Free Republic

Four Florida men were charged in an indictment unsealed Thursday for their alleged participation in a compound pharmacy kickback scheme.Assistant Attorney General Brian A. Benczkowski of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, U.S. Attorney Maria Chapa Lopez of the Middle District of Florida, Special Agent in Charge Cyndy Bruce of the Defense Criminal Investigative Service’s (DCIS) Southeast Field Office, Special Agent in Charge Michael F. McPherson of the FBI’s Tampa Field Office, Special Agent in Charge Omar Aybar Perez of the U.S. Health and Human Services-Office of Inspector General (HHS-OIG) Miami Regional Office and Special Agent in Charge David Spilker...

"TheDepartment of Health and Human Services is cutting red tape to begin rolling out mass testing for COVID-19. One America’s Jack Posobiec spoke to the CEO (Steve Anderson) Associations of Chain Drug stores to learn more." Check the CDC Website to learn who qualifies to be tested.

  Fugitive Sought A federal jury sitting in Houston, Texas, found a pharmacist guilty Tuesday of charges related to health care fraud, wire fraud and money laundering.After a six-day trial, George Phillip Tompkins, 75, of Houston, Texas, was convicted on all charges - one count each of conspiracy to pay and receive kickbacks, conspiracy to commit health care fraud, conspiracy to commit money laundering as well as 11 counts of health care fraud and three counts of wire fraud.According to evidence presented at trial, Tompkins and others billed the federal government approximately $21.8 million for medically unnecessary compound gels and creams...

In some towns, it’s getting harder to pick up your blood-pressure pills with that gallon of milk and rotisserie chicken. Hundreds of regional grocery stores in cities from Minneapolis to Seattle are closing or selling pharmacy counters, which have been struggling as consumers make fewer trips to fill prescriptions and big drugstore chains tighten their grip on the U.S. market. Grocery pharmacies are getting hit on several fronts, analysts and the companies say. They are too small to wrest competitive reimbursement rates on drugs, they aren’t connected to big medical networks or insurers, and they generally lack walk-in clinics and...

After Walmart and Kroger earlier this week urged customers not to openly carry firearms in their stores, drug store giants Walgreens and CVS, along with the Wegmans Food Markets announced Thursday that they were joining in making the same request, continuing a movement among major stores concerning gun violence. "We are joining other retailers in asking our customers to no longer openly carry firearms into our stores other than authorized law enforcement officials," Walgreens stated. "We join a growing chorus of businesses in requesting that our customers, other than authorized law enforcement personnel, do not bring firearms into our stores,"...

Discussing low cost drug purchasing. team of Internet entrepreneurs in downtown Manhattan wants to revolutionize how Americans get prescription drugs. Their company, Blink Health, has a crazy idea: let customers shop for the best deal... A functioning market requires price signals to provide consumer guidance; but at the pharmacy, neither the buyer nor the seller knows what the price is. In choosing among drugs to prescribe, your doctor doesn’t know how much each will cost you or your insurance company. You can’t find out what you’ll pay until after you’ve chosen a pharmacy to handle the prescription. The pharmacist must...

Drug store chain CVS is closing 46 locations, including three stores in Alabama. The closures represent less than 1 percent of the chain’s 9,000 locations nationwide. Each of the closures were at stores the massive retail chained deemed “underperforming.” The Alabama locations are in Huntsville, Mobile and Montgomery. Some of the closures have already taken place while others are underway. Overall business remains strong, CVS said, reporting 35 percent year-over-year increase in first quarter revenues to $61.6 billion. Here is the list via USA Today: Alabama Huntsville: 3115 Bob Wallace Ave SW Mobile: 664 Schillinger Rd S Montgomery: 2815 Lower...

Officials in San Diego County have issued an alert after three people have suffered documented fatal overdoses from a new form of the drug fentanyl know as carfentanil. It would only take 2 mg of the drug to cause a deadly overdose meanwhile it would only take .02 mg of carfentanil to have the same fatal results, CBS Sacramento reported. Langdon Fielding is an emergency veterinarian at Loomis Basin Equine. He said he uses fentanyl on horses for pain relief. "Basically it's super strong morphine-like a really strong drug to control pain," said Fielding. Carfentanil is similar to fentanyl but...

A Senate committee recently passed a bill allowing pharmacists to inform customers of cheaper prescription options. The new legislation bans the so-called ‘gag clauses’ on contracts between pharmacies and insurers. Such provisions prevent pharmacists from telling customers their prescription is cheaper if paid for with cash instead of using insurance. The Senate bill is sponsored by Republican Senator Susan Collins and is aimed at bringing down health care costs. Collins said the ‘gag clauses’ allowed insurers to increase their revenues by withholding information from customers.

