Clinicians at Take Care Health are Driving Force Behind Patient and Employer-Centric Health Care Innovation

Nation’s largest community pharmacy chain to administer vaccinations at 18 pharmacy locations in Salt Lake County beginning Nov. 5

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The foundation of this recovery is unstable.

CVS Caremark Corp. (NYSE: CVS) beat out analyst expectation as its third quarter earning rose 39% from the previous quarter. CVS Caremark Corp used their revenue gains from it Pharmacy Benefits business to help fuel their profits.

This upbeat results shows that their decision to acquire Caremark for their benefits business is actually paying off. CVS has also taken advantage of their “Maintenance Choice “ Program, which allows customers to get the same low price as if it was bought through the Pharmacy Benefits units mail service if they pick up 90 day prescriptions through drugstores.

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Biotech investors interested in seeing more details about these companies and a full list of their related stories can do so by typing the stock ticker symbol into the Stock Quotes box on the right side of the page.Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (Nasdaq:ALNY), a leading RNAi therapeutics company, today announced that it will webcast its upcoming R&D Day live on the "Investors” section of the company’s website at www.alnylam.com.Biogen Idec Inc. (NASDAQ:BIIB) announced today that its presentation at the 2009 Annual Credit Suisse Healthcare Conference will be webcast live via the internet , on Friday, November 13, 2009 at 8:30 a.m. MST, 6:30 a.m. EST.

BioSante Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ: BPAX) today announced its third quarter 2009 financial results.

CEL-SCI Corporation (NYSE:CVM) announced today that Dr. Kenneth S. Rosenthal, Professor of Immunology and Microbiology of Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine and Pharmacy, reported on work conducted in collaboration with scientists at the Cleveland Clinic and CEL-SCI on CEL-SCI's LEAPS vaccine technology.

Clinical Data, Inc. (NASDAQ:CLDA) announced the Company’s operational and financial results for its second fiscal quarter ended September 30, 2009.Compugen Ltd. (NASDAQ:CGEN) announced the discovery and experimental confirmation of a genetic biomarker, CGEN-40001 for predisposition to type 2 diabetes the most common form of diabetes.Commonwealth Biotechnologies, Inc. (NASDAQ:CBTE) is pleased to announce it has completed the divestment of the assets (excluding land and buildings) of its bioanalytical and genetic testing business units, CBI Services and Fairfax Identity Laboratory (FIL) for a cash consideration and an ongoing lease commitment for 5 years.EpiCept Corporation (Nasdaq:EPCT) announced Health Canada has accepted for review the Company’s New Drug Submission (NDS) for Ceplene® (histamine dihydrochloride) for the remission maintenance of acute myeloid leukemia (AML) patients in first complete remission.Global Health Ventures Inc. (OTC:GHLV), or the "Company" a Specialty Pharma is pleased to announce it has completed the prototype manufacturing of the drug "X-Excite" Global's male enhancement drug.Hercules Technology Growth Capital, Inc. (NASDAQ:HTGC), the leading specialty finance company providing venture debt and equity to venture capital and private equity-backed technology and life science companies at all stages of development, announced it has committed to provide Labcyte, Inc. (www.labcyte.com) $5.5 million in credit facilities.Lannett Company, Inc. (NYSE:LCI) reported financial results for the fiscal 2010 first quarter ended September 30, 2009.Mentor Capital, Inc.'s (OTC:MNTR) major investee, Quantum Immunologics, reported significant advances in its recent Quarterly Conference Call. Monsanto Company (NYSE:MON) and Pfizer Inc (NYSE: PFE) announced they have entered into an agreement for Monsanto to acquire Pfizer's Chesterfield Village Research Center located in Chesterfield, Mo.OSI Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:OSIP) announced OSI Management will present at the Lazard Healthcare Conference in New York, NY on Tuesday, November 17, 2009 at 8:55am (Eastern Time) and will provide an overview on the Company’s product portfolio and business developments.Repros Therapeutics (Nasdaq:RPRX) announced financial results for the third quarter ended September 30, 2009.SuperGen, Inc. (Nasdaq:SUPG), a pharmaceutical company dedicated to the discovery and development of novel cancer therapies, announced the acceptance of seven abstracts for poster presentations on November 16, 17 and 18, 2009 at the 2009 AACR-NCI-EORTC Molecular Targets and Cancer Therapeutics conference in Boston, MA.Walgreens (NYSE:WAG)(NASDAQ:WAG), Monthly total increases 185 percent over year ago E-prescribing promotes goals of health care reform as it lowers cost and improves adherence to drug therapy Federal stimulus package further bolsters electronic prescribing.Walgreens (NYSE:WAG)(NASDAQ:WAG), President and CEO Greg Wasson will present during the Morgan Stanley Global Consumer and Retail Conference in New York on Thursday, Nov. 19, 2009 at approximately 8:20 a.m. EST.Yasheng Group (OTC:YHGG), announced an agreement between Yasheng Group's majority shareholder Yasheng Group BVI and Yasheng ECO Trade Corp wherein Yasheng Eco Trade was to acquire 75,000,000 shares of Yasheng Group has been terminated due to a clause in the agreement that either party could terminated if the acquisition was not concluded by the end of September 2009.

