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Hayward Apparently Doesn’t Understand The Difference Between A Government Payor, And For-Profit Insurers… YAWN.

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This afternoon — mostly to distract from the fact that his MAGA wing of the GOP has crippled the nation’s business, by forcing forward (three failed times!) a manifestly malign actor as a putative Speaker of the House… Steve would tell us that price inflation in for profit health insurance company premiums is the fault of an Act of Congress from 2010.

What?!

He seems unaware that about 30 million more Americans now have basic government health benefits — called Obamacare, if you like — paid for by the government, not private for profit health insurers.

Additionally, he seems unaware that Pepperidge Farms (his charted example) offers its employees very high level Cadillac plans — from a for profit insurer.

Finally, he seems unaware Tangerine actively cut support for healthy outcomes for four long years, making it more expensive to provide coverage to the sickest older Americans. And that drug companies are still actively suing (in specious federal strike suits) to avoid having to fairly negotiate drug prices with the federal government. All to avoid… reining in costs of treatment.

The standard of care for health care in the US is up about 30% since 2010 — as of 2022, thanks to restored Democratic sponsored plans.

But Steve thinks Mr. Obama is responsible for the FACT that the United Healths and Aetnas of the world are choosing to gouge companies like Pepperidge Farms… because the benefits managers at such companies are fairly poor consumers / unsophisticated purchasers of group plans.

Hilarious, old Hayward is.

Daiichi Sankyo And Merck Hook Up Again: More Bio-Bucks — For Oncology…

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More bio-bucks, this evening — and Friday morning, in Tokyo.

Daiichi Sankyo just announced an up to $5.5 billion joint development agreement with Rahway, for three precision cancer drug candidates, in a deal that could generate up to $16 billion more — depending on milestone achievements.

All three drug candidates belong to the class of drugs known as antibody drug conjugates (ADC) and are in various stages of clinical development for the treatment of an array of solid cancer tumors. Here’s the latest, from Reuters:

…Under the deal, Merck will pay Daiichi Sankyo a $4 billion upfront payment in addition to $1.5 billion in continuation payments over the next two years. Merck may make additional payments of up to $16.5 billion contingent on future sales milestones.

Shares of Daiichi Sankyo surged in Tokyo trade and were up 12% at 0046 GMT….

Now you know. And the upper right graphic is largely speculation on my part, but this deal may solve some long running patent disputes — which have now become part of Seagen’s acquired tool box at Pfizer, now that it is no longer independent. We will watch for evidence of that late night, back-porch horse trading. Onward.

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While His Party Burns To The Ground, Hinderaker Cries About Women’s… Underwear Sales?!

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Nothing new here.

John wanted to show a scantily clad woman, beautiful and blonde — but needed a reason to do so. [He plays this odious charade about once a week.] And the idea that Victoria’s Secret is no longer being repped by Megan Rapinoe was plenty of cannon fodder, tonight.

Yeh — so Hinderaker has nothing to say about Jim Jordan’s megalomaniacal destruction of internal comity in the GOP — but wastes ten paragraphs on why he should be listened to, on how to market women’s underwear… to women.

His view? By marketing women’s t-backs & bras to… men, of course — by speaking to their… Johnsons.

I don’t care, except that he should be doing something about the barn-fire he helped set, in his own party.

But that would be a bridge too far.

Damn.

[U: The Cheese Just Caved, Too!] Hinderaker Thinks Only Powell Was Exposed, In Georgia?! Precious!

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Welp.

John never understood criminal law, much — he never practiced in the area. Moreover…

He was wrong about Ollie North, Scooter Libby, and every big GOP crime case since… all the way to Paul Manafort, Michael Flynn and Steve Bannon.

[Those last three were pardoned by Tangerine — which solidifies my point: you cannot be pardoned unless it was a completed crime, John.]

So… John’s views on felonies are less than marginally meaningful.

But I will note them, just for the record, when Rudy and Cheddar go up the river, for these or other crimes.

UPDATED: 10.20.2023 @ 1 PM EDT — Now Cheesebro has cut a deal in Georgia, too. Tangerine is… cooked. Hinderaker is… as ever… clueless.

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Thanks ole’ Johnnie!

As Jordan Plays A Cheap Nero, In The US House…

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We thought he’d been convinced, yesterday, after he’d lost 22 NEW votes — in the second tally — ones he’d previously secured, in the first.

But no… this afternoon Jungle Gym says he wants the Speaker’s gavel, yet and still. He’s Tangerine’s boy, after-all. Cannot see any forest through the trees.

