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Pharmacy network efficiency is sought

...As a brand-name drug on the formulary, For Navy Cmdr.

Mark Richerson, director of the Defense Department's Pharmacoeconomic Center, patient behavior with this and other drug classes on the formulary show the powerful effect of raising co-payments.

What we learned, he said, is that co-pays do change market share.

"Patients will switch." That confirmation is important, Richerson said during the Tricare conference, because getting 6.6 million users of the military pharmacy benefit to make more cost-effective choices is critical to department plans to lower soaring pharmacy costs.

In fiscal 2005, defense spending on outpatient pharmacy services hit $5.4 billion, up 80 percent in three years.

But at least, the rate of growth is trending down, Richerson noted.

In fiscal 2003, outpatient drugs costs rose by 27.5 percent.

The increase was 21.8 percent in 2004 and 15.5 percent last year.

And for the first time in recent memory, outpatient drug costs in military treatment facilities actually fell last year, by 5.2 percent or $89 million.

But military retail pharmacy costs jumped 30.1 percent.

"It's an incredibly expensive point of service," Richerson said.

Congress took a first important step toward controlling pharmacy costs in 2000 when it directed the Defense Department to create a uniform formulary of prescription drugs.

Th...

Top 40 Countdown: Five Super Bowl moments - Nos. 10 to 6

...Valerie Grabowski would be so disappointed.

No.

9: Wide right Even today no one wants to be Scott Norwood.

On the Web site of Scott E.

Norwood, we learn that he works with computers, he lives in downtown Boston, and he has a personality type of ISTJ.

Oh, and then, in the third paragraph of his biography, he relays this: "I am not related to that Scott Norwood guy who missed the field goal for the Buffalo Bills in the Super Bowl, nor do I know him or have any idea how to get in touch with him.

Don't even ask." Apparently, ISTJs are sensitive.

Another Scott Norwood, who graduated from Lee's Summit High and is a librarian at Central Missouri State, redirects mistaken viewers in far kinder fashion.

"If you are looking for the field-goal kicker," Norwood writes, "you are on the wrong page - grin." He had to add the "grin," of course, because who outside of Buffalo conjures up Scott Norwood's name and doesn't at very least chuckle about the biggest miss in Super Bowl history?

For all the heroes the biggest game in sports has created, it has its share of goats.

And none bleats quite like Norwood.

"Wide right" is now built into the vernacular of every Buffalonian after Norwood pushed his potential game-winning 47-yard field goal with 4 seconds remaining in Super Bowl XXV.

The sad-sack Bills lost 20-19 to the Giants, and they would drop the next three Super Bowls, too, just to rub it in.

Norwood's miss lived on.

In the movie "Buffalo `66," the m...

Sunday's Super Lineup of Stones, Stevie--and Liza

... Big names to appear in big game ads include: Jessica Simpson, pitching Cheesy Bites Pizza for Pizza Hut; Diddy and Jackie Chan, pitching Diet Pepsi (separately); Fabio, pitching for Nationwide Insurance; and the Enterprise's own Leonard Nimoy, pitching for Aleve.

Unexpected names to appear in unexpected ads include: Kermit the Frog, showing off Ford's Escape Hybrid SUV; and Richard Dean Anderson, going all MacGyver for MasterCard.

Hollywood movies to get a super push via a Super Bowl ad include: Tom Cruise's Mission: Impossible III; Anthony Hopkins' The World's Fastest Indian; and the unsinkable Poseidon Adventure.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, only 7 percent of adult U.S.

viewers watch the Super Bowl for the commercials, a 2005 survey by Eisner Communications found.

For those who are devoted to the commercials, digital cable's NFL Network will run 30 minutes worth of Super Bowl spots uninterrupted by football on Monday, beginning at noon ET.

ALTERNATIVES Listen to the big game in Russian on Sirius Satellite Radio.

Also available on channels in handy Mandarin Chinese, Japanese, Danish, French, and for old-time's sake, English and Spanish.

Watch the Goo Goo Dolls and Nickelback headline The Pepsi Smash Super Bowl Bash, airing Saturday night on VH1.

In a pair of non-televised concerts, Snoop Dogg and 3 Doors Down will fill Tiger Stadium on Friday and Saturday, respectively, at Bud ...

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