb is seeking to broaden the use of its CAR T cell therapy, Breyanzi, to address marginal zone lymphoma as a strategy to offset losses from exclusivity. In other news, Boehringer Ingelheim has seen promising results in a Phase III trial for its lung fibrosis drug, randomilast, aimed at progressive pulmonary fibrosis. However, Pliant has experienced a stock decline following the halt of its Phase IIb/III study for idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. Additionally, Vertex has received FDA approval for its non-opioid pain treatment, while AbbVie has secured approval for a new antibiotic. Bain's acquisition of Tanabe for $3.3 billion is also making headlines. Regeneron is currently in a legal battle with Sanofi over the Dupixent pact, and Equillium's itolizumab is undergoing testing against Humira for ulcerative colitis. On the horizon, Acelyrin and Alumis are joining forces to address immune-mediated diseases, while Eisai is seeking subq approval for Leqembi due to sluggish US sales. Job opportunities are available at ATCC, AbbVie, Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, and Dren Bio.
Good morning from Pharma and Biotech daily: the podcast that gives you only what's important to hear in Pharma e Biotech world.Eisai reports lagging sales of Leqembi in the US and is now looking towards gaining approval for a subcutaneous version. Novo Nordisk executives are trying to boost sentiment after the failure of obesity candidate Cagrisema, without providing hard numbers. Regeneron is suing Sanofi for allegedly withholding information about the sales of Dupixent. Nasdaq newcomers Acelyrin and Alumis have merged to focus on immune-mediated diseases. The AAPS National Biotechnology Conference will cover trends in research and biopharma markets.Equillium's Itolizumab is competing with Humira in ulcerative colitis. FDA approval of Vertex's non-opioid Jornavx signals a new era in pain treatment. Novo's bispecific for hemophilia has aced a phase III pediatric trial. Lilly has increased Zepbound supply, prompting analysts to question if it is sustainable. BMS has added $2 billion to cost-cutting plans and is eyeing deals after the success of Cobenfy. AstraZeneca has axed two Alexion assets as Q4 earnings exceed expectations.
Use the power of the collective by joining a class action lawsuit against Humira's manufacturers. Reach out to Norwood Law Firm today: https://norwoodlegal.com/ Norwood Law Firm P.C. City: Tulsa Address: 1717 S Cheyenne Ave Website: https://norwoodlegal.com/
In the latest episode of IBX: The Cover Story, guest host Dr. Reetika Kumar, SVP & Chief Customer Product, Clinical Solutions & Pharmacy Services at IBX is joined by Helen Sherman, Chief Transformation Officer at Evio and Julie Bartl, President of Employee Benefits at Johnson, Kendall & Johnson to discuss our recent Humira biosimilar launch and the unique approach we took to ensure cost savings while maintaining high quality for our clients and members.
American healthcare is well known for its extreme cost and worst outcomes among industrialized (such as the 38 OECD member) countries, and beyond that to be remarkably opaque. The high cost of prescription drugs contributes, and little has been done to change that except for the government passing the Affordable Insulin Now Act at the end of 2022, enacted in 2023. But in January 2022 Mark Cuban launched Cost Plus Drugs that has transformed how many Americans can get their prescriptions filled at a fraction of the prevailing prices, bypassing pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) that control 80% of US prescriptions. That was just the beginning of a path of creative destruction (disruptive innovation, after Schumpeter) of many key components American healthcare that Cuban is leading, with Cost Plus Marketplace, Cost Plus Wellness and much more to come. He certainly qualifies as a master disrupter: “someone who is a leader in innovation and is not afraid to challenge the status quo.” Below is a video clip from our conversation dealing with insurance companies. Full videos of all Ground Truths podcasts can be seen on YouTube here. The current one is here. If you like the YouTube format, please subscribe! The audios are also available on Apple and Spotify.Transcript with External links to Audio (00:07):Hello, it's Eric Topol with Ground Truths, and I have our special phenomenal guest today, Mark Cuban, who I think you know him from his tech world contributions and Dallas Mavericks, and the last few years he's been shaking up healthcare with Cost Plus Drugs. So Mark, welcome.Mark Cuban (00:25):Thanks for having me, Eric.Eric Topol (00:27):Yeah, I mean, what you're doing, you've become a hero to millions of Americans getting them their medications at a fraction of the cost they're used to. And you are really challenging the PBM industry, which I've delved into more than ever, just in prep for our conversation. It's just amazing what this group of companies, namely the three big three CVS Caremark, Optum of UnitedHealth and Express Scripts of Cigna with a market of almost $600 billion this year, what they're doing, how can they get away with all this stuff?Inner Workings of Pharmacy Benefit ManagersMark Cuban (01:03):I mean, they're just doing business. I really don't blame them. I blame the people who contract with them. All the companies, particularly the bigger companies, the self-insured companies, where the CEO really doesn't have an understanding of their healthcare or pharmacy benefits. And so, the big PBMs paid them rebates, which they think is great if you're a CEO, when in reality it's really just a loan against the money spent by your sickest employees, and they just don't understand that. So a big part of my time these days is going to CEOs and sitting with them and explaining to them that you're getting ripped off on both your pharmacy and your healthcare side.Eric Topol (01:47):Yeah, it's amazing to me the many ways that they get away with this. I mean, they make companies sign NDAs. They're addicted to rebates. They have all sorts of ways a channel of funds to themselves. I mean, all the things you could think of whereby they even have these GPOs. Each of these companies has a group purchasing organization (I summarized in the Table below).Mark Cuban (02:12):Yeah, which gives them, it's crazy because with those GPOs. The GPO does the deal with the pharmacy manufacturer. Then the GPO also does the deal with the PBM, and then the PBM goes to the self-insured employer in particular and says, hey, we're going to pass through all the rebates. But what they don't say is they've already skimmed off 5%, 10%, 20% or more off the top through their GPO. But that's not even the worst of it. That's just money, right? I mean, that's important, but I mean, even the biggest companies rarely own their own claims data.Mark Cuban (02:45):Now think about what that means. It means you can't get smarter about the wellness of your employees and their families. You want to figure out the best way to do GLP-1s and figure out how to reduce diabetes, whatever it may be. You don't have that claims data. And then they don't allow the companies to control their own formularies. So we've seen Humira biosimilars come out and the big PBMs have done their own version of the biosimilar where we have a product called Yusimry, which is only $594 a month, which is cheaper than the cheapest biosimilar that the big three are selling. And so, you would think in a normal relationship, they would want to bring on this new product to help the employer. No, they won't do it. If the employer asks, can I just add Cost Plus Drugs to my network? They'll say no, every single time.Mark Cuban (03:45):Their job is not to save the employer money, particularly after they've given a rebate. Because once they give that loan, that rebate to the employer, they need to get that money back. It's not a gift. It's a loan and they need to have the rebates, and we don't do rebates with them at all. And I can go down the list. They don't control the formula. They don't control, you mentioned the NDAs. They can't talk to manufacturers, so they can't go to Novo or to Lilly and say, let's put together a GLP-1 wellness program. All these different things that just are common sense. It's not happening. And so, the good news is when I walk into these companies that self-insured and talk to the CEO or CFO, I'm not asking them to do something that's not in their best interest or not in the best interest of the lives they cover. I'm saying, we can save you money and you can improve the wellness of your employees and their families. Where's the downside?Eric Topol (04:40):Oh, yeah. Yeah. And the reason they can't see the claims is because of the privacy issues?Mark Cuban (04:46):No, no. That's just a business decision in the contract that the PBMs have made. You can go and ask. I mean, you have every right to your own claims. You don't need to have it personally identified. You want to find out how many people have GLP-1s or what are the trends, or God forbid there's another Purdue Pharma thing going on, and someone prescribing lots of opioids. You want to be able to see those things, but they won't do it. And that's only on the sponsor side. It's almost as bad if not worse on the manufacturer side.Eric Topol (05:20):Oh, yeah. Well, some of the work of PBMs that you've been talking about were well chronicled in the New York Times, a couple of major articles by Reed Abelson and Rebecca Robbins: The Opaque Industry Secretly Inflating Prices for Prescription Drugs and The Powerful Companies Driving Local Drugstores Out of Business. We'll link those because I think some people are not aware of all the things that are going on in the background.Mark Cuban (05:39):You see in their study and what they reported on the big PBMs, it's crazy the way it works. And literally if there was transparency, like Cost Plus offers, the cost of medications across the country could come down 20%, 30% or more.Cost Plus DrugsEric Topol (05:55):Oh, I mean, it is amazing, really. And now let's get into Cost Plus. I know that a radiologist, Alex Oshmyansky contacted you with a cold email a little over three years ago, and you formed Cost Plus Drugs on the basis of that, right?Mark Cuban (06:12):Yep, that's exactly what happened.Eric Topol (06:15):I give you credit for responding to cold emails and coming up with a brilliant idea with this and getting behind it and putting your name behind it. And what you've done, so you started out with something like 110 generics and now you're up well over 1,200 or 2,500 or something like that?Mark Cuban (06:30):And adding brands. And so, started with 111. Now we're around 2,500 and trying to grow it every single day. And not only that, just to give people an overview. When you go to www.costplusdrugs.com and you put in the name of your medication, let's just say it's tadalafil, and if it comes up. In this case, it will. It'll show you our actual cost, and then we just mark it up 15%. It's the same markup for everybody, and if you want it, we'll have a pharmacist check it. And so, that's a $5 fee. And then if you want ship to mail order, it's $5 for shipping. And if you want to use our pharmacy network, then we can connect you there and you can just pick it up at a local pharmacy.Eric Topol (07:10):Yeah, no, it's transparency. We don't have a lot of that in healthcare in America, right?Mark Cuban (07:15):No. And literally, Eric, the smartest thing that we did, and we didn't expect this, it's always the law of unintended consequences. The smartest thing we did was publish our entire price list because that allowed any company, any sponsor, CMS, researchers to compare our prices to what others were already paying. And we've seen studies come out saying, for this X number of urology drugs, CMS would save $3.6 billion a year. For this number of heart drugs at this amount per year, for chemotherapy drugs or MS drugs this amount. And so, it's really brought attention to the fact that for what PBMs call specialty drugs, whether there's nothing special about them, we can save people a lot of money.Eric Topol (08:01):It's phenomenal. As a cardiologist, I looked up a couple of the drugs that I'm most frequently prescribed, just like Rosuvastatin what went down from $134 to $5.67 cents or Valsartan it went down from $69 to $7.40 cents. But of course, there's some that are much more dramatic, like as you mentioned, whether it's drugs for multiple sclerosis, the prostate cancer. I mean, some of these are just thousands and thousands of dollars per month that are saved, brought down to levels that you wouldn't think would even be conceivable. And this has been zero marketing, right?Mark Cuban (08:42):Yeah, none. It's all been word of mouth and my big mouth, of course. Going out there and doing interviews like this and going to major media, but it's amazing. We get emails and letters and people coming up to us almost single day saying, you saved my grandma's life. You saved my life. We weren't going to be able to afford our imatinib or our MS medication. And it went from being quoted $2,000 a month to $33 a month. It's just insane things like that that are still happening.Eric Topol (09:11):Well, this is certainly one of the biggest shakeups to occur in US healthcare in years. And what you've done in three years is just extraordinary. This healthcare in this country is with its over 4 trillion, pushing $5 trillion a year of expenditure.