Easy comparisons and relatively favorable weather helped increase same-store sales in the typically weak month of October for retailers, up 1.8% from the year-earlier level but below the 2% growth expectation. Results for this series, which tracks data for stores open at least a year from 30 major retailers, had come ahead of expectations the [...]

($WMT) Easy Comparisons Help Retail Sales

While I touched on unemployment duration at the end of my last blog, this is a very important subject and deserves a bit more elaboration. Quite simply being out of work for three or four weeks is a very different experience with very different economic implications than being out of work for six months to [...]

(AXP) More Information on Unemployment Duration

While I touched on unemployment duration at the end of my last blog, this is a very important subject and deserves a bit more elaboration. Quite simply being out of work for three or four weeks is a very different experience with very different economic implications than being out of work for six months to a year or more. The focus on the total number of unemployed obscures that reality. The thing that makes this recession so much different than the ones that have gone before it is how long people are staying out of work once they become unemployed. Yeah if you get laid off for a few weeks, it can be a pain in the butt, but essentially it is just an unplanned vacation. It does not really affect your long term financial solvency, nor do your job skills diminish significantly. After six months, regular state unemployment benefits expire.

Fortunately during recessions, the federal government usually will step in and provide emergency extended benefits. However this recession has gone on for so long, and we have so many long-term unemployed, that millions were in danger of losing even those extended benefits. Fortunately the Senate finally got around to extending those benefits for up to another 20 weeks (depending on the overall level of unemployment in that state). Still, unemployment benefits only replace a fraction of what people were earning before they lost their jobs. This means that as soon as people get their pink slips, they will reduce their spending. However, depending on how long they expect to be out of work, they do not bring their spending levels down all the way to their new unemployment insurance income level. There are all sorts of spending categories that are at least semi fixed. If you think you will get a new job soon, you don't cancel little Jimmy's ballet lessons, or Betty's karate lessons. Instead you draw down your savings and use your American Express (AXP) card more.

However, as the weeks go by and you get no response from all the resumes you sent out, more and more things start to go by the wayside. But still does it make sense to quit the country club and lose the $20,000 initiation fee you paid, especially now that you actually have time to use it? Well after a few months you have to bite that bullet too. In the meantime, your non-retirement savings are probably about gone. Going into this recession the savings rate had been close to zero, so it is a pretty safe bet that most people did not have a lot of savings outside their 401-ks or IRAs. You have probably run up your balance on your credit card, but the card companies are getting wise to that and are starting to cut back the available credit limits for millions of accounts. That is a wise move on their part individually, but collectively for the economy, it acts to reduce overall demand.

