51ÊÓƵ

It’s hard to remember now, but there once was a time when pharmaceutical companies were considered heroes, not villains. In the 1920s, Dr. Frederick Banting and Charles Best discovered insulin could be purified and administered to diabetes patients via injection. Before this groundbreaking discovery, people living with diabetes were placed on starvation diets as a form of treatment, and many patients died. (Marlene Beggelman, 3/26)

If one message is becoming clear, it’s that increased concentration is harming consumers and leading to less competition, decreased choice and higher cost. The need for corporations to compete is dampened when markets are dominated by a small number of firms. Worse, when consumers don’t have the ability to discipline markets there is a lack of transparency or accountability. Nowhere is that more true than in the market for Pharmacy Benefit Managers (PBMs) — the unregulated entities that control the reimbursement of drugs. (David Balto, 3/27)

Asset swaps have been a big thing in pharma over the past few years. Now it's time for the un-swap. Novartis AG on Tuesday said it was unwinding part of a complicated 2014 asset swap with GlaxoSmithKline PLC, trading its stake in their consumer-health joint venture for $13 billion. The decision isn't a huge surprise, though the timing is unexpected. It suggests new Novartis CEO Vas Narasimhan won't be shy about dealing with the long list of decisions his predecessor left him. It also hints at sizable, pharma-focused M&A to come. The company would be well served by ambition on both fronts. (Max Nisen, 3/27)

Of all the items on a biotech CEO’s worry list, high-level government policy has to be at or near the bottom. The demands of launching a business—every aspect of the future organization embodied in a single individual—hardly leave time for a personal life, let alone consideration of economic policy. Yet policy made in disparate parts of the world can have a profound effect on a company and an industry to innovate. (Standish Fleming, 3/27)

It's easier to promise a quick biotech buck than deliver one. Biohaven Pharmaceutical Holding Co. Ltd., which raised nearly $200 million in an IPO last year, announced Monday that its lead migraine pill had met its main goals in a late-stage trial. But the drug didn't have the impact investors had hoped, and the firm's shares retreated to their IPO price. (Max Nisen, 3/26)

Patricia Bernard of Falmouth has unwittingly become the face of American seniors facing high drug costs. Sen. Susan Collins recently invited Bernard to tell her story before the Senate Aging Committee, which Collins chairs. Diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis 25 years ago, Bernard worked until age 79 to keep her employer-sponsored health insurance plan that allowed her to purchase the medication she needed for between $10 and $30 a month. (Terry Wilcox, 3/23)