[New CMS report this week pegs the number at $4.867 trillion for 2023]Mark Cuban (09:30):It's interesting. I think it's really fixable. This has been the easiest industry to the disrupt I've ever been involved in. And it's not even close because all it took was transparency and not jacking up margins to market. We choose to use a fixed margin markup. Some choose to price to market, the Martin Shkreli approach, if you will. And just by being transparent, we've had an impact. And the other side of it is, it's the same concept on the healthcare side. Transparency helps, but to go a little field of pharmacy if you want. The insane part, and this applies to care and pharmacy, whatever plan we have, whether it's for health or whether it's for pharmaceuticals, there's typically a deductible, typically a copay, and typically a co-insurance.Insurance CompaniesMark Cuban (10:20):The crazy part of all that is that people taking the default risk, the credit risk are the providers. It's you, it's the hospital, it's the clinics that you work for. Which makes no sense whatsoever that the decisions that you or I make for our personal insurance or for the companies we run, or if we work for the government, what we do with Medicare or Medicare Advantage, the decisions we all make impacts the viability of providers starting with the biggest hospital systems. And so, as a result, they become subprime lenders without a car or a house to go after if they can't collect. And so, now you see a bunch of people, particularly those under the ACA with the $9,000, the bronze plans or $18,000 out-of-pocket limits go into debt, significant medical debt. And it's unfortunate. We look at the people who are facing these problems and think, well, it must be the insurance companies.Mark Cuban (11:23):It's actually not even the insurance companies. It's the overall design of the system. But underneath that, it's still whoever picks the insurance companies and sets plans that allow those deductibles, that's the core of the problem. And until we get to a system where the providers aren't responsible for the credit for defaults and dealing with all that credit risk, it's almost going to be impossible to change. Because when you see stories like we've all seen in news of a big healthcare, a BUCA healthcare (Blue Cross Blue Shield (BCBS), UnitedHealth, Cigna, and Aetna/CVS) plan with all the pre-authorizations and denials, typically they're not even taking the insurance risk. They're acting as the TPA (third party administrator) as the claims processor effectively for whoever hired them. And it goes back again, just like I talked about before. And as long as CMS hires or allows or accepts these BUCAs with these plans for Medicare for the ACA (Affordable care Act), whatever it may be, it's not going to work. As long as self-insured employers and the 50 million lives they cover hire these BUCAs to act as the TPAs, not as insurance companies and give them leeway on what to approve and what to authorize and what not to authorize. The system's going to be a mess, and that's where we are today.Academic Health System PartnershipsEric Topol (12:41):Yeah. Well, you've been talking of course to employers and enlightening them, and you're also enlightening the public, of course. That's why you have millions of people that are saving their cost of medications, but recently you struck a partnership with Penn Medicine. That's amazing. So is that your first academic health system that you approached?Cost Plus MarketplaceMark Cuban (13:00):I don't know if it was the first we approached, but it was certainly one of the biggest that we signed. We've got Cost Plus Marketplace (CPM) where we make everything from injectables to you name it, anything a hospital might buy. But again, at a finite markup, we make eight and a half percent I think when it's all said and done. And that saves hospital systems millions of dollars a year.Eric Topol (13:24):Yeah. So that's a big change in the way you're proceeding because what it was just pills that you were buying from the pharma companies, now you're actually going to make injectables and you're going to have a manufacturing capability. Is that already up and going?Mark Cuban (13:39):That's all up and going as of March. We're taking sterile injectables that are on the shortage list, generic and manufacturing them in Dallas using a whole robotics manufacturing plant that really Alex created. He's the rocket scientist behind it. And we're limited in capacity now, we're limited about 2 million vials, but we'll sell those to Cost Plus Marketplace, and we'll also sell those direct. So Cost Plus Marketplace isn't just the things we manufacture. It's a wide variety of products that hospitals buy that we then have a minimal markup, and then for the stuff we manufacture, we'll sell those to direct to like CHS was our first customer.Eric Topol (14:20):Yeah, that's a big expansion from going from the pills to this. Wow.Mark Cuban (14:24):It's a big, big expansion, but it goes to the heart of being transparent and not being greedy, selling on a markup. And ourselves as a company, being able to remain lean and mean. The only way we can sell at such a low markup. We have 20 employees on the Cost Plus side and 40 employees involved with the factories, and that's it.Eric Topol (14:46):Wow. So with respect to, you had this phenomenal article and interview with WIRED Magazine just this past week. I know Lauren Goode interviewed you, and she said, Mark, is this really altruistic and I love your response. You said, “how much f*****g money do I need? I'm not trying to land on Mars.” And then you said, “at this point in my life, it's just like more money, or f**k up the healthcare industry.” This was the greatest, Mark. I mean, I got to tell you, it was really something.Mark Cuban (15:18):Yeah.Eric Topol (15:19):Well, in speaking of that, of course, the allusion to a person we know well, Elon. He posted on X/Twitter in recent days , I think just three or four days ago, shouldn't the American people be getting their money's worth? About this high healthcare administration costs where the US is completely away from any other OECD country. And as you and I know, we have the worst outcomes and the most costs of all the rich countries in the world. There's just nothing new here. Maybe it's new to him, but you had a fabulous response on both X and Bluesky where you went over all these things point by point. And of course, the whole efforts that you've been working on now for three years. You also mentioned something that was really interesting that I didn't know about were these ERISA lawsuits[Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) of 1974.] Can you tell us about that?ERISA LawsuitsMark Cuban (16:13):Yeah, that's a great question, Eric. So for self-insured companies in particular, we have a fiduciary responsibility on a wellness and on a financial basis to offer the members, your employees and their families the best outcomes at the best price. Now, you can't guarantee best outcomes, but you have to be able to explain the choices you made. You don't have to pick the cheapest, but again, you have to be able to explain why you made the choices that you did. And because a lot of companies have been doing, just like we discussed earlier, doing deals on the pharmacy side with just these big PBMs, without accounting for best practices, best price, best outcomes, a couple companies got sued. Johnson and Johnson and Wells Fargo were the first to get sued. And I think that's just the beginning. That's just the writing on the wall. I think they'll lose because they just dealt with the big pharmacy PBMs. And I think that's one of the reasons why we're so busy at Cost Plus and why I'm so busy because we're having conversation after conversation with companies and plenty of enough lawyers for that matter who want to see a price list and be able to compare what they're paying to what we sell for to see if they're truly living up to that responsibility.Eric Topol (17:28):Yeah, no, that's a really important thing that's going on right now that I think a lot of people don't know about. Now, the government of the US think because it's the only government of any rich country in the world, if not any country that doesn't negotiate prices, i.e., CMS or whatever. And only with the recent work of insulin, which is a single one drug, was there reduction of price. And of course, it's years before we'll see other drugs. How could this country not negotiate drugs all these years where every other place in the world they do negotiate with pharma?Mark Cuban (18:05):Because as we alluded to earlier, the first line in every single pharmaceutical and healthcare contract says, you can't talk about this contract. It's like fight club. The number one rule of fight club is you can't talk about fight club, and it's really difficult to negotiate prices when it's opaque and everything's obfuscated where you can't really get into the details. So it's not that we're not capable of it, but it's just when there's no data there, it's really difficult because look, up until we started publishing our prices, how would anybody know?Mark Cuban (18:39):I mean, how was anybody going to compare numbers? And so, when the government or whoever started to negotiate, they tried to protect themselves and they tried to get data, but those big PBMs certainly have not been forthcoming. We've come along and publish our price list and all that starts to change. Now in terms of the bigger picture, there is a solution there, as I said earlier, but it really comes down to talking to the people who make the decisions to hire the big insurance companies and the big PBMs and telling them, no, you're not acting in your own best interest. Here's anybody watching out there. Ask your PBM if they can audit. If you can audit rather your PBM contract. What they'll tell you is, yeah, you can, but you have to use our people. It's insane. And that's from top to bottom. And so, I'm a big believer that if we can get starting with self-insured employers to act in their own best interest, and instead of working with a big PBM work with a pass-through PBM. A pass-through PBM will allow you to keep your own claims, own all your own data, allow you to control your own formulary.Mark Cuban (19:54):You make changes where necessary, no NDA, so you can't talk to manufacturers. All these different abilities that just seem to make perfect sense are available to all self-insured employers. And if the government, same thing. If the government requires pass-through PBMs, the price of medications will drop like a rock.Eric Topol (20:16):Is that possible? You think that could happen?Mark Cuban (20:19):Yes. Somebody's got to understand it and do it. I'm out there screaming, but we will see what happens with the new administration. There's nothing hard about it. And it's the same thing with Medicare and Medicare Advantage healthcare plans. There's nothing that says you have to use the biggest companies. Now, the insurance companies have to apply and get approved, but again, there's a path there to work with companies that can reduce costs and improve outcomes. The biggest challenge in my mind, and I'm still trying to work through this to fully understand it. I think where we really get turned upside down as a country is we try to avoid fraud from the provider perspective and the patient perspective. We're terrified that patients are going to use too much healthcare, and like everybody's got Munchausen disease.Mark Cuban (21:11):And we're terrified that the providers are going to charge too much or turn into Purdue Pharma and over-prescribe or one of these surgery mills that just is having somebody get surgery just so they can make money. So in an effort to avoid those things, we ask the insurance companies and the PBMs to do pre-authorizations, and that's the catch 22. How do we find a better way to deal with fraud at the patient and provider level? Because once we can do that, and maybe it's AI, maybe it's accepting fraud, maybe it's imposing criminal penalties if somebody does those things. But once we can overcome that, then it becomes very transactional. Because the reality is most insurance companies aren't insurance companies. 