Oh, and since a big factor in your credit rating is how much credit card debt you have relative to your available limit, both increasing your balance and the bank cutting back your maximum availability will conspire to knock off more than a hundred points from your FICO score. In past downturns, especially recent ones, if the unemployed person were a homeowner, he could tap the equity in the house. Now with millions and millions of homes worth less than the amount of the mortgage, or at least very close to it, that option is not open. Indeed this time around it seems that people are more likely to go in the other direction.

To survive, they are simply not paying on their mortgage and waiting for the sheriff to show up at the door to kick them out. Given the huge numbers of people who are falling behind on their mortgages, and to political efforts to slow the rate of foreclosures, this is actually a very rational strategy. In many parts of the country it has been possible to live rent and mortgage free for well over a year before actually getting kicked out of the house. That can free up a lot of cash to spend on other things. However, it is very bad news for the banks that lent the money like Bank of America (BAC) and Wells Fargo (WFC). It is also going to become a serious issue for the Federal Reserve since it is in the process of buying $1.25 trillion worth of mortgaged backed paper. True, the paper is guaranteed by Fannie (FNM) and Freddie (FRE), but since the taxpayers own 80% of both of them, what is the difference? People have to start tapping their 401-ks and IRAs. While the stock market has recovered nicely, it is still far below its peak, making that option even more painful, along with the 10% penalty imposed if you start to withdraw money from those accounts before retirement age.

By the time people have been out of work for six months or more, they have usually depleted their financial resources. Remember that on average, someone who is out of work has been out of work for 26.9 weeks now, and half of all the unemployed have been looking for work for more than 18.7 weeks. That smashes any record prior to this downturn. At the worst point in the Reagan recession, half of all the unemployed were out of work for more than 12.3 weeks. In fact, since the median duration started being tracked at the beginning of 1967, the median duration has only been in the double digits for 36 of those 502 months, and 14 of those have been during his downturn.

To those who say the stimulus bill has not helped, tell that to the almost 5.6 million people who have been out of work for more than six months. If not for the emergency benefits in that bill, they would be left with no income as soon as they passed that mark. I suspect that the vast majority of people who are in that category assumed that they would have found a new job by now when they first got laid off, and thus did not cut back their spending as fast as, in retrospect, they should have when they first got their pink 
slip.



It is long term unemployment that is the hallmark of a recession. The graph below shows the number of unemployed (in thousands) in each duration group back to 1960. This is not adjusted for the rather substantial increase in the total population over that period, so some upward trend to the numbers would be normal. Notice how stable the pink short term unemployment line is. There are always people getting laid off, and people getting hired. In good times, the number of people becoming unemployed does not really fall that much, it is just that they don't stay unemployed for all that long. They are either able to find a new job quickly, or in the case of many manufacturing jobs, get called back to work by their previous employer.

The light blue line of moderate length unemployment (5 to 14 weeks) shows a little bit more cyclical behavior, but nothing like the two longer term measures, the yellow 15 to 26 week group and the dark blue over 26 week long term group. What is striking about this recession is just how high that long term dark blue line has soared. While these graphs do not have the recession bars in, I would note that the level of long term unemployment usually continues to rise for many months after a recession ends. The shorter term groups tend to turn down well before the long term group does. This means that the situation is likely to continue to get worse before it gets better.



When these people do return to work, it is highly unlikely that they will be earning anything close to what they were earning before they got laid off. Many will be homeless, without any savings and in pretty desperate shape. We have already seen a steep rise in the poverty rate, which rose to 13.2% in 2008 from 12.5% in 2007 (see Census Bureau: Poverty Rising and Income, Poverty & Health Insurance).

