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Columbus Dispatch
@DispatchAlerts
, 25 tweets, 9 min read Read on Twitter
Over the course of a year our reporting in the #SideEffects series has created transparency, influenced legal action and helped consumers get the best price for their prescription medication.

Here is a thread of our biggest stories in the investigation in the past year.
2/ March 2018 - Dispatch reporters @martyschladen @CCandisky @DispatchSully and @darreldrowland started investigating the role of pharmacy benefit managers and the high costs of prescription medication.
3/ March 2018 - We reported concerns by some pharmacists that CVS Caremark was charging Medicaid high prices and paying pharmacies low prices for the same drugs.

The next day State officials announced they would look into CVS Caremark billing practices.

dispatch.com/news/20180313/…
4/ March 2018 - We broke down how PBMs were making $1.36 per pill for a drug commonly used to treat depression which amounted to almost $6 million in 2017.

dispatch.com/news/20180325/…
5/ April 2018 - Ohio Medicaid officials say they will investigate whether PBMs were overcharging taxpayers.

dispatch.com/news/20180404/…
6/ May 2018 - President @realDonaldTrump says he will go after pharmacy benefit managers to cut drug costs

dispatch.com/news/20180509/…
7/ May 2018 - An Ohio lawmaker called the state’s method of managing Medicaid pharmacy benefits “a public embarrassment.”

dispatch.com/news/20180510/…
8/ May 2018 - We reported that independent pharmacies were losing money on dispensing drugs because the state was reimbursing them so little.

dispatch.com/news/20180521/…
9/ June 2018 - We reported how cancer patients were being forced to get their medication through the mail if they wanted their insurance to cover the cost of their pills.

We talked with one cancer patient about how it affected him.

10/ June 2018 - We found a pain cream that was being advertised as 'free' to state employees actually cost the city more than $8,000 a prescription. City employees submitted 283 prescriptions for the cream for a total of $2.3 million

gatehousenews.com/sideeffects/fr…
11/ June 2018 - We analyzed records of transactions from 40 pharmacies across Ohio and found that CVS Caremark routinely billed the state for drugs at a far higher amount than it paid pharmacies to fill the prescriptions.

gatehousenews.com/sideeffects/co…
12/ June 2018 - The state then did an analysis of more than 39 million drug transactions and the results confirmed our findings.

gatehousenews.com/sideeffects/st…
13/ June 2018 - We reported that pharmacy middlemen are charging Ohio taxpayers three to six times as much to process prescription drugs for the poor and disabled as the industry standard.

dispatch.com/news/20180627/…
14/ July 2018 - CVS Caremark sues Ohio Department of Medicaid to block it from releasing the full report detailing how they charged taxpayers three to six times as much to process prescription drugs for the poor and disabled as the industry standard.

gatehousenews.com/sideeffects/cv…
15/ July 2018 - The then Attorney General @MikeDeWine tells pharmacy middlemen he's ready to sue.

dispatch.com/news/20180723/…
16/ July 2018 - For the first time, state officials flatly accused pharmacy middlemen of "driving up costs" in the tax-funded Medicaid program and hiding their activities behind a veil of secrecy.

gatehousenews.com/sideeffects/si…
17/ August 2018 - Ohio Medicaid officials fire pharmacy benefit managers effective Jan. 1

gatehousenews.com/sideeffects/oh…
18/ September 2018 - The Ohio Department of Medicaid released the heavily redacted report analyzing the costly practices of pharmacy middlemen and confirms complaints.

gatehousenews.com/sideeffects/ce…
19/ October 2018 - We created a drug look up database that the public can use to look up what their pills should cost and compare the numbers with what they are charged at the pharmacy counter or through the mail.

gatehousenews.com/sideeffects/19…
20/ October 2018 - We reported that an additional $20 million might have been wasted on the same Medicaid drug services that taxpayers were already paying.

gatehousenews.com/sideeffects/ta…
21/ Dec 2018 - Ohio has become a nationwide sensation in the Medicaid world after it was the first to collect and analyze drug pricing data by its two PBMs, CVS Caremark and Optum Rx.

gatehousenews.com/sideeffects/oh…
22/ December 2018 - Ohio Medicaid says they will move to a more transparent system in 2019.

gatehousenews.com/sideeffects/oh…
23/ January 2019 - We reported that @cvspharmacy used its role as a pharmacy middleman for the Ohio Medicaid program to pay some of its biggest retail competitors far less than it pays its own stores,

gatehousenews.com/sideeffects/cv…
24/ Feb. 2019 - After nearly a year of investigating, Ohio is taking its first steps to recover $16 million repayment from pharmacy middleman OptumRX

gatehousenews.com/sideeffects/at…
25/ March 2019 - After first seeking mediation in the dispute Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost is suing pharmacy middleman OptumRx to recover $16 million in overcharges to the state for prescription drugs.