50 million lives are covered by self-insured employers that use the BUCAs, the big insurance companies, but not as insurance companies.Eric Topol (22:07):Yeah, I was going to ask you about that because if you look at these three big PBMs that control about 80% of the market, not the pass-throughs that you just mentioned, but the big ones, they each are owned by an insurance company. And so, when the employer says, okay, we're going to cover your healthcare stuff here, we're going to cover your prescriptions there.Mark Cuban (22:28):Yeah, it's all vertically integrated.Mark Cuban (22:36):And it gets even worse than that, Eric. So they also own specialty pharmacies, “specialty pharmacies” that will require you to buy from. And as I alluded to earlier, a lot of these medications like Imatinib, they'll list as being a specialty medication, but it's a pill. There's nothing special about it, but it allows them to charge a premium. And that's a big part of how the PBMs make a lot of their money, the GPO stuff we talked about, but also forcing an employer to go through the specialty mail order company that charges an arm and the leg.Impact on Hospitals and ProceduresEric Topol (23:09):Yeah. Well, and the point you made about transparency, we've seen this of course across US healthcare. So for example, as you know, if you were to look at what does it cost to have an operation like let's say a knee replacement at various hospitals, you can find that it could range fivefold. Of course, you actually get the cost, and it could be the hospital cost, and then there's the professional cost. And the same thing occurs for if you're having a scan, if you're having an MRI here or there. So these are also this lack of transparency and it's hard to get to the numbers, of course. There seems to be so many other parallels to the PBM story. Would you go to these other areas you think in the future?Mark Cuban (23:53):Yeah, we're doing it now. I'm doing it. So we have this thing called project dog food, and what it is, it's for my companies and what we've done is say, look, let's understand how the money works in healthcare.Mark Cuban (24:05):And when you think about it, when you go to get that knee done, what happens? Well, they go to your insurance company to get a pre-authorization. Your doctor says you need a knee replacement. I got both my hips replaced. Let's use that. Doctor says, Mark, you need your hips replaced. Great, right? Let's set up an appointment. Well, first the insurance company has to authorize it, okay, they do or they don't, but the doctor eats their time up trying to deal with the pre-authorization. And if it's denied, the doctor's time is eaten up and an assistance's time is eaten up. Some other administrator's time is eaten up, the employer's time is eaten up. So that's one significant cost. And then from there, there's a deductible. Now I can afford my deductible, but if there is an individual getting that hip replacement who can't afford the deductible, now all of a sudden you're still going to be required to do that hip replacement, most likely.Mark Cuban (25:00):Because in most of these contracts that self-insured employers sign, Medicare Advantage has, Medicare has, it says that between the insurance company and the provider, in this case, the hospital, you have to do the operation even if the deductibles not paid. So now the point of all this is you have the hospital in this case potentially accumulating who knows how much bad debt. And it's not just the lost amount of millions and millions and billions across the entire healthcare spectrum that's there. It's all the incremental administrative costs. The lawyers, the benefits for those people, the real estate, the desk, the office space, all that stuff adds up to $10 billion plus just because the hospitals take on that credit default risk. But wait, there's more. So now the surgery happens, you send the bill to the insurance company. The insurance company says, well, we're not going to pay you. Well, we have a contract. This is what it says, hip replacement's $34,000. Well, we don't care first, we're going to wait. So we get the time value of money, and then we're going to short pay you.Mark Cuban (26:11):So the hospital gets short paid. So what do they have to do? They have to sue them or send letters or whatever it is to try to get their money. When we talk to the big hospital systems, they say that's 2%. That's 2% of their revenue. So you have all these associated credit loss dollars, you've got the 2% of, in a lot of cases, billions and billions of dollars. And so, when you add all those things up, what happens? Well, what happens is because the providers are losing all that money and having to spend all those incremental dollars for the administration of all that, they have to jack up prices.Eric Topol (26:51):Yeah. Right.Mark Cuban (26:53):So what we have done, we've said, look for my companies, we're going to pay you cash. We're going to pay you cash day one. When Mark gets that hip replacement, that checks in the bank before the operation starts, if that's the way you want it. Great, they're not going to have pre-authorizations. We're going to trust you until you give us a reason not to trust you. We're not short paying, obviously, because we're paying cash right there then.Mark Cuban (27:19):But in a response for all that, because we're cutting out all those ancillary costs and credit risk, I want Medicare pricing. Now the initial response is, well, Medicare prices, that's awful. We can't do it. Well, when you really think about the cost and operating costs of a hospital, it's not the doctors, it's not the facilities, it's all the administration that cost all the money. It's all the credit risks that cost all the money. And so, if you remove that credit risk and all the administration, all those people, all that real estate, all those benefits and overhead associated with them, now all of a sudden selling at a Medicare price for that hip replacement is really profitable.Eric Topol (28:03):Now, is that a new entity Cost Plus healthcare?Mark Cuban (28:07):Well, it's called Cost Plus Wellness. It's not an entity. What we're going to do, so the part I didn't mention is all the direct contracts that we do that have all these pieces, as part of them that I just mentioned, we're going to publish them.Eric Topol (28:22):Ah, okay.Mark Cuban (28:23):And you can see exactly what we've done. And if you think about the real role of the big insurances companies for hospitals, it's a sales funnel.Getting Rid of Insurance CompaniesEric Topol (28:33):Yeah, yeah. Well, in fact, I really was intrigued because you did a podcast interview with Andrew Beam and the New England Journal of Medicine AI, and in that they talked about getting rid of the insurers, the insurance industry, just getting rid of it and just make it a means test for people. So it's not universal healthcare, it's a different model that you described. Can you go over that? I thought it was fantastic.Mark Cuban (29:00):Two pieces there. Let's talk about universal healthcare first. So for my companies, for our project dog food for the Mark Cuban companies, if for any employee or any of the lives we cover, if they work within network, anybody we have the direct contract with its single-payer. They pay their premiums, but they pay nothing else out of pocket. That's the definition of single-payer.Eric Topol (29:24):Yeah.Mark Cuban (29:25):So if we can get all this done, then the initial single-payers will be self-insured employers because it'll be more cost effective to them to do this approach. We hope, we still have to play it all through. So that's part one. In terms of everybody else, then you can say, why do we need insurance companies if they're not even truly acting as insurance companies? You're not taking full risk because even if it's Medicare Advantage, they're getting a capitated amount per month. And then that's getting risk adjusted because of the population you have, and then there's also an index depending on the location, so there's more or less money that occurs then. So let's just do what we need to do in this particular case, because the government is effectively eliminating the risk for the insurance company for the most part. And if you look at the margins for Medicare Advantage, I was just reading yesterday, it's like $1,700 a year for the average Medicare Advantage plan. So it's not like they're taking a lot of risk. All they're doing is trying to deny as many claims as they can.Eric Topol (30:35):Deny, Deny. Yeah.Mark Cuban (30:37):So instead, let's just get somebody who's a TPA, somebody who does the transaction, the claims processing, and whoever's in charge. It could be CMS, can set the terms for what's accepted and what's denied, and you can have a procedure for people that get denied that want to challenge it. And that's great, there's one in place now, but you make it a little simpler. But you take out the economics for the insurance company to just deny, deny, deny. There's no capitation. There's no nothing.Mark Cuban (31:10):The government just says, okay, we're hiring this TPA to handle the claims processing. It is your job. We're paying you per transaction.Mark Cuban (31:18):You don't get paid more if you deny. You don't get paid less if you deny. There's no bonuses if you keep it under a certain amount, there's no penalties If you go above a certain amount. We want you just to make sure that the patient involved is getting the best care, end of story. And if there's fraud involved as the government, because we have access to all that claims data, we're going to introduce AI that reviews that continuously.Mark Cuban (31:44):So that we can see things that are outliers or things that we question, and there's going to mean mistakes, but the bet was, if you will, where we save more and get better outcomes that way versus the current system and I think we will. Now, what ends up happening on top of that, once you have all that claims data and all that information and everybody's interest is aligned, best care at the best price, no denials unless it's necessary, reduce and eliminate fraud. Once everybody's in alignment, then as long as that's transparent. If the city of Dallas decides for all the lives they cover the 300,000 lives they cover between pharmacy and healthcare, we can usually in actuarial tables and some statistical analysis, we can say, you know what, even with a 15% tolerance, it's cheaper for us just to pay upfront and do this single-pay program, all our employees in the lives we cover, because we know what it's going to take.Mark Cuban (32:45):If the government decides, well, instead of Medicare Advantage the way it was, we know all the costs. Now we can say for all Medicare patients, we'll do Medicare for all, simply because we have definitive and deterministic pricing. Great. Now, there's still going to be outlier issues like all the therapies that cost a million dollars or whatever. But my attitude there is if CMS goes to Lilly, Novo, whoever for their cure for blindness that's $3.4 million. Well, that's great, but what we'll say is, okay, give us access to your books. We want to know what your breakeven point is. What is that breakeven point annually? We'll write you a check for that.Eric Topol (33:26):Yeah.Mark Cuban (33:27):If we have fewer patients than need that, okay, you win. If we have more patients than need that, it's like a Netflix subscription with unlimited subscribers, then we will have whatever it is, because then the manufacturer doesn't lose money, so they can't complain about R&D and not being able to make money. And that's for the CMS covered population. You can do a Netflix type subscription for self-insured employers. Hey, it's 25 cents per month per employee or per life covered for the life of the patent, and we'll commit to that. And so, now all of a sudden you get to a point where healthcare starts becoming not only transparent but deterministic.Eric Topol (34:08):Yeah. What you outline here in these themes are extraordinary. And one of the other issues that you are really advocating is patient empowerment, but one of the problems we have in the US is that people don't own their data. They don't even have all their data. I expect you'd be a champion of that as well.Mark Cuban (34:27):Well, of course. Yeah. I mean, look, I've got into arguments with doctors and public health officials about things like getting your own blood tested. I've been an advocate of getting my own blood tested for 15 years, and it helped me find out that I needed thyroid medication and all of these things. So I'm a big advocate. There's some people