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MARYLAND (WBFF) — On a recent Friday, the door never seemed to stop opening at Snow Hill Pharmacy. Patients were picking up medications; phones were ringing, and the pharmacist on duty was filling countless prescriptions... Read more from Fox45.

A groundbreaking vaccine reduced the risk of death or recurrence of melanoma by almost half, an encouraging signal for a treatment seeking federal approval that has boosted the fortunes of drugmakers Moderna and Merck and could usher in a new wave of cancer treatments... Read more from the Washington Post.

When a pharmacy closes, patients have to find somewhere else to get their prescriptions. And that can be a bigger problem than it sounds. National data suggests more than 525,000 people in Maryland live in a pharmacy shortage area and may have to travel 10 to 15 miles to get their prescriptions. Some patients are even crossing state lines to get their medicines. For some, finding another pharmacy may be a simple fix. For others, it can mean finding a pharmacy that accepts the

The 340B Drug Pricing Program was established in 1992 with a noble purpose: to help patients by enabling safety-net hospitals and clinics to stretch scarce resources and provide care and affordable medications to low-income, vulnerable and uninsured patients. Unfortunately, over the decades, the program has drifted wildly off course... Read more from The Baltimore Sun.

HANCOCK, Md. — For 21 years, Ken Reed kept his pharmacy open in this small Western Maryland town, filling prescriptions for neighbors who knew the pharmacist by name and sometimes stopped in simply to ask a question about their health. Then the economics stopped making sense. Reed said some prescription drugs cost his pharmacy more to buy than insurance middlemen paid him to dispense. An insulin prescription that cost his pharmacy about $400, he said, could bring only about $

After a month hiatus, John Oliver returned to Last Week Tonight with a look at United Healthcare, the largest insurance company in the US, which served over 50 million people last year... Read more from The Guardian.

I remember what my life looked like before I found the right medication. Crohn’s disease had stolen years from me, piece by piece. I spent more time managing my disease than with my family. I couldn’t trust my body to get me through a workday. After years of suffering, failed treatments, unwanted medication side effects and insurance denials, I worked with my doctor to find a treatment that was right for me. Within months, I was in remission. For the first time in years, I fe

Starting a business should not mean gambling with your family’s health. Yet for millions of entrepreneurs, it increasingly does.Nearly 1 in 5 small-business owners and self-employed workers rely on the Affordable Care Act marketplaces for insurance. They just got the awful news that exchange plan premiums will likely jump 15% in 2027, the second consecutive year of double-digit increases. Those hikes could stop new businesses before they start, as would-be entrepreneurs concl

As policymakers in Washington take a closer look at the 340B program and debate reforms to improve transparency and accountability, one thing has become increasingly clear: Questions about whether the program is serving patients as intended can no longer be ignored. What began as a well-intentioned safety-net program has grown dramatically over the past three decades, attracting bipartisan scrutiny as lawmakers seek to understand whether 340B savings are reaching the patients

Congress created the 340B Drug Pricing Program in 1992 to help safety-net providers care for low-income patients by allowing qualified hospitals, clinics, and other health care organizations to purchase medicines at discounted prices. These providers often serve communities facing the greatest barriers to care, including communities with high proportions of Black patients. The idea is simple and worth defending: a hospital serving patients with the greatest needs buys medicin

The Maryland Department of Commerce has approved $8.5 million in matching grants to help establish seven endowed research professorships at four higher education institutions, supporting a combined $17.7 million investment aimed at accelerating scientific research, technology commercialization and workforce development across the state... Read more at City Biz.

For more than three decades, my work has been rooted in West Baltimore, where the gap between scientific progress and community benefit is not theoretical; it is something families experience every day. That is why a recent announcement about a new treatment for metastatic pancreatic cancer demanded my attention. New clinical data shows that daraxonrasib doubled survival rate for patients with previously treated metastatic pancreatic cancer, reducing the risk of death by 60 p

Maryland and Virginia lost nearly the same number of federal workers during the Trump administration’s cuts to the federal workforce last year. But one state’s economy appears to be responding very differently... Read more at the Baltimore Sun.

American voters desperately want relief from rising prices — especially the increasingly unaffordable cost of healthcare. Democrats have a plan for that. Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren recently introduced the Break Up Big Medicine Act with Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., a bill that would split up the huge conglomerates that have made the current healthcare system so expensive and frustrating to navigate. Businessman Mark Cuban recently quipped that breaking up these near-monop

Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich joined Maryland Secretary of State Susan Lee, Maryland Commerce Secretary Harry Coker Jr., County Council President Natali Fani-González and other local leaders to celebrate the opening of Bora Biologics’ new drug substance manufacturing facility in Rockville... Read more at MocoShow.

Healthcare insurance customers in Maryland’s state-run exchange are likely to see significant rate increases next year despite efforts by the state to shield residents. Insurance companies selling Affordable Care Act plans, also known as Obamacare, are requesting an average increase of 13.7% for individuals and 13.1% for small businesses... Read more at the Baltimore Banner.

U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin worries about proposed rule handing federal grantmaking power to the administration’s political appointees Since President Donald Trump took office, his administration has throttled billions in grants for health and science research through orders and foot dragging. There may soon be a rule to set this approach in stone... Read more at the Baltimore Banner.

Only a few months after Congress enacted some of the most significant federal reforms to date of the business practices oft pharmacy benefit managers, the PBM industry’s chief lobbying group says it has launched the biggest advertising campaign in its history... Read more at Health Care un-covered.

Some of the forces that shape biopharma cluster development are constants year after year, such as the emergence of startups from university and research institute labs to develop new treatments, thanks to ideas backed by the brains of researchers and executives, and the bucks of serial entrepreneurs and other investors... Read more at GenEng News.

Maryland is seeing more people than usual drop out of ACA health care plans after the first quarter after federal subsidies were allowed to sunset by Congress. The state saw an 8% disenrollment rate from people unable to pay for their ACA health care plans from January to the end of March, which translates to about 18,000 residents. Read more at WYPR.