About healthcare financing
Most interesting health tech M&A deals in 2020: As December winds down, news media are starting to report lists of the year’s superlatives. Here is one of them.
About the public’s health
Xavier Becerra has been defending the ACA in court. Now he could manage it: “President-elect Joe Biden announced this morning he is nominating [California Attorney General Xavier] Becerra (D) — who has little health policy experience but has emerged as the nation’s defender of the Affordable Care Act — to helm the 80,000-employee agency that manages Healthcare.gov, regulates prescription drugs and oversees the government’s sweeping Medicare and Medicaid insurance programs.
Biden has also picked Rochelle Walensky, an infectious-disease specialist at Massachusetts General Hospital, to direct the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention within HHS.”
Becerra also has a history of blocking system mergers.
US Covid-19 hospitalizations hit another record high: “It took almost 100 days for the US to reach 1 million coronavirus infections after the first cases were confirmed on January 20. But in the first five days of the month, from Tuesday to Saturday, 1,000,882 cases were reported in the US, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.
More than 14.7 million confirmed cases had been reported in the US as of Sunday night, and more than 282,200 people have died.
As of Saturday, the US averaged 190,948 new cases over the last week, another record high, according to a CNN analysis of Johns Hopkins data.”
Trump’s Operation Warp Speed promised a flood of covid vaccines. Instead, states are expecting a trickle: “Instead of the delivery of 300 million or so doses of vaccine immediately after emergency-use approval and before the end of 2020 as the Trump administration had originally promised, current plans call for availability of around a tenth of that, or 35 to 40 million doses.”
How Covid test supply shortages could cause a 'public health crisis' of undiagnosed STIs: “Labs across the country have been facing dire shortages of supplies as the number of Covid-19 tests being processed has skyrocketed. But with so many supplies directed toward Covid-19 testing, it's increasingly becoming more difficult for patients to get an accurate diagnosis for sexually transmitted infections, common but serious illnesses like pneumonia and other potentially life-threatening infections.”
Joint associations of accelero-meter measured physical activity and sedentary time with all-cause mortality: a harmonised meta-analysis in more than 44 000 middle-aged and older individuals: 11 minutes per day of moderate to vigorous activity is all it took to reduce mortality.
New Mexico shut down nearly everything to keep hospitals from being overwhelmed by covid. It wasn’t enough: Governor Lujan Grisham (D) ” is on the verge of acknowledging just how grim conditions have become: She will, she said in an interview, soon allow hospitals to move to ‘crisis standards,’ a move that frees them to ration care depending on a patient’s likelihood of surviving.” This move is unprecedented.
FDA Authorizes Covid-Flu Combo Test for Home-Collected Samples: “The FDA authorized Quest Diagnostics RC Covid-19 + Flu RT-PCR Test for prescription use with the Quest Diagnostics Self-Collection Kit for Covid-19 + Flu by individuals who are suspected of respiratory viral infection consistent with Covid-19 when home collection is determined to be appropriate by an individual’s healthcare provider.”
Covid vaccines will be available for private purchase in India: “Serum Institute of India, the world’s largest vaccine manufacturer, has a licence to produce the shot and has already manufactured 40m doses. Once the jab is approved for use, Serum will initially supply the Indian government but then expects to sell 20m-30m doses to private facilities, according to Adar Poonawalla, chief executive.”
Consider how a secondary private market for these vaccines will affect price, availability and equity.
About health insurance
About 523,000 people select healthcare plans in the fourth week of open enrollment: “That brings the total number of enrollees to 2.9 million, a slight jump over last year but with more days to sign up over 2019.”
Supreme Court to hear appeal to reinstall New Hampshire, Arkansas work requirement program: “The Supreme Court agreed Friday to take up an appeal from Arkansas, New Hampshire and the Trump administration to reverse a lower court’s ruling to strike down both states' Medicaid work requirements program.
A decision, expected next June, could have major ramifications for other work requirement programs that have been tied up in court.
Arkansas and New Hampshire are two of four states whose work requirement program was set aside by a court ruling. The other states are Kentucky and Michigan. Kentucky later pulled the program in 2019 after a Democrat became governor.”
About hospitals and health systems
Financial updates from 9 health systems: A short financial performance summary of 9 large systems. Recall that many statements look good because of federal aid.
About pharma
FTC Staff Issues FY 2017 Report on Branded Drug Firms' Patent Settlements with Generic Competitors: “According to a new FTC staff report, the total number of final Hatch-Waxman patent settlements entered by pharmaceutical companies in FY 2017 was close to the record high in FY 2016. Despite the high number of settlements, those that include the types of reverse payments that are likely to be anticompetitive remain very low.” In other words, pay-for-delay actions to generic companies are very low. [Despite the FY 2017 timeframe, this report was issued a few days ago.]
Novo Nordisk to Stop Shipping 340B Discounted Medications to Contract Pharmacies: “Novo Nordisk has announced that effective Jan. 1, it will stop distributing discounted medications to community-based pharmacies of covered entity hospitals under the 340B Drug Pricing Program, joining other drugmakers who have taken similar steps to combat what they claim are duplicate discounts created under the program’s expansion to include contract pharmacies.”
Sanofi Plans to Unveil Price of COVID-19 Vaccine Following Phase 1/2 Trial Results: “Sanofi is aiming to price its messenger RNA-based COVID-19 vaccine, NVX-CoV2373, at less than $12.20 (10 euros) per dose and said it will finalize the price after it releases the results of its phase 1/2 trial.”
Drug industry trade groups sue Trump admin over drug pricing rule: “Drug industry trade groups filed two lawsuits against the Trump administration on Friday challenging new U.S. rules to lower drug prices, potentially undermining one of President Donald Trump’s flagship efforts to take on high drug costs.
The suits were filed by PhRMA, the pharmaceutical industry trade group, and a group of biotechnology industry trade organizations, including Biotechnology Innovation Organization (BIO), in federal courts in Maryland and California, respectively.” And in a related story: Most Favored Nation [MFN] Rule’s Impact on Medicare Beneficiaries OOP Costs: “Avalere’s analysis finds that the vast majority of beneficiaries in Medicare FFS would not see a reduction in their OOP costs from the MFN model because more than 94% of FFS Part B beneficiaries using MFN drugs have supplemental coverage (e.g., Medigap, employer sponsored insurance, Medicaid) that covers some or all of their cost-sharing for Part B drugs. Avalere estimates that less than 1% of beneficiaries in Medicare would see reduced OOP costs (in a given year) if the demo were to include the 50 drugs listed in the IFC [Interim Final Rule with Comment Period].”
CRISPR, Vertex's gene-editing therapy shows promise in beta thalassaemia, sickle-cell disease: This story was published in many media outlets today.
”CRISPR Therapeutics and Vertex Pharmaceuticals announced new data showing that 10 patients given the investigational CRISPR/Cas9-based gene-editing therapy CTX001 had a "consistent and sustained response" to treatment. The findings come from two Phase I/II trials and build on results disclosed last month from seven patients with transfusion-dependent beta thalassaemia (TDT) or severe sickle-cell disease (SCD).”
About healthcare IT
Future of AI and Digital Healthcare: “For the first time, a joint The Lancet & Financial Times Commission entitled Growing up in a digital world: Governing health futures 2030 is exploring the convergence of digital health, artificial intelligence (AI) and other frontier technologies with universal health coverage (UHC) to support attainment of the third Sustainable Development Goal (SDG).”
If you can access the Financial Times site, it is a really interesting dive into this topic.