that think that too much data gives you a lot of false positives, and people get excited in this day and age to get more care when it should only be done if there are symptoms. I'm not a believer in that at all. I think now, particularly as AI becomes more applicable and available, you'll be able to be smarter about the data you capture. And that was always my final argument. Either you trust doctors, or you don't. Because even if there's an aberrational TSH reading and minus 4.4 and it's a little bit high, well the doctor's going to say, well, let's do another blood test in a month or two. The doctor is still the one that has to write the prescription. There's no downside to trusting your doctor in my mind.Eric Topol (35:32):And what you're bringing up is that we're already seeing how AI can pick up things even in the normal range, the trends long before a clinician physician would pick it up. Now, last thing I want to say is you are re-imagining healthcare like no one. I mean, there's what you're doing here. It started with some pills and it's going in a lot of different directions. You are rocking it here. I didn't even know some of the latest things that you're up to. This seems to be the biggest thing you've ever done.Mark Cuban (36:00):I hope so.Mark Cuban (36:01):I mean, like we said earlier, what could be better than people saying our healthcare system is good. What changed? That Cuban guy.Eric Topol (36:10):Well, did you give up Shark Tank so you could put more energy into this?Mark Cuban (36:16):Not really. It was more for my kids.Eric Topol (36:19):Okay, okay.Mark Cuban (36:20):They go hand in hand, obviously. I can do this stuff at home as opposed to sitting on a set wondering if I should invest in Dude Wipes again.Eric Topol (36:28):Well, look, we're cheering for you. This is, I've not seen a shakeup in my life in American healthcare like this. You are just rocking. It's fantastic.Mark Cuban (36:37):Everybody out there that's watching, check out www.costplusdrugs.com, check out Cost Plus Marketplace, which is business.costplusdrugs.com and just audit everything. What I'm trying to do is say, okay, if it's 1955 and we're starting healthcare all over again, how would we do it? And really just keep it simple. Look to where the risk is and remove the risk where possible. And then it comes down to who do you trust and make sure you trust but verify. Making sure there aren't doctors or systems that are outliers and making sure that there aren't companies that are outliers or patients rather that are outliers. And so, I think there's a path there. It's not nearly as difficult, it's just starting them with corporations, getting those CEOs to get educated and act in their own best interest.Eric Topol (37:32):Well, you're showing us the way. No question. So thanks so much for joining, and we'll be following this with really deep interest because you're moving at high velocity, and thank you.**************************************************Thank you for reading, listening and subscribing to Ground Truths.If you found this fun and informative please share it!All content on Ground Truths—its newsletters, analyses, and podcasts, are free, open-access.Paid subscriptions are voluntary. All proceeds from them go to support Scripps Research. Many thanks to those who have contributed—they have greatly helped fund our summer internship programs for the past two years. I welcome all comments from paid subscribers and will do my best to respond to each of them and any questions.Thanks to my producer Jessica Nguyen and to Sinjun Balabanoff for audio and video support at Scripps Research.FootnoteThe PBMS (finally) are under fire—2 articles from the past week Get full access to Ground Truths at erictopol.substack.com/subscribe
Good morning from Pharma and Biotech Daily: the podcast that gives you only what's important to hear in Pharma and Biotech world. Merck has entered the obesity pill race with a $2 billion deal with Hansoh, allowing them to compete in the crowded oral GLP-1 space. The FDA issued warning letters against GLP-1 compounders, and the EMA will investigate the eye risk for Novo Nordisk's Ozempic. Novo has also collaborated with Photys to add a novel approach to their cardiometabolic pipeline. Intelligencia AI accurately predicted high-potential biotechs before the ASH conference, showcasing the reliability of its predictive AI methodology. Tenaya stock crashed due to underwhelming data on cardio gene therapy, with a focus on scaling in 2024. Manufacturing has become the hottest target in biopharma, with all of pharma vying for capacity and talent. AbbVie's Humira held 105 patents, preventing biosimilar competition for over 20 years, prompting discussions on policy reforms to prevent unjust extensions of drug monopolies. Moderna investors are advised to hold after a steep drop in 2024. The year saw cautious IPOs, restraint, and breakthroughs. BMS' cost-cutting campaign is in progress, while AbbVie continues its deal-making spree. Lilly and Pfizer executives express an optimistic outlook. Layoffs occurred at Outlook Therapeutics. Novo Holdings successfully closed its $16.5 billion acquisition of Catalent, despite facing pressure from various stakeholders to block the deal. The acquisition was approved by both the European Commission and the Federal Trade Commission, raising concerns about competition in the CDMO sector.
There's a lot of concern right now about healthcare affordability, but not enough action. Paul Markovich, the CEO of Blue Shield of California, is on a mission to bring down health costs by reducing administrative overhead and negotiating lower drug prices. In this episode we dive deep into Paul's call to action for healthcare leaders to tackle the affordability crisis head-on. Paul and I discuss:How Blue Shield slashed the cost of arthritis drug Humira, by offering a biosimilar at 25% of the costWhy reducing healthcare costs is critical to averting a national economic crisisWhether we need a new national mandate for health data sharingPaul's advice on tackling fear and being a brave leaderPaul says healthcare affordability isn't just a pocketbook issues for patients, it's also a huge economic issue for the nation:“The reality is we are facing a huge affordability crisis, a fiscal crisis right now. Even though our economy is running pretty much at or near full employment, we have record fiscal deficits… We cannot keep spending on this program the way that we are. We need to bring the spending down... Even our dysfunctional political system is going to have to deal with that.”Relevant LinksCalifornia's new data sharing law Announcement of new Humira biosimilar Investment in nonprodit Civica for lower cost genericsNew prior authorization platform with SalesforceAbout Our GuestPaul Markovich is Chief Executive Officer of Blue Shield of California, a nonprofit health plan with $25 billion in annual revenue serving 4.8 million members in the state's commercial, individual, and government markets. Markovich has launched and led numerous initiatives to drive innovation and help reimagine healthcare, including funding support for a statewide provider directory to make it easier for Californians to find physicians and facilities in their plan; supporting development of a statewide health information network for patients' records, enabling more seamless and holistic care; and investing in a partnership with the California Medical Association to help physicians pilot new care delivery models and leverage technology.Markovich is a North Dakota native and Rhodes Scholar with a master's in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from Oxford University. He is a graduate of Colorado College, where he earned a Bachelor of Arts in International Political Economy and played Division I hockey.Source: https://www.blueshieldca.com/en/home/about-blue-shield/corporate-information/leadership/paul-markovichStay InformedSign up for The Other 80 Newsletter to receive a monthly update with reflections, news, events, jobs and funding curated for you by Claudia. Click here to sign up.Connect With...
Adam and Drew discuss the culture of too much self-esteem and the now defunct Naugles fast food chain. They then take listener calls on Humira and long distance relationships.
Show Notes 1. Jeremias S. Skyrizi overtakes Humira: “product hopping” leaves biosimilar market in limbo. The Center for Biosimilars. November 7, 2024. Accessed November 27, 2024. https://www.centerforbiosimilars.com/view/skyrizi-overtakes-humira-product-hopping-leaves-biosimilar-market-in-limbo 2. Jeremias S. Celltrion sets sights on 2030 with expanded biosimilar portfolio, market reach. The Center for Biosimilars. November 6, 2024. Accessed November 27, 2024. https://www.centerforbiosimilars.com/view/celltrion-sets-sights-on-2030-with-expanded-biosimilar-portfolio-market-reach 3. Ferreri D. Making the cost of IBD care sustainable. The Center for Biosimilars. November 2, 2024. Accessed November 27, 2024. https://www.centerforbiosimilars.com/view/making-the-cost-of-ibd-care-sustainable 4. Ferreri D. Achieving PFS in advanced gastric cancer with HLX02 biosimilar, chemotherapy. The Center for Biosimilars. November 23, 2024. Accessed November 27, 2024. https://www.centerforbiosimilars.com/view/achieving-pfs-in-advanced-gastric-cancer-with-hlx02-biosimilar-chemotherapy 5. Ferreri D. Subcutaneous infliximab CT-P13 superior to placebo as maintenance therapy for IBD. The Center for Biosimilars. November 16, 2024. Accessed November 27, 2024. https://www.centerforbiosimilars.com/view/subcutaneous-infliximab-ct-p13-superior-to-placebo-as-maintenance-therapy-for-ibd 6. Ferreri D. Challenges, obstacles, and future directions for anti-TNF biosimilars in IBD. The Center for Biosimilars.November 9, 2024. Accessed November 27, 2024. https://www.centerforbiosimilars.com/view/challenges-obstacles-and-future-directions-for-anti-tnf-biosimilars-in-ibd 7. Jeremias S. Breaking down biosimilar barriers: the patent system.The Center for Biosimilars. November 11, 2024. Accessed November 27, 2024. https://www.centerforbiosimilars.com/view/breaking-down-biosimilar-barriers-the-patent-system 8. Jeremias S. Breaking down biosimilar barriers: payer and PBM policies. The Center for Biosimilars. November 13, 2024. Accessed November 27, 2024. https://www.centerforbiosimilars.com/view/breaking-down-biosimilar-barriers-payer-and-pbm-policies 9. Poore D. Breaking down biosimilar barriers: interchangeability. The Center for Biosimilars. November 14, 2024. Accessed November 27, 2024. https://www.centerforbiosimilars.com/view/breaking-down-biosimilar-barriers-interchangeability 10. The Center for Biosimilars Staff. Webinar: streamlining the regulatory process to advance access to biosimilars. The Center for Biosimilars. November 21, 2024. Accessed November 27, 2024. https://www.centerforbiosimilars.com/view/webinar-streamlining-the-regulatory-process-to-advance-access-to-biosimilars 11. Jeremias S. Can global policies to boost biosimilar adoption work in the US? The Center for Biosimilars. November 17, 2024. Accessed November 27, 2024. https://www.centerforbiosimilars.com/view/can-global-policies-to-boost-biosimilar-adoption-work-in-the-us-
This episode breaks down real-world market tests and savvy competitive moves! Get actionable strategies for product changes, budget-friendly consumer research, and the power of understanding your audience.And don't forget! You can crush your marketing strategy with just a few minutes a week by signing up for the StrategyCast Newsletter. You'll receive weekly bursts of marketing tips, clips, resources, and a whole lot more. Visit https://strategycast.com/ for more details.==Let's Break It Down==05:17 Research program analyzes data for insights development.08:12 Humira: versatile drug, profitable for AbbVie, biologics.10:41 Focus on clear benefits to drive change.13:12 Assess market needs; ensure prototype satisfies criteria.16:52 Segmenting meals, not people, by occasion.20:39 Your plant probably eats better than you.24:58 McCormick's packaging change caused customer confusion.26:12 People ignore instructions; follow intuitive methods instead.30:53 Monitor competitors closely; adapt strategy cautiously.33:00 Engage directly with customers for market insights.==Where You Can Find Us==Website: https://strategycast.com/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/strategy_cast/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/strategycast==Leave a Review==Hey there, StrategyCast fans!If you've found our tips and tricks on marketing strategies helpful in growing your business, we'd be thrilled if you could take a moment to leave us a review on Apple Podcasts. Your feedback not only supports us but also helps others discover how they can elevate their business game!