<p>Hilde Hall says she went straight from her doctor's office in April to a CVS pharmacy in her Phoenix suburb, eager to fill her first hormone therapy prescription.</p> <p>The treatment would spur the physical changes in Hall's body that would reflect her identity as a transgender woman, she said.</p>

Freepers are the best and know everything! I need some prescription meds that my insurance co. will not pay for. My doctor suggested getting from Mexico or Canada! I searched and found too many Canada Pharmacies on the net, great prices. But I don't know whether to trust any of them. I hate to risk $100+ to find out. Would appreciate any tips if you have ordered RX from Canada.

Walgreens has decided to change its bathroom policies following an incident at one of their Los Angeles locations — in which a woman was denied access to the ladies room because she “looked like a man.” The drugstore chain will now allow customers to “use restroom facilities that correspond to the individual’s gender identity, regardless of the individual’s sex assigned at birth,” according to officials. The American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California

4 Hours Ago Pharmacy chain CVS will purchase insurance giant Aetna in a deal value at $69 billion, The Associated Press reported Sunday. The move will dramatically expand the drugstore juggernaut's health services; a historic amplification which could transform the health care industry. If approved by regulators, CVS' 9,700 locations could morph into health care centers, providing its consumers with primary care and other services and dramatically lowering the cost of health care. The unprecedented merging of retail and health care is likely to spark similar deals throughout the industry, experts said.

CVS Health is expected to announce plans to acquire Aetna for roughly $69 billion in cash and stock in a first-of-its kind deal aimed at fending off challenges in retail and health care, sources familiar with the situation told CNBC on Sunday. The deal is one of the year's largest so far. It comes as insurers are under pressure to lower medical costs and retailers are under attack from new competitors, including an increasingly powerful Amazon. It creates the first health-care triple threat, combining CVS's pharmacy and pharmacy benefit manager platform with Aetna's insurance business.

WASHINGTON — If House Speaker Paul Ryan comes down with the flu this winter, he and his security detail won’t be screeching off toward the closest CVS for his Tamiflu. Instead, he can just walk downstairs and pick up the pills, part of a little-known perk open to every member of Congress, from Ryan and Majority Leader Mitch McConnell down to the newest freshman Democrat. Nearly every day for at least two decades pharmaceutical drugs have been brought by the carload to the Capitol — an arrangement so under the radar that even pharmacy lobbyists who regularly pitch Congress on...

<p>Theranos, the biotech company started by a 19-year-old Stanford dropout, has another hurdle to cross in its whole "we're totally a legit blood-testing company" campaign. This time, it turns out that tens of thousands of blood tests were voided, making them totally invalid. Whoops!</p>

We haven't really written much about the insane Theranos scandal, though we discussed it on our podcast. The whole story is pretty crazy -- involving a heavily hyped up company that appeared to basically be flat out lying to everyone about what it could do. The company still exists, but barely. The company's founder and CEO, who was plastered across magazine covers and compared frequently to Steve Jobs, has been banned from running a lab for two years, and the company is now facing a $140 million lawsuit from its biggest partner, Walgreens, who claims that Theranos repeatedly lied to...

Litigator David Boies and the law firm he founded, Boies, Schiller & Flexner LLP, have stopped doing legal work for Theranos Inc. after disagreeing about the strategy for handling ongoing government investigations of the blood-testing company, according to people familiar with the matter. Mr. Boies, 75 years old, has been one of the country’s best-known litigators since the late 1990s. He became Theranos’s outside counsel after being approached in 2011 by two investors in the Palo Alto, Calif., startup. He fiercely defended Theranos against questions about its technology and operations. Those efforts included threatening to take legal action against The...

Litigator David Boies and the law firm he founded, Boies, Schiller & Flexner LLP, have stopped doing legal work for Theranos Inc. after disagreeing about the strategy for handling ongoing government investigations of the blood-testing company, according to people familiar with the matter. Mr. Boies, 75 years old, has been one of the country’s best-known litigators since the late 1990s. He became Theranos’s outside counsel after being approached in 2011 by two investors in the Palo Alto, Calif., startup. He fiercely defended Theranos against questions about its technology and operations. Those efforts included threatening to take legal action against The...

It's worth asking why Elizabeth Holmes is still leading the embattled blood testing company Theranos Inc. But there may be a good reason why she still is in charge, one that has little to do with the scandal-ridden company's performance to date. Forget what venture capitalist Tim Draper — one of the first to invest in the Palo Alto company — implied this week that Holmes is being attacked because she's a young, female entrepreneur. The simple fact is that Theranos has not been able to deliver on its technology from a commercial, scientific or regulatory standpoint, and that falls...