Among children, the poverty rate rose to 19.0% in 2008 from 18.0% in 2007. I would be shocked if it does not exceed the one in five level when the statistics come out next summer for 2009. Since health care coverage is largely tied to employment in this country, the rising number of unemployed means that the number of people without health insurance, already at 46.3 million in 2008, is likely to jump further. While it is true that the stimulus package did subsidize COBRA insurance by as much as 65%, by the time people are unemployed for more than six months, it is very difficult for most of them to be able to afford even those subsidized premiums. When those people get sick, their only option is to go to the hospital emergency room, which is a very expensive and inefficient way of being treated. It is not free either, the hospital will try to bill them for the services, and even send debt collectors on them, although in most of these cases they will be trying to get blood from a stone.

For many, it simply means that they go without treatment, other than over-the-counter medicines they buy at Walgreen's (WAG). If it turns out to be something more serious, it very often results in death. A Harvard study recently estimated that 46,000 Americans die prematurely each year because of a lack of health care coverage. That is a national disgrace.

While unemployment is a lagging indicator of the economy, it does play a role in the economy going forward. It will be very hard to sustain the surprisingly strong growth we have seen in recent months if we don’t start to see some improvement in the employment picture. Yes, huge improvements in productivity are good, but people on the ground need jobs.

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Monday, November 2, 2009.

Biotech investors interested in seeing more details about these companies and a full list of their related stories can do so by typing the stock ticker symbol into the Stock Quotes box on the right side of the page.

Bristol-Myers Squibb (NYSE:BMY) announced 48-week data from an ongoing study (ETV-048) of chronic hepatitis B patients with decompensated cirrhosis, in which BARACLUDE demonstrated greater viral suppression compared to adefovir.

ICON plc, (NASDAQ:ICLR), a global provider of outsourced development services to the pharmaceutical, biotechnology and medical device industries, announced it has signed an extension to its strategic agreement with Eli Lilly and Company (NYSE:LLY) to manage the company’s clinical data management outside the US.

Auxilium Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:AUXL) announced executive management will participate in the Oppenheimer Healthcare Conference to be held November 3 - 4, 2009 at the Waldorf Astoria in New York City.

Arrayit Corporation (OTC:ARYC) is pleased to join the federal government in their efforts to help control health care costs by leveraging Arrayit's leading edge health care platform.

AEterna Zentaris Inc. (Nasdaq:AEZS), a global biopharmaceutical company focused on endocrine therapy and oncology, announced positive efficacy data from a Phase 2 study with its targeted cytotoxic peptide conjugate, AEZS-108 (formerly AN-152), in patients with platinum-resistant and taxane-pretreated ovarian cancer.

Perrigo Company (Nasdaq:PRGO) announced it has signed a definitive agreement to sell its Israel Consumer Products business along with the related production assets in Israel to Emilia Group, a subsidiary of O. Feller Holdings Ltd., for 205 million New Israeli Shekels (approximately $54 million).

Vanda Pharmaceuticals Inc., (Nasdaq:VNDA), a biopharmaceutical company focused on the development and commercialization of clinical-stage products for central nervous system disorders, announced financial and operational results for the third quarter ended September 30, 2009.

Kinetic Concepts, Inc. (NYSE:KCI) announced the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare (MHLW) in Japan has granted final regulatory approval for KCI to market and sell its innovative V.A.C.® Therapy System in the country.

Cytori Therapeutics Inc. (NASDAQ:CYTX) will release and host a webcast to discuss its third quarter financial results on Monday, November 9, 2009 at 10:30 AM Eastern time.

GTx, Inc. (NASDAQ:GTXI) announced it has received a Complete Response Letter issued by the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regarding its New Drug Application (NDA) for toremifene 80 mg to reduce fractures in men with prostate cancer receiving androgen deprivation therapy (ADT).

AMRI (NASDAQ:AMRI) announced a third compound being developed under its license and research agreement with Bristol-Myers Squibb Company (NYSE:BMY) will proceed into preclinical development.

GTC Biotherapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:GTCB) announced LFB Biotechnologies, a wholly owned subsidiary of LFB S.A. (Laboratoire françaindu Fractionnement et des Biotechnologies S.A., Les Ulis, France) and a strategic shareholder in GTC, has exercised its option to purchase $12.8 million of additional convertible preferred stock under the terms described in the financing agreements approved by GTC shareholders in July 2009.

