About pharma
FDA to Study Drug Endorsements by Instagram Influencers: Because of the prevalence of false information, the FDA will be conducting this study.
About health insurance
ACOs warn future of Next Gen program appears bleak: “The five-year demonstration program will expire at the end of 2020 unless the Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar decides to extend it or make it permanent. But an industry group and several participants say that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services is already telling Next Gen ACOs, which take on high amounts of financial risk, that the program will not be around for 2021.That's due to an evaluation report that found the program hadn’t saved Medicare money…
Another reason some in the ACO industry are speculating about the demise of Next Gen is the emergence of the new payment model called Direct Contracting, which goes online in 2021…
The Next Gen ACO program started in 2016 and required participants to take on a high amount of downside risk, where the ACO must pay CMS for not meeting savings targets. However, Next Gen ACOs got a higher share of savings than those in the MSSP.”
Humana, private equity firm team up to open Medicare-centric primary care clinics: “Humana is teaming up with New York-based private equity firm Welsh, Carson, Anderson & Stowe (WCAS) on a joint venture to launch senior-care-centric primary care clinics…The clinics will be payer-agnostic and operated by Humana’s primary care subsidiary, Partners in Primary Care.” The “payer-agnostic” model has been tried before with poor results. Competitors will not send patients to these clinics unless they have no other choice.
Top 10 health insurance companies in the US: The article provides information about these ten companies.
About emerging science
Unique new antiviral treatment made using sugar: “Using modified sugar molecules the team showed that the outer shell of a virus can be disrupted, thereby destroying the infectious particles on contact, as oppose to simply restricting its growth. This new approach has also been shown to defend against drug resistance.”
About the public’s health
Quantifying Health Systems’ Investment In Social Determinants Of Health, By Sector, 2017–19:” We identified seventy-eight unique programs involving fifty-seven health systems that collectively included 917 hospitals. The programs involved at least $2.5 billion of health system funds, of which $1.6 billion in fifty-two programs was specifically committed to housing-focused interventions. Additional focus areas were employment (twenty-eight programs, $1.1 billion), education (fourteen programs, $476.4 million), food security (twenty-five programs, $294.2 million), social and community context (thirteen programs, $253.1 million), and transportation (six programs, $32 million). Health systems are making sizable investments in social determinants of health.”