Good morning from Pharma and Biotech daily: the podcast that gives you only what's important to hear in Pharma e Biotech world. Merck exceeded Q3 expectations but adjusted its 2024 guidance downwards due to underwhelming revenues from Gardasil and Januvia. Novo is making progress in resolving shortages of Ozempic and Wegovy. Amgen is gearing up for the release of obesity data for Maritide. AbbVie surpassed Q3 estimates thanks to Skyrizi and Rinvoq, despite Humira falling short. The FDA announced full availability of Novo's Ozempic and Wegovy after previous shortages. Compass has postponed pivotal trial results for psilocybin and reduced staff by 30%. Novartis secured first-line approval for Scemblix in specific CML patients. Pfizer's Q3 earnings were robust, with numerous deals being made as the election approaches. Smaller funds are starting to invest in early-stage science as larger VCs raise billions.
Send us a textBrandy Shantz is the host of the ‘Living Chronic' podcast. She suffers from severe Crohn's disease after serving near burn pits in Afghanistan. 4 years ago, she began having severe symptoms and ended up suffering a reaction to the Humira she was taking for Crohn's, which took 19 months for doctors to diagnose!! Upon receiving the diagnosis of drug induced lupus and neurological issues, Brandy worked to recover but never got back to herself. It took her another 2 1/2 years going to doctors to tell them she was not ok, and being told it was just psychosomatic. Then, finally she was diagnosed with cardiac autonomic neuropathy and small fiber neuropathy as a result of the reaction to the drugs. Even today, she is still going through tests to understand how severe the damage is and if she can actualy treat the problem. Brandy talks about advocating for yourself and learning to live and continue to thrive despite having a chronic illness. What an amazing story!livingchronic911.comInsta: Livingchronic911X: BrandySchantz TikTok: @brandyschantzSupport the show
Send us a textIt's no secret that medical drug prices have been out of control for most Americans.However, one hospital group has a novel idea to control drug spending.Blue Shield of California is bypassing PBMs by negotiating directly with the manufacturer of a biosimilar for Humira.Is this a one-off experiment or the start of a bigger trend that can drive industry-wide impact?In this episode of CareTalk, David E. Williams and John Driscoll discuss these price negotiation tactics and what they see as the long-term results of Blue Shield of California's attempt to lower pharmaceutical prices.This episode is brought to you by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at https://betterhelp.com/caretalk and get on your way to being your best self.As a BetterHelp affiliate, we may receive compensation from BetterHelp if you purchase products or services through the links provided.TOPICS(0:34) Sponsorship(1:50) Understanding the Complex Nature of Deals with PBMs(2:40) Examining the Humira Deal(3:18) Is the Humira Deal a Trend in Healthcare?(5:43) Will Deals Like Humira Lower Drug Costs?(7:30) Will Patients See Lower Drug Costs?(9:58) How PBMs Factor into Lowering Drug Costs(11:58) The Investor's Perspective on the Blue Shield Deal(13:20) How Patients Factor into Drug Negotiations(16:48) Exploring Cost Plus's Pricing Deals(20:30) PBMs, Inflation, and the Future of Drug Costs
Can you imagine the frustration of battling a chronic illness and not finding the right treatment? On our milestone 100th episode, we reconnect with the remarkable Alison, who was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis at the age of 28. Her journey from struggling with an unhelpful specialist to meeting the incredible Dr. Tony is nothing short of inspiring. Despite the bittersweet news of Tony's upcoming retirement, Allison's story is a testament to the impact a dedicated and compassionate doctor can have on a patient's life.Hair loss can be a devastating side effect of chronic illness, and we tackle this sensitive topic with Allison. She opens up about how hair extensions and toppers have helped her regain confidence. We discuss the life-changing effects of Humira on her condition, and offer practical beauty tips for taming those pesky baby hairs. And because it's not all serious, we share our favorite coffee indulgences and quirky local coffee shop experiences, proving that sometimes, it's the small joys that make the biggest difference.Our episode underscores the essential role of community in navigating chronic illness. We stress the power of connecting with others who truly understand your challenges, and how sharing stories and support can be more beneficial than any medical advice. The importance of living fully, finding joy in each moment, and persistently seeking the right medical support is highlighted. Whether it's through a supportive network or a beloved doctor like Tony, inspiration and resilience are within reach. Tune in to celebrate our 100th episode and be uplifted by stories of hope and determination.Send us a textNew Intro 2024 2024 Thoughtful premium products for all the immune challenged.We make living with chronic illnesses easier! BeWell - Thoughtful products for those with an autoimmune disease. (wearebewell.com)Support the Show.Website: https://myspooniesisters.com/Support:https://www.etsy.com/shop/MySpoonieSisters
Crain's residential real estate reporter Dennis Rodkin talks with host Amy Guth about his latest takeaways from new market data.Plus: Fed minutes show Chicago and New York chiefs favored a July discount rate cut, exec affirms in merger hearing Kroger hiked milk and egg prices above inflation, another major drug distributor drops AbbVie's Humira and Revival Food Hall gets a new name with more breakfast and a bigger happy hour.
Good morning from Pharma and Biotech daily: the podcast that gives you only what's important to hear in Pharma e Biotech world. A new healthcare AI accelerator program has been launched by Johns Hopkins, CareFirst, and Techstars, offering funding and guidance to startups working on AI tools. Medicare could face increased spending of $34 billion to $145 billion annually if all newly eligible patients received coverage for weight loss drug semaglutide. Pfizer has launched a direct-to-consumer service for migraine, COVID-19, and flu treatments similar to one by Eli Lilly. Johnson & Johnson plans to reform the 340B drug discount program, causing concern among hospitals and the government. Healthcare Dive provides insights into healthcare venture trends and offers resources on improving patient outcomes with data and AI technology. The publication covers news on various healthcare topics such as health IT, payer-provider partnerships, and value-based care. Healthcare Dive is operated by Industry Dive, providing in-depth journalism for decision-makers in competitive industries.On August 27th, Lilly introduced cheaper vials of Zepbound, a weight loss medicine, to compete with telehealth companies. Pfizer also launched a direct-to-consumer service for their migraine, COVID-19, and flu treatments, following in the footsteps of Eli Lilly. In other news, a startup backed by RA Capital raised $100 million for developing drugs for immune diseases, while UCB sold its neurology and allergy business in China. Additionally, Versant's Jerel Davis discussed build-to-buy deals and pharma investment strategies. The industry is moving towards more patient-centric commercialization strategies, with companies like Pfizer and Lilly breaking into the DTC market. This shift aims to give consumers easier access to treatments and improve supply chain efficiency. Pharmaceutical companies are exploring new partnerships and strategies to accelerate drug development and improve patient outcomes.Eli Lilly has reduced the price of its drug Zepbound by offering single-dose vials at a 50% discount through its online pharmacy LillyDirect. This move aims to expand the supply of Zepbound and make it more accessible to patients. In other news, a study suggests that Medicare coverage of Novo Nordisk's semaglutide for cardiovascular disease could cost $145 billion annually, depending on the number of eligible patients. Additionally, Cigna plans to remove AbbVie's Humira from its formularies, Oculis closes a phase III eye drop trial due to an administrative error, and Regeneron gains EU approval for a bispecific antibody for lymphoma. Furthermore, there have been lay-offs in the biopharma industry, and Massachusetts' biopharma job growth has slowed in 2023. Interested individuals can register for upcoming webinars and explore job opportunities in the biopharma field.