Ligand Pharmaceuticals Incorporated (NASDAQ:LGND) has amended its license agreement with Exelixis, Inc. (NASDAQ:EXEL) as a result of which Ligand is now entitled to receive royalties on net sales of future products from a mineralocorticoid receptor program and a one-time $75,000 payment for providing access to certain patent rights.

Gilead Sciences, Inc. (Nasdaq:GILD), in collaboration with GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), announced plans for an international, event-driven (morbidity and mortality) clinical trial to study combination therapy versus monotherapy in a first-line treatment setting for pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH).

Dendreon Corporation (Nasdaq:DNDN) announced it has completed the submission of the amended Biologics License Application (BLA) for PROVENGE 4; (sipuleucel-T), the Company's lead investigational product, to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).Dendreon is seeking licensure for PROVENGE for men with metastatic castrate-resistant prostate cancer (CRPC).

Phase Forward (NASDAQ:PFWD), a leading provider of data management solutions for clinical trials and drug safety, announced a contract award to support the FDA’s production rollout of the company’s WebSDM™ Release 3.0 software, including the Empirica™ Study Clinical Trials Signal Detection system.

iMedicor (OTC:VMCI) announced it has received a Scope of Work (SOW) order from its partner, Franklyn Ideas, LLC (Franklyn) on behalf of one of its major pharmaceutical clients.

Walgreens (NYSE:WAG), the nation’s largest drugstore chain with more than 70,000 health service providers, will host its first-ever Diabetes Wellness Events at more than 1,500 stores nationwide in November.

CVS Caremark (NYSE:CVS) announced it has extended its contract to provide retail pharmacy benefit services and all clinical services for the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Government-wide Service Benefit Plan, also known as the Federal Employee Program (FEP).

Herbalife Ltd. (NYSE:HLF) reported third quarter 2009 net sales of $600.2 million, a decrease of 0.3 percent compared to the same period of 2008, primarily reclecting the 780 basis point unfavorable impact from currency fluctuations.

Antares Pharma, Inc. (Amex:AIS) announced it will release its third quarter 2009 financial results after the market closes on Monday, November 9, 2009, and host a conference call shortly thereafter at 4:30 PM (Eastern Time) to discuss the results.

La Jolla Pharmaceutical Company (NASDAQ:LJPC) announced its Special Meeting of Stockholders, which was convened on October 30, 2009, was adjourned to November 6, 2009 at 11:00 a.m., local time, at 4225 Executive Square, Suite 495, La Jolla, California.

Tom Dorsey and Tammy DeRosier - 2008 Year End Wrap-Up

Schaeffer's analyst Colleen S. King takes a look at news on the Street before the market open.

Schaeffer's Colleen S. King takes a look at news on the Street before the market open.

Schaeffer's Laura Houser takes a look at today's options activity

Fellow Masters, Earnings calls of interest this week are the following:

Monday - 3/24

3Com (COMS) - The Drama Award Today goes to 3Com Corp.

Walgreen (WAG) - Stocks to Watch: Stocks in focus for Monday
- Earnings Preview: Walgreen

Tuesday - 3/25

Yamana Gold (AUY) - Yamana Gold Rush Quiets Down

Wednesday - 3/26

Oracle (ORCL) - This is the big one America.  Related reading for betting on Oracle:
- Earnings Outlook: Oracle expected to post gains despite economy
- Market highlights for next week: Jabil, Oracle to report earnings

Pep Boys (PBY)

Thursday - 3/27

Finish Line (FINL)

Red Hat Inc (RHT) - Trading less than $1 away from a 52-week low.
-  Red Hat, Inc. Earnings Call scheduled for Thu, Mar 27

Friday - 3/28

Coca-Cola Hellenic Bottling Company SA (CCH)

Happy Trading this week and best of luck to all the longs and shorts.