What is amusing — and sad — is not one of the boys at Ringside or Powerline will admit that Jordan is killing Israelis (burning Rome)… by being so stupidly myopic.

He cannot win.

And in a few weeks, we may see Hakeem Jeffries, a Democrat… as the GOP’s sole remaining option.

Hilarious!

[U: Now Cheesebro, Too!] Sidney “Kraken” Powell Pleads… Guilty!

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This is pure genius!

“…Take a load off Fani…

And, and and…

You put the load right on Cheese….”

Courtesy a commenter named Hollywood, at emptywheel.net, this morning.

That’s all I’ve got.

If you don’t know. . . now you know. Courtesy our erstwhile Anon. commenters. . . this refers to Sidney Powell — and a great deep cut from The Band. Grin.

UPDATED: 10.20.2023 @ 1 PM EDT — Now Kenny Cheesebro has cut a deal in Georgia, too. Tangerine is… cooked.

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Zostavax® “Lone Pine” Ruling To Be Argued October 31 On Appeal, In The Third Cir. — Merck’s Many Years Of Defense On The Line In 1,200 Vaccine Cases.

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We talked at length about so-called Lone Pine orders in Merck’s defense of the Fosamax® cases, back in 2013.

And this is a topic now certainly ripe for appeals — and eventually Supremes’ — consideration: in these vaccine cases, as about two years ago, a trial judge ruled that if some 1,200 vaccine injury claimants would not take a PCR test to show some genetic connection between their illnesses, and the shingles vaccine, he would dismiss their cases. And that is just what he did. [My backgrounder, here. We’ve been following this since… 2009.]

Several law professors (and the plaintiffs’ lawyers, of course) have written that this amounts to a judge stepping over the transom (from arbiter, to advocate): the judge put himself in the role of demanding “new evidence” be created — on pain of dismissal, as to these plaintiffs. All of this without a full trial to decide whether the PCR tests could plausibly rule out, or include, the vaccine as being cause/effect related to the complained-of illnesses. [Similar problems have been seen with Shingrix®, from GSK — but no Lone Pine order has ever been entered in any case involving GSK’s vaccine.]

Here’s Reuters on it all — but more high stakes ahead for Merck, even with the highly favorable US vaccine shield laws in place, in its favor:

…“This case,” [plaintiffs’ counsel] Bashman said in an email, “highlights how a Lone Pine order can be improperly used to deprive on a mass basis nearly 1,200 separate plaintiffs of the procedural protections that the summary judgment process affords.”

It’s one thing, Bashman said in the plaintiffs’ brief, for an MDL judge to grant summary judgment in masses of cases after determining that plaintiffs cannot prove general causation through their expert witnesses. The problem in the Zostavax case, he argued, is that Bartle was addressing specific causation, not general causation, and used the vehicle of dismissal for failure to comply with a Lone Pine order.

Two law professors who have written about MDL Lone Pine orders, Elizabeth Burch of the University of Georgia and Nora Freeman Engstrom of Stanford Law School, echoed Bashman’s assertion that Lone Pine dismissals may improperly disregard plaintiffs’ procedural protections. “Numerous courts have recognized that Lone Pine orders can tempt courts to trammel on plaintiffs’ rights,” Engstrom said via email.

Burch called Lone Pine dismissals “deeply problematic” because they “often act as a poor-man’s substitute for summary judgment….”

[And this may explain Merck dipping below $100 a share today, on the NYSE — been a minute since MRK had a $90s handle.] We will keep a weather eye on this one, as well, as you might imagine. Off — grinning, into a fine morning with Halloween in the air….

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The Settlement Of Merck’s Zetia® Federal Antitrust Class Action Was Approved Today, In Norfolk, Virginia.

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We’ve covered this back and forth, which later became a piece of federal class action litigation — from about 2008, on — so now… well over 15 years. This is plainly the legacy of one Fast Fred Hassan.