In this episode of Let's Talk Future, Joel Sendek and Matt Biegler discuss the use of CAR T-cell therapy in autoimmune indications. They explain that CAR T-cell therapy involves modifying a patient's T cells to recognize and fight cancer cells. While CAR T-cell therapy has been successful in treating certain types of cancer, its application in autoimmune diseases is still in the early stages. Matt Biegler highlights the challenges and potential modifications needed for CAR T-cell therapy to be effective in autoimmune diseases. They also discuss the companies involved in developing CAR T-cell therapies for autoimmune indications and the potential market size for these treatments. Podcast Disclosure: This podcast is the property of Oppenheimer & Co. Inc. and should not be copied, distributed, published or reproduced, in whole or in part. The information/commentary contained in this recording was obtained from market conditions and professional sources, and is educational in nature. The information presented has been derived from sources believed to be reliable but is not guaranteed as to accuracy and does not purport to be a complete analysis of any strategy, plan, security, company, or industry involved. Opinions expressed herein are subject to change without notice. Oppenheimer has no obligation to provide any updates or changes. Any examples used in this material are generic, hypothetical and for illustration purposes only. All price references and market forecasts are as of the date of recording. This podcast is not a product of Oppenheimer Research, nor does it provide any financial, economic, legal, accounting, or tax advice or recommendations. Any liability therefore (including in respect of direct, indirect or consequential loss or damage) is expressly disclaimed. Securities and other financial instruments that may be discussed in this report or recommended or sold are not insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and are not deposits or obligations of any insured depository institution. Investments involve numerous risks including market risk, counterparty default risk and liquidity risk. Securities and other financial investments at times maybe difficult to value or sell. The value of financial instruments may fluctuate, and investors may lose their entire principal investment. Prior to making any investment or financial decisions, an investor should seek advice from their personal financial, legal, tax and other professional advisors that take into account all of the particular facts and circumstances of an investor's own situation. The views and strategies described may not be suitable for all investors. This report does not take into account the investment objectives, financial situation or specific needs of any particular client of Oppenheimer or its affiliates. This presentation may contain forward looking statements or projections regarding future events. Forward-looking statements and projections are based on the opinions and estimates of Oppenheimer as of the date of this podcast, and are subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties as well as other factors, including economic, political, and public health factors, that could cause actual events or results to differ materially from those anticipated in the forward-looking statements and projections. Past performance does not guarantee future results. The performance of a benchmark index is not indicative of the performance of any particular investment; however, they are considered representative of their respective market segments. Please note that indexes are unmanaged and their returns do not take into account any of the costs associated with buying and selling individual securities. Individuals cannot invest directly in an index. Humira, manufactured by AbbVie and Enbrel, manufactured by Amgen, are not covered by Oppenheimer Research Oppenheimer Transacts Business on all Principal Exchanges and Member SIPC 6840494.1
Good morning from Pharma and Biotech daily: the podcast that gives you only what's important to hear in Pharma and Biotech world.Mountain Dew introduced the Mountain Dude character in a new campaign called "Do the Dew" created by Goodby Silverstein & Partners. The campaign features a stylish brand character and encourages consumers to get active. Amazon released a back-to-school ad promoting savings, Heinz launched a campaign inspired by superheroes for their condiments, and Kraft Heinz named former Pepsi marketer Todd Kaplan as their North America CMO. Hershey also handed US media duties to Publicis. Industries are adopting the media network model to replicate the success of companies like Amazon and Walmart. Additionally, America's most trusted brands like Nvidia, Sony, and Adidas are discussed in a sponsored content piece. Other trending topics include Havas agencies losing B Corp status, Google accused of misleading consumers, the WNBA securing lucrative media rights deals, and Meta in talks to buy a stake in eyewear giant EssilorLuxottica.Transitioning to the world of biotech, Revolution Medicines is advancing its cancer drug, a ras inhibitor, to phase 3 trials after demonstrating tumor reduction in pancreatic cancer patients. The drug showed promising results but also had high rates of side effects like rash and nausea. Roche's obesity pill showed significant weight loss in a small study, while Gilead's Chief Medical Officer is set to depart next year. The biotech industry in 2024 is seeing progress in gene editing, mRNA, and cell therapies, offering optimism for the future of medicine. Caribou is cutting its workforce, Sionna is exploring abandoned cystic fibrosis drugs from AbbVie, and the industry is focusing on successful commercialization strategies. Overall, the industry is evolving with new treatments and developments shaping the landscape of biotech and pharma.Shifting gears to healthcare news, the House Committee has urged the FDA to suspend the lab-developed test rule, citing concerns about potential alterations to the United States' laboratory testing infrastructure. Steward executives received significant compensation before the company declared bankruptcy, and UnitedHealth's cyberattack response costs are expected to exceed $2.3 billion this year. Senators have introduced bipartisan healthcare cybersecurity legislation, while a Chicago children's hospital faces class action lawsuits after a cyberattack. Branded calling is highlighted as a way to increase patient answer rates, and AI is showcased as a tool to address healthcare challenges. Overall, the healthcare industry is facing various challenges related to cybersecurity, financial pressures, and patient care.In the realm of pharmaceuticals, Boehringer Ingelheim has partnered with GoodRx to offer its Humira biosimilar at a 92% discount. This move is aimed at capitalizing on Humira's decreasing market share. Artiva Biotherapeutics has announced an upsized IPO of $167 million to support the development of its therapy for systemic lupus erythematosus. George Church's startup has raised $60 million for its investigational therapy for gout, while Aveo's Fotivda combination therapy did not meet its primary efficacy endpoint in a phase III study. Invitro Cell Research is also working on preventive and regenerative medicine to help people live healthier lives. Other news includes the FDA rejecting Orexo's opioid overdose drug and granting a third indication for Phathom's Voquezna. Pfizer's once-daily weight loss pill and ongoing disputes over CRISPR patents are also highlighted.That's all for today's episode of Pharma and Biotech daily. Stay informed and have a great day!
Today is an encore because I am going on vacation next week. It always feels a little bit like a time warp because by the time this show will air, I will be back from vacation. This show with Paul Holmes was one of the most popular episodes of 2023 and definitely is just as relevant now. A lot of the things that Paul talks about are worth repeating or listening to again. For a full transcript of this episode, click here. Before we kick in, though, I'm gonna repeat something that Ge Bai, PhD, CPA, says a lot: There's no angels and there's no devils in the healthcare industry. But we are talking about for-profit entities. And if there's one thing that's generally true about a for-profit entity, especially one that is publicly traded, it's gonna do whatever it can get away with. It becomes up to the customer to set expectations and using the purchasing discipline that they probably use everywhere else in the business because it basically is good business to have purchasing discipline. Before we kick into the episode, just a couple of things. Thing one, if you haven't, do subscribe to the weekly email that goes out describing the show. Here's just one reason to do so. It's really efficient because what is transcribed in that email is the whole beginning half (usually) of the introduction. So, if later on you are trying to remember which episode you heard something in, you can just search your email and find the show. How you subscribe is go to relentlesshealthvalue.com, hang out for probably 15 seconds, and there will be a pop-up. And while you're on the Web site, here's something else you could do. Go to the lower right-hand corner of the Web site. You will notice a little button. It's an orange button. There's a microphone. Click on that; say something like your name, your company name, maybe a word or two about Relentless Health Value; and then encourage others to subscribe to the weekly email that goes out, similarly to what I just did. Then what our team will do is take that recording and potentially use it at the end of some of the shows so we can hear somebody else talk besides myself. So, please do go over to the Web site, click on that little microphone, and record something that you might want to share with the other members of the Relentless Tribe. And with that, here's your encore. If this were a video show, I would stare into the camera with steely eyeballs right now and say that I have a special message for employer CFOs. If you aren't a CFO, pretend that you are so that you get the full effect here. So, now that we're all CFOs, let's pull up the company P&L (Profit and Loss) statement. This is what keeps us all up at night, right? Making sure that the net profit line at the bottom looks good. We could decide to lay off a few people. Reorg something or other. Beat up a vendor. We also could go over and have a strident conversation with sales leadership about what they can do to jack up their sales revenue. Top line begets bottom line and all that. Or, here's another idea: In this healthcare podcast, I am speaking with Paul Holmes, who is an ERISA (Employee Retirement Income Security Act) attorney with a specialty in PBM (pharmacy benefit manager) contracts, especially the PBM contracts from the big PBMs that get jammed in employer plan sponsor faces by whomever and which they are told look fine and that the employer plan sponsor should just go ahead and sign. Now, if we, meaning all of us CFOs, sign that paper, or someone on our benefits team signs the paper … fun fact, our company just spent 30% to 40% over market for our pharmacy benefits. That contract we just signed contains all kinds of expensive little buried treasures—treasures accruing to the PBM and other parties, to be clear, and coming at our expense. There's 17-ish very common treasures in your typical PBM contract, and none of us will ever spot them unless we know what we are looking for. But let's dig into this for a sec, especially for all of us newly minted CFOs because the real ones already did this math. Say our company spends whatever—we're a bigger company, and we spend $100 million a year on our drugs. That's a minimum of $30 million that we got taken for … $30 million a year. Because of the huge dollars at stake (30% to 40% of drug spend), it's certainly the advice of almost anybody that you talk to who's an expert in PBM contracts to have a third party—not your EBC (employee benefit consultant), which we'll get into in a sec, but somebody else (a third party)—review every PBM contract. I mean, what's the worst that can happen for anybody considering having an independent third party review their PBM contract? It costs a couple grand in lawyer fees, and they give it a stamp of approval. Knowledge is power, and now we know. But let's just say this third-party review doesn't happen. We all go with a “devil may care” about this whole PBM overcharging us by 30% to 40% possibility. And let's say the PBM contract is, in fact, a ride on the Hot Mess Express but we don't know it. Here's two pretty bad downsides, especially now, this year, since the passage of the CAA (the Consolidated Appropriations Act). Number one bad thing: Plan sponsors may get sued as per the CAA for ERISA violations. It's not just the company paying that extra $30 million, or 30% to 40%, right? It's also employees. This is risk exposure, bigly. Just like it was on the 401(k) side of the house, which Paul Holmes, my guest today, mentions later on in the interview. He talks about just how much those lawsuits cost and, yeah, exposure. As I mentioned three times already, today I am speaking with Paul Holmes about PBM contracts in all their stealthy glory. The one thing I came to appreciate is that these things are works of art … if you're into those paintings of pretty flowers where, if you look hard enough, you spot a skull tucked in the greenery (memento mori). Paul is a longtime ERISA attorney. He has dedicated his career to helping plan sponsors in their negotiations with PBMs and trying to help them reduce drug spend, especially drug spend that isn't actually paying for drugs. Here's a link to an article we discuss about how a school district in Florida is suing their longtime EBC for taking $2 million a year in alleged secret payments. We also mention an episode with AJ Loiacono (EP379). And along similar lines, Jeff Hogan mentioned on LinkedIn the other day, “It's pretty amazing that just in the course of the [past few] weeks, I'm reading, seeing, and hearing about big new CAA breach of fiduciary duty cases.” So, Paul Holmes says this more eloquently, but if you're a plan sponsor, definitely get your PBM contract reviewed and maybe consider working with an EBC who's happy to sign the disclosure statement that your lawyer has provided without disclaimers. Also mentioned in this episode are Ge Bai, PhD, CPA; AJ Loiacono; and Jeffrey Hogan. You can learn more by emailing Paul at pbh@williamsbarbermorel.com. Paul B. Holmes, JD, is a seasoned ERISA lawyer with nearly 40 years of specialization in that field. Paul joined Williams Barber & Morel Ltd. recently, after 31 years with Nixon Peabody LLP and Ungaretti & Harris LLP. Paul is one of the few ERISA lawyers in the United States, concentrating his practice on PBM contracting and oversight. Paul represents large employers, Taft-Hartley welfare funds, and governmental units in their selection, contracting, auditing, and disputes with large pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs). This work includes active oversight of the request for proposal (RFP) process for selecting a PBM, the negotiation and customization of PBM contracts, and legal audits of PBM compliance with their contracts. Paul provides insightful guidance on the prudent selection of independent pharmacy benefit consulting firms (who do not receive indirect compensation from PBMs), which independence is expressly required under Section 202 of the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021 (CAA). Recent efforts have focused on reducing wasteful drug spend promulgated by large PBMs in dozens of categories. These include the preference of Humira® biosimilars, reducing off-label utilization of GLP-1s, reducing huge markups on certain specialty generics, and customizing PBM formularies and clinical protocols to better control spend. He was selected, through a peer-review survey, for inclusion in The Best Lawyers in America® (2020 and 2021) in the field of Employee Benefits (ERISA) Law. Paul received his bachelor's degree from Bradley University and his Juris Doctor degree from the University of Illinois College of Law. 07:41 What are Paul's usual observations when a PBM contract crosses his desk? 08:34 “If you just sign … one of their model contracts …, you're probably gonna pay 30% to 40% above market on your drug spend.” 