Middlemen...

The Trump administration is working on a rule to upend the current drug-price negotiation system by targeting the middlemen in the process, pharmacy benefit managers, or PBMs  which currently demand large and secret rebates from pharmaceutical companies in exchange for favoring their drugs in competitive areas. 

Ending rebates would help the company to narrow the gap between the list, or sticker price, and the real price of its drugs. That would reduce costs for consumers and potentially boost demand.

Without rebate-driven exclusive contracts, sales volume might go down for certain products. Incentives to favor more expensive products would erode. And it’s not as if Lilly hasn’t benefited from the current system at times this year, for instance, it managed to secure favorable coverage for its copy of Sanofi’s blockbuster insulin Lantus.

This is not an open market condition. Leech on the back of the patient.

Toss

Roswell city spokeswoman Julie Brechbill tells The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that Courtney Brown and Kristee Wilson were fired, weeks after video of the April stop surfaced. The officers had been on administrative leave.

The footage showed them using a cellphone app mimicking a coin toss to decide whether to arrest Sarah Webb, who'd been pulled over for speeding. The decision to flip the virtual coin was made after Brown discovered her radar gun wasn't working. Although the result of the toss indicated Webb should be released, she was arrested anyway.  Charges against Webb were later dropped.  [NBC News]

Bond...

An orca has been spotted off the coast of Victoria, British Columbia, propping the body of her dead newborn calf up in the water with her head for two days, researchers say.

Deborah Giles, a biologist with the Center for Conservation Biology, told KCPQ the photos are "heartbreaking."

"It reflects the very strong bonds these animals have, and as a parent, you can only imagine what kinds of emotional stress these animals must be under, having these events happen," Baird said, according to the Times.

Boyle

Former Taliban hostage Caitlan Coleman returned to the United States with her three children, almost six years after she was abducted while backpacking across Afghanistan with her husband.

She decided to leave both Canada and Boyle behind, with her three children.  Caitlan is pregnant with her fourth child.

Officials often expressed doubts about Boyle's motives in traveling to Afghanistan with his then-pregnant wife in 2012. 

Boyle still faces 19 criminal charges and is restricted to his parents' home in Smiths Falls, Ontario, while he continues psychiatric treatment and awaits trial.

GDP...

• United States gross domestic product rose at an annual rate of 4.1 percent in the second quarter, up from 2.2 percent in the first three months of the year. It was the strongest quarter of growth since 2014.

• Consumer spending rose 4 percent, but private investment fell slightly as the housing market cooled.

• Exports rose 9.3 percent, driven in part by a surge in soybean shipments tied to President Trump’s trade policies.  

Farmers...

That is the idea. Farmers have been getting subsidiaries for the past 50 years.

One Shot...

The shooting took place at the Circle A Food Store in Clearwater. McGlockton's girlfriend parked in a handicapped spot while McGlockton and their 5-year-old son went inside. Drejka approached the vehicle and began a heated argument with Jacobs over parking in the spot without a permit.

McGlockton left the store, walking up to Drejka and shoving him to the ground. Just seconds later, Drejka, who has a conceal-carry permit, pulled out a gun and fired one shot at McGlockton, killing him.

Free...

Julian Assange, born in Australia in 1971, is a computer programmer by trade who has been involved in hacking schemes, targeting the Pentagon, the U.S. Department of Defense, NASA, the U.S. Navy and several private American companies.

In 2006, he founded the website WikiLeaks, which published secret information leaked to the site by whistleblowers.

WikiLeaks has published massive dumps of unredacted diplomatic cables, thousands contained sensitive information, and classified intelligence documents relating to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In 2007, it uploaded a U.S. Army manual for dealing with prisoners at Guantanamo Bay.

During the 2016 presidential campaign, WikiLeaks began publishing thousands of hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee. It was very embarrassing to the party.

Double...

  

Well, it is the biggest tax giveaway to giant corporations in modern memory. Let’s not kid ourselves. It’s got lots of moving parts, but the key, the part that’s the whole central issue here is $2 trillion in giveaways to giant corporations.

Number one recipient is estimated to be Wells Fargo, who will walk away with billions of dollars. You do remember Wells Fargo, the company that opened the fake accounts to cheat its own customers.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass. weighs in on revelations from a new book by Donna Brazile about the DNC, the 2016 election and whether the nominating process was rigged for Hillary Clinton.  
Double talk?

Ran...