And as we’ve mentioned this summer, the able federal district court judge had indicated he would likely approve the negotiated settlement figures and terms. See our earlier coverage for the tallies on those. The attorneys for the plaintiffs here will likely reap over $30 million, when all the dust settles, and all class counsels are paid out. Well earned, as it was solid work all around, with some working over a decade now, to get to this moment. In any event, here is the opinion, hot off the presses just this afternoon — and a bit from it:

…Defendants [Merck and Glenmark] entered into an unlawful agreement to delay the introduction of a less expensive generic version of Merck’s cholesterol-lowering medication, Zetia, which resulted in artificially inflated prices for branded Zetia (Ezetimibe) and its generic equivalents. The alleged unlawful agreement is a 2010 settlement agreement resolving a patent infringement litigation Merck brought against Glenmark after Glenmark filed an Abbreviated New Drug Application (“ANDA”) seeking to manufacture, market, and sell a less expensive, generic form of Zetia. As a result, the EPPs alleged that they paid more for Zetia and/or its generic equivalents than they would have paid absent Defendants’ unlawful conduct. Defendants denied: (1) the EPPs’ allegations of unlawful or wrongful conduct; and (2) that any of the alleged conduct caused any damage….

The court is satisfied that the requested attorneys’ fees of one-third of the Settlement Fund properly balances these policy goals. A significant award is appropriate for the attorneys because they litigated the case vigorously for nearly five years, managed the interests of the EPP Class, and fronted significant costs….

Onward, but anyone who regards Fast Fred as any sort of life science leader to be emulated… is a few sandwiches short of a picnic. And again, this sort of chicanery is exactly why the federal payors need the right to negotiate price on older meds — for the benefit of John Q. Public. Out.

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On What Edgar Allan Poe Called… “This Sinfully Scintillant Planet”: What, Exactly, Caused These “Pits” On… Mercury?

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You know we love a good science mystery. Doubly so, when it involves likely… geological forces.

So do join in the sleuthing, here near All-Hallows Eve, with NASA — to try to explain the strange nearly-glowing blueish pits, thus far seen nowhere else in the entire known Universe, except for hot lil’ Mercury:

…[One theory] include[s] the idea that darker areas on Mercury’s surface are graphite deposits that, when pummeled and destroyed by solar wind, collapse and leave behind pitted, hollowed areas of only the much brighter, blue-tinged materials.

[But it is plainly true that] Mercury has… “ghosts” — craters in a previous life, later shrouded by lava — and has seen shooting stars and meteors peppering every part of its surface for billions of years. The craters they leave are named for artists and authors, including Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, and Edgar Allan Poe, whose namesake crater contains hollows.

Maybe one day Irving, their mentor and contemporary, will join their company. By then the true nature of Mercury’s strange hollows may be unmasked….

Smiling, into the cool night air… with some debris from remnant tail particles from Halley’s Comet likely to whiz by Earth this weekend. Heads’ up!

नमस्ते

Unsurprisingly, The Supremes (5-4) Have Allowed The New Ghost Gun Rules To Go Into Effect, Even In NRA-Dominated Texas…

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Just as we predicted last week, the new rules against “ghost” gun frames may be enforced by the Biden administration, as we await the overall appeals outcomes.

Here’s that bit, via a Sam Alito order, and some of the last briefing we quoted on the topic:

…Recent advances in firearms technology have prompted the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (“ATF”) to reexamine its rules implementing the GCA. In the past few years, the ghost gun industry has exploded, driven in large part by the online sale of weapon parts kits. These user-friendly kits typically contain nearly complete firearms parts and require a minor amount of assembly to become fully functional weapons. 87 Fed. Reg. at 24662. As these firearms kits have proliferated, so too have self-made, unserialized guns. Law enforcement officers went from recovering about 1,700 self-made guns in 2016 to over 19,000 in 2021, an eleven-fold increase. Id. at 24656. Altogether, officers recovered about 45,240 self-made guns during that five-year period — more than 40 percent of which were recovered in 2021 alone. Id. at 24656.

The rise of these kits revealed two problems. First, a person explicitly banned from firearm possession under the GCA could buy a kit and assemble a fully functional gun within hours. Second, because the finished product was unserialized, officers could not track the gun if it was later used in a crime. Indeed, of the 45,240 suspected ghost guns recovered from 2016 to 2021, only 445 could be traced — a less than one percent success rate….

[Mr. Biden’s] Final Rule is a vital backstop to states’ efforts to stem the flow of ghost guns and combat the violence engendered by prohibited persons possessing untraceable weapons. In response to the recent influx of ghost guns, at least 14 jurisdictions have enacted their own laws regulating weapon parts kits and partially complete frames or receivers. But absent federal enforcement, the number of unserialized guns has proliferated, leaving in its wake a spike in crime and violence. The Final Rule serves a vital coordinating function, consistent with the GCA, that states cannot exercise on their own….

Onward — now you know. Grinning into the gloaming….

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