12:11 What is a PBM lawyer? And why is it important to find an ERISA PBM lawyer? 17:12 EP379 with AJ Loiacono. 17:40 Who is on the hook for the cost of the PBM contracts? 21:05 What's the problem with most ERISA lawyers today? 22:56 Lawsuit about PBM contract. 27:43 What's Paul's advice for benefits consultants? 31:40 How much might a plan sponsor be paying their consultant versus what a consultant might be making from a PBM? You can learn more by emailing Paul at pbh@williamsbarbermorel.com. Paul Holmes discusses #PBMContracts on our #healthcarepodcast. #healthcare #podcast #financialhealth #primarycare #patientoutcomes #healthcareinnovation Recent past interviews: Click a guest's name for their latest RHV episode! Ann Kempski, Marshall Allen (tribute), Andreas Mang, Abby Burns and Stacey Richter, David Muhlestein, Luke Slindee, Dr John Lee, Brian Klepper, Elizabeth Mitchell, David Scheinker (Encore! EP363)
This week, your hosts welcome Maddy Martinez to the podcast. Maddy is a beginner lifting and fitness coach who's gone through her own complex autoimmune journey! Maddy joins the podcast to tell her story of being misdiagnosed with an autoimmune disease and the struggles she faced with doctors / conventional healthcare throughout her journey. She dives into symptoms like joint pain to the point that she could not walk, fungal overgrowth, weight gain, and more. The girls discuss how Maddy went about treating her autoimmune symptoms from both a conventional and holistic standpoint, coming off her HUMIRA medication, and why it's so important to be an advocate for your own health. Follow the NYQF Podcast Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/notyourquickfixpodcast/ Connect with Maddy: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/maddy.nourishandlift/ Start to Lift Program: https://nourishandliftpgh.activehosted.com/f/54 Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/kinda-hot-kinda-healthy-with-maddy-martinez-and/id1712327132 Connect with Kara: Instagram: Instagram.com/karagoss_rd FREE Facebook Group: Functional Fat Loss Secrets for Women TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@karagoss_rd Connect with Kylie: Instagram: Instagram.com/kylie.kaiser.comedy13 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@kylie.kaiser.comedy13
Since a number of biosimilars to Humira became available in 2023, many more arthritis patients have become aware of these drugs, and many are being required by insurance to switch to one. In this episode, a patient and a rheumatologist will discuss their experience with biosimilars and how they are addressing concerns. *Visit the Live Yes! With Arthritis Podcast episode page to get show notes, additional resources and read the full transcript: https://arthr.org/LiveYes_Ep103 (https://arthr.org/LiveYes_Ep103) * We want to hear from you. Tell us what you think about the Live Yes! With Arthritis Podcast. Get started by emailing podcast@arthritis.org (podcast@arthritis.org). Special Guests: Dr. Angus Worthing and Rick Phillips.
Back on medication and mindset changes during my Crohn's journey It's been over 20 years since my colon started bleeding and my inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) journey began. In 2003, I ignored the symptoms of blood, pain, and bloating for nearly three years. When I finally sought help in 2006 after a severe flare, it took another three years to reach a diagnosis. In those first six years, I was left to my own devices to try and stop the symptoms and find some way of living a normal life. When I finally had an IBD diagnosis in 2009, I was relieved to have answers and eager for pharmaceutical help to finally eliminate my symptoms. Eventually, I ended up on a combination therapy of both Imuran and HUMIRA. I got better, but not completely. I didn't have the uncontrollable diarrhea that kept me at home for three months during my first severe flare-up, but I still struggled off and on with pain, blood, and mucus. I found that I had to watch my diet in order to get the most relief, and my obsession with food and supplements became fanatical. Then, after five years, I thought I had learned and experimented enough that I could stop my medications. And so, under the supervision of my gastroenterologist, I did. I was 32 years old. I was completely free of medications for a little over a year. But, when I started living life again – enjoying food and finding myself in stressful situations that life tends to bring – I went into a moderate flare. I went back on medications for a few months and by the end of 2016, I was off all medications once again. After that, I had multiple minor flare-ups during the next few years involving pain, mucus, and bloating, that I was able to work through using CBD, extended fasting, meditation, and extremely restrictive diets. I didn't seek medication or medical help and thought I was doing fine. In early 2022, I was actually feeling really good and the minor flare-ups seemed to be behind me. But, as many of you can guess how this story goes, IBD wasn't done with me. In the summer of 2022, I had my first bout of intestinal bleeding in over five years. I tried to seek help, but the flare happened during the middle of our move from Texas to Florida and I couldn't get set up with my new doctors in Florida without going through a few hoops with the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). It was (and I'm sure still is) a requirement that I see my new primary care doctor first, and then she would need to put in new referrals for me to be seen in the gastroenterology and nephrology clinics – even though I already had those specialists assigned to me in Texas. By the time I got to see my new doctors, my symptoms had fortunately gone away and I was back to feeling good. But, that only got me dismissed by the VA's gastroenterologist and another four month wait to get assigned to a gastroenterologist in the VA's community care network, thanks to the help of my primary care provider. For the past year and a half, I've been well. But we all know that IBD is a disease of remission and flare-ups. Fast forward to today, not even a full two years later, and I'm back in a moderate flare. This time, while it's not the worst I've ever been, it's the worst I've been in a long time. For the past two months, I've been passing blood and mucus up to twelve times a day, frequently nauseous, fatigued (so fatigued!) with low iron saturation showing on my lab results, experiencing intermittent pain and extreme bloating (my fellow IBD warriors know what I'm talking about), and feeling pretty lousy overall. Even my kidney function has declined (it's still fine and we're still watching it, but I find it interesting to see distinct changes in my lab values while my body battles inflammation from Crohn's). I've still been able to leave the house and do things, but the dread of being anywhere not close to a bathroom is back. I've been avoiding meals with friends, fasting a few hours longer than usual if I'm going to be out running errands, and wondering what foods are causing my pain this time. It's been almost ten years since I was on HUMIRA, and during that time, I've changed. For starters, I don't want my life to be controlled by my diet. I don't want to go back to being obsessed with food and every single bite I put into my mouth. My health journey is more complicated now. I'm on medication to lower my blood pressure and hopefully stop IgA nephropathy from causing further damage to my kidneys. I'm taking omeprazole to relieve symptoms of silent reflux, which is causing inflammation in my esophagus and stomach. And that little thing we call stress, which is also my biggest IBD trigger, is not going away – no matter how much sauerkraut I eat or meditation and yoga that I do. I still think diet and lifestyle play significant roles in overall health, but I accept and recognize that at this point, I need more than that. In my current state, I'm reluctant to use some of the supplements and methods I tried in the past. Now that I'm on blood pressure medication, I don't feel safe doing periods of extended fasting because my heart rate drops low and I get lightheaded if I go longer than sixteen hours fasting. So many products have warnings against taking them if you have kidney disease and I don't want to accidentally take an herb or supplement that either lowers my blood pressure even more or causes additional damage to my kidneys. I don't have the knowledge or expertise to start combining natural and pharmaceutical treatments; it's not a road I want to travel. Finally, even though daily meditation has numerous benefits, it doesn't eliminate stressful situations from happening in life. People get sick, work has deadlines, and travel or new experiences can cause anxiety, even if they are exciting adventures. So this time, I'm ready. This time, I'm not starting medication with one foot out the door. I don't want to wonder what damage is being done by inflammation in my body during minor flare-ups that I try to ignore. I don't want moderate and severe flare-ups to prevent me from enjoying life. I want to live my best life and I'm ready to do that with a biologic medication again. When my symptoms began in early March, we were out of town, so I waited a week to contact my gastroenterologist. When I reached out, he ordered some blood work and a fecal calprotectin test. My CRP was quite a bit higher than my baseline levels, but still considered within the normal range. My calprotectin, however, was definitely high. So, with my symptoms worsening and a high calprotectin test, my gastroenterologist recommended it was time I go back on medication for Crohn's and I agreed with him. I was finally able to receive my loading dose of HADLIMA this past Friday, April 26 (a biosimilar for HUMIRA that was introduced to the U.S. commercial market on July 1, 2023). My doctor did actually prescribe HUMIRA, but I learned that the VA announced in February that they selected HADLIMA (adalimumab-bwwd), a biosimilar, to replace HUMIRA on the VA National Formulary.(1) It's my understanding that the change took place just this month. As an aside, over the past week I've spent a lot of time on Google catching up on the progress that's been made in the last ten years for IBD medications. I've learned quite a bit about biosimilars, biosimilars with an interchangeability designation(2), and JAK inhibitors that I'll try to write about in a later post! Even though it's been less than a week since I took my loading dose of HADLIMA, I'm already starting to feel better. I know there are risks that come with medications, but there are risks that come with natural treatments and even greater risks when inflammation in the body isn't treated at all. I can't see the damage that may have been done when I ignored minor flare-ups during the years I stopped HUMIRA, but I know I don't want this current moderate flare to take a turn for the worse and I'd like to try and prevent them altogether in the future. It's been a long journey with Crohn's disease and I know it's far from over. As I reflect back to my first six years with IBD and being left on my own to manage symptoms, I now wonder if I would have been so determined to come off medications ten years ago if I would have received the help and diagnosis I needed at the very beginning. I don't know the answer to that, but what I do know is that as life goes on, we evolve, we grow, and things change – including our perspectives and even beliefs we once held so tightly. I'm ready now, and I'm grateful. Grateful to have a supportive gastroenterologist who listens and actually believes me, grateful to have access to medications I need, and grateful for a clear path ahead for this next chapter. https://www.formularywatch.com/view/the-va-replaces-humira-with-hadlima-on-national-formulary https://www.organon.com/news/samsung-bioepis-organon-announce-fda-acceptance-of-supplemental-biologics-license-application-sbla-for-interchangeability-designation-for-hadlima-adalimumab-bwwd-a-biosimilar-to-humira/ * * * * * Support the podcast ❤️ at https://www.crohnsfitnessfood.com Get your copy of Crohn's Fitness Food and My Rocky Road to Health, Shop my favorite products, Read my favorite books, Subscribe to the podcast, Send a little love/coffee
AbbVie's Humira dam is beginning to crack. Crain's health care reporter Katherine Davis talks with host Amy Guth about how the tide appears to be turning as CVS' pharmacy benefit manager replaces the blockbuster drug on its formulary list.Plus: City Council greenlights Johnson's plan to pump $1.25 billion into housing and development, ShipBob picks JPMorgan to lead IPO, ex-Citadel exec's trading firm expanding and moving to revamped Loop tower, and how Chicago's venture-capital and startup scene stacks up globally.
