As Goes Medicare/Medicaid Reimbursement, So Goes Vytorin/Zetia

Natasha Singer, for The New York Times, is running this ominous-sounding paragraph, in her Arbiter 6 study coverage this morning:

. . . .On Friday, Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, wrote to the Department of Health and Human Services, asking its director, Kathleen Sebelius, what action she intended to take in light of the study results. Mr. Grassley sits on the Senate Finance Committee which has jurisdiction over Medicare and its drug spending. In 2006 and 2007, the drug makers made more than $300 million through Medicare Part D in sales of Vytorin, a drug that combines Zetia and a statin, Mr. Grassley wrote. . . .

This could be the death-knell, right here.