gatehousenews.com/sideeffects/oh…
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Columbus Dispatch
@DispatchAlerts
1/ For the past couple of years, Ohioans could buy the generic version of the heartburn treatment Prilosec off the shelf at most any drugstore for less than 60 cents a tablet — and less than 40 cents online.
2/ However, Ohioans were being charged $6.57 a tablet to provide large quantities of the exact same drug through the state’s Medicaid program.
3/ Those apparent overcharges for just this one 20-mg pill totaled about $2.4 million in only 18 months, from the start of 2017 to mid-2018
Read 8 tweets
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Columbus Dispatch
@DispatchAlerts
This is Elvin Weir. He is battling Stage 4 colon cancer — and a convoluted healthcare system that forced him to wait weeks for chemo pills. That’s because insurance only covers the pricey drugs if filled through a specific mail-order pharmacy: AllianceRx.
bit.ly/2LjVmZT
2/ Weir isn’t the only one, cancer-care providers and pharmacists say. Instead of getting drugs at their treatment centers, Ohio cancer patients are forced to use mail-order pharmacies for insurance to cover medications. And cancer’s no waiting game.
bit.ly/2LjVmZT
3/ This is thanks to insurers and pharmacy benefit managers, or PBMs — little-known but powerful healthcare middlemen. The Dispatch’s reporting shows PBMs often direct patients to their own mail-order pharmacies, meaning they get a cut of the profits. bit.ly/2LjVmZT
Read 13 tweets

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Campaign
@realnews1234
This all started because the #MetPolice & #LBRUT couldn't do their day jobs properly & decided to take the law into their own hands. It started as a small cover up 12 years ago but has turned into British State Persecution.

#Skynews #BBCNews #DailyMail #Guardian #Euronews
My company was raided. It should have been a straightforward matter. But the #MetPolice & #LBRUT forgot to seize my computer & came back to do a 2nd raid. The search warrant didn't permit a second entry, however, #LBRUT entered unlawfully

#Guardian #Telegraph #DailyMail #GMB #UK
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Just Live With It
@bbc_thismorning
This all started because the #MetPolice & #LBRUT couldn't do their jobs properly & then decided to take the law into their own hands. The result of this decision has led to events stranger than fiction

#BBCNews #Skynews #Itvnews #Channel4News #ThisMorning #TheresaMay #UKGov #LBC
My company was raided. It should have been a straightforward matter. But the #MetPolice & #LBRUT forgot to seize my computer & came back to do a 2nd raid. The search warrant didn't permit a second entry, however, #LBRUT entered unlawfully

#Guardian #Telegraph #DailyMail #GMB #UK
Complaints were then made to my MP #VinceCable. He liaised with the #Metpolice & #LBRUT. And then weeks later, the search warrant was completely changed & was passed off as the search warrant executed on the day of the raids.

#DailyPolitics #Libdems #Conservatives #labour #bbcdp
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Naomi Clark [暗悪・直美]
@metasynthie
PRACTICE: Game Design in Detail is starting at the @NYUGameCenter with some opening comments by @flantz! I’ll be live-tweeting a bunch of talks on game design over the next couple days. Feel free to mute #Practice2018 if you’d rather opt out?
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I Draw Charts
@ILikeCharting
"Over the course of the year Coinbase Markets will introduce new features like low latency performance, on-premise datacenter colocation services, institutional connectivity and access, and settlement and clearing services."
-blog.coinbase.com/coinbase-insti…

Thoughts below
This is a very interesting development which I just noticed. This paragraph essentially tells us that @coinbase is opening up the field to institutions who wish to conduct high frequency trading via algorithms on the cryptocurrency market.
This is indicated by the phrase "on-premise datacenter co-location." In essence, this means that these institutions will be able to have a lower latency connection to a centralized trading database, in order to front run the market by a few milliseconds.
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Yonatan Zunger 🔥
@yonatanzunger
Here's the underlying news story. 1,475 of the over 7,000 children which ICE has seized from their parents are missing and unaccounted for - and will probably never be reunited with their parents.

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Observe the numbers. Over 7,000 taken, 1,475 lost - and this is the first report. The project is still spinning up. The final numbers will be much, much, higher.
Una mattina, mi son svegliato
O bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao ciao ciao;
Una mattina, mi son svegliato
Eo ho trovato l'invasor.
Read 45 tweets
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Alamo_on_the_rise
@AlamoOnTheRise
Trump: Day 475
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Trump’s first and only solo news conference was on February 16, 2017.

What is he afraid of?
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