Rosemary also shares her experience with a mystery skin rash that ended up being a rare psoriatic arthritis medication side effect: leukocytoclastic vasculitis triggered by drug-induced lupus, and an eventual diagnosis of Palisaded Neutrophilic and Granulomatous Dermatitis. Throughout the episode, Rosemary and Cheryl discuss the importance of coping skills for difficult medical experiences. They also emphasize the importance of finding the right medications, lifestyle strategies, and the role of psychosocial support. Uncertainty and setbacks can be overwhelming, but self-compassion, support systems, acceptance, and perseverance can help you pursue a fulfilling life despite health challenges.Episode at a glance:Chronic Illness Journey: The interview delves into Emily's journey of living with chronic illnesses, from psoriatic arthritis, to developing drug-induced lupus which triggered leukocytoclastic vasculitis, and eventually being diagnosed with Palisaded Neutrophilic and Granulomatous Dermatitis (PNGD).Medication Management: Rosemary shares her experiences with various medications, including Enbrel, Humira, and Plaquenil, discussing their effectiveness in managing her symptoms and the decision-making process involved in discontinuing certain medications. They discuss the importance in recognizing adverse effects, while balancing this understanding with the benefits that medications do provide.Lifestyle strategies: Rosemary emphasizes the importance of physical activity and wellness in her life, despite her health challenges.Emotional Resilience: Navigating the emotional highs and lows with chronic illness can be overwhelming, from the initial relief of finding treatments to the grief and uncertainty of adjusting plans. Cheryl and Rosemary discuss self-advocacy, and pursuing fulfilling lives despite obstacles .Adapting to Change: Rosemary and Cheryl discuss how to adapt to change, both in terms of treatment plans and mindset towards living with chronic illness, including exploring alternative treatments and embracing new perspectives.Support: Rosemary reflects on the role of support from healthcare providers, online support groups, and in personal relationships - underscoring the importance of having a strong network when facing chronic illness.Advice to Newly Diagnosed Patients: “You don't have control of the fact that that happened to you, and you didn't do anything wrong. All you can do now is choose how to react to it. Do the next right thing. Little by little by little, it'll start coming together. And you're going to be okay.”Medical disclaimer: All content found on Arthritis Life public channels was created for generalized informational purposes only. The content is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment.Episode SponsorsRheum to THRIVE, an online course and support program Cheryl created to help people with rheumatic disease go from overwhelmed, confused and alone to confident, supported and connected. See all the details and join the program or waitlist now! For full episode details including a transcriptGo to the episode page on the Arthritis Life Website (transcript coming soon!).
When Boeing came to Chicago in 2001, it was a win for the city. But was it good for the company? Crain's Steven Strahler talks with host Amy Guth about the troubled planemaker.Plus: U of I's Discovery Partners Institute chief is stepping down, AbbVie sees signs of post-Humira growth in positive 2024 outlook, 180 laid off from University of Chicago Medical Center, and cannabis rescheduling faces an uphill battle, but DEA decision expected soon.Crain's Daily Gist listeners can get 20% off a one-year Crain's Chicago Business digital subscription by visiting chicagobusiness.com/gist and using code “GIST” at checkout.
The Health Advocates are back and breaking down all the latest news so far in 2024. Steven gives us a debrief on what to look for this election year. We then dive into Florida's plan to import drugs, why you may be switched from Humira to a biosimilar, and finally the latest hospitalizations and case rates this respiratory illness season. Contact Our Hosts Steven Newmark, Director of Policy at GHLF: snewmark@ghlf.org Zoe Rothblatt, Associate Director, Community Outreach at GHLF: zrothblatt@ghlf.org A podcast episode produced by Ben Blanc, Manager of Programs & Special Projects at GHLF. We want to hear what you think. Send your comments in the form of an email, video, or audio clip of yourself to podcasts@ghlf.org Catch up on all our episodes on our website or on your favorite podcast channel.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Thank you for joining us for our 2nd Cabral HouseCall of the weekend! I'm looking forward to sharing with you some of our community's questions that have come in over the past few weeks… Shelley: Hi Dr. Cabral. I love you and your work. Thank you. My question is about my daughter who was diagnosed with JRA at the age of 13. She has been on various meds and is currently on Humira to control her symptoms. She has had a positive ANA test and a Centromere B ab of 1.4 which is high. Her doctor is concerned about CREST among other things. She also has had Myastenia Gravis. All serious auto immune diseases. She tries to be gluten free and careful with her diet but as an 18 year old going to college, I am concerned. What advice might you have to get control of this auto immune nightmare? Thank you for all you do. Lindsey: hi dr. cabral! thank you for this podcast and all of your knowledge. i have 2 questions for you — 1.i run a body fever most nights. i notice it significantly when i lay down to go to sleep and my partner says i'm literally radiating heat. i suspect my body is trying to fight off something - what do you suggest as a first step in finding the root cause?2. my heart races/gets faster after meals (whether it be healthy or unhealthy food). can you help?thank you Tiffany: Ive listened to your podcast for 10 yrs & am grateful for your passion your knowledge & helping people. Question: An older friend of mine had to have emergency surgery to remove a non cancerous infected mass from her bowl & has been on a constant antibiotic drip for 2 wks. The I.V. was just removed & she is home w/a drainage bag still attached outside of her body to help rid the infection. When I found this out, I immediately ordered for her the Clean Gut Pros, Saccharomysis Boulardii & a 7 day detox. I was also able to talk her into The Big 5, to get the root cause. She then mentioned she also has Chronic Myeloid Leukemia. I tried to research your podcasts for info on this with no luck. Lab results will soon reveal but want any advice on CML to be in your podcasts. Much appreciated! Mandy: Hi doctor Cabral, I've been following your work, and listening to your podcast for years, and it has truly changed by health for better, so I'm eternally grateful. I have a question about my parents: they are both in their mid-70s and I want to keep them as healthy as possible. What are some essential supplements that they should definitely be using? They are not on anything now. They both eat pretty healthy and walk around 20K steps a day. Thanks so much for your advice! Erika: Breast question (I have a dr appointment next week and i know it will be weeks until you get to this but that's okay, would love your opinion)….we did a lot of hiking in the mountains 2 weeks ago and i had a backpack on. After the 5th day, at the end of the day i noticed one breast on the underside looked bruised or like the veins were widened and very visible. I've never had this before…. The blue color will be very light in the morning but after exercising it's back darker again. And only on the underside of the boob.Any idea what is happening? Thank you for tuning into this weekend's Cabral HouseCalls and be sure to check back tomorrow for our Mindset & Motivation Monday show to get your week started off right! - - - Show Notes and Resources: StephenCabral.com/2816 - - - Get a FREE Copy of Dr. Cabral's Book: The Rain Barrel Effect - - - Join the Community & Get Your Questions Answered: CabralSupportGroup.com - - - Dr. Cabral's Most Popular At-Home Lab Tests: > Complete Minerals & Metals Test (Test for mineral imbalances & heavy metal toxicity) - - - > Complete Candida, Metabolic & Vitamins Test (Test for 75 biomarkers including yeast & bacterial gut overgrowth, as well as vitamin levels) - - - > Complete Stress, Mood & Metabolism Test (Discover your complete thyroid, adrenal, hormone, vitamin D & insulin levels) - - - > Complete Food Sensitivity Test (Find out your hidden food sensitivities) - - - > Complete Omega-3 & Inflammation Test (Discover your levels of inflammation related to your omega-6 to omega-3 levels) - - - Get Your Question Answered On An Upcoming HouseCall: StephenCabral.com/askcabral - - - Would You Take 30 Seconds To Rate & Review The Cabral Concept? The best way to help me spread our mission of true natural health is to pass on the good word, and I read and appreciate every review!
This episode is special. When we heard that widely-beloved writer John Green was rallying his online community around a fight over drug prices — and apparently making a difference — we were pumped. And this story took us in so many different directions: Literally around the world, and then straight back home.The drug in question is bedaquiline, made by Johnson & Johnson. It treats drug-resistant tuberculosis, and its price has been a huge obstacle to getting it to places it's needed most — primarily places far away from the U.S.But the reason this TB drug costs so much overseas is also one of the main reasons that important drugs here are so expensive — drugs like insulin, Humira and… well, just about everything: Legalistic patent games that pharma companies have mastered. So, in addition to John Green — and yes, we talked with John Green — we also talked with one of the world's leading experts on drug-patent games, Tahir Amin.Also, John Green is a great storyteller. So hearing him tell the story of how he became obsessed with tuberculosis is bittersweet.And in order to make sense of any of this, we had to dig into the story of how John Green and his brother Hank became (and remain) YouTube superstars. For more than 16 years, they've been building a community of “nerdfighters” — nerds fighting to make the world a better place. It's a profoundly sweet and fun story, and everything we're trying to do here owes them a debt. Oh, finally: This is, as you're probably guessing by now, an epic story. It's gonna take two full episodes of An Arm and a Leg to tell it all. So, we hope you enjoy part one. There's more coming in a few weeks. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
In this podcast, Dr. Berg talks about the Humira alternative. Humira is an anti-inflammatory blockbuster and a top-selling prescription drug.
After decades of patent protection, the wildly successful arthritis and autoimmune drug Humira is finally facing competition. WSJ's Jared Hopkins on what that could mean for patients and the drug industry. Further Reading: - Blockbuster Arthritis Drug Humira Faces Competition From First Lower-Price Copycat in U.S. - AbbVie Aims for New Drugs to Boost Sales as Competitors Target Humira Further Listening: - How Big Pharma Lost Its Swagger Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices