About Covid-19
Omicron variant identified in U.S.: First case of covid-19 linked to new variant found in California: “The first U.S. case of covid-19 linked to the new omicron variant has been identified in California in a traveler who returned from South Africa on Nov. 22, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Wednesday.
The patient has mild symptoms that are improving and is in self-quarantine.”
Counterfeit Covid Masks Are Still Sold Everywhere, Despite Misleading Claims: “Consumers who try to purchase N95 masks, mainly on Amazon, are often led to vendors selling fake or poorly made KN95s, a Chinese-made mask that is often marketed as an N95 equivalent despite the lack of testing by U.S. regulators to confirm virus-filtering claims.”
Courts block two Biden administration COVID vaccine mandates: “U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty in Monroe, Louisiana, temporarily blocked the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) from enforcing its vaccine mandate for healthcare workers until the court can resolve legal challenges.
Doughty's ruling applied nationwide, except in 10 states where the CMS was already prevented from enforcing the rule due to a prior order from a federal judge in St. Louis.”
Stricter coronavirus testing being weighed for all travelers to U.S.: “As part of an enhanced winter covid strategy Biden is expected to announce Thursday, U.S. officials would require everyone entering the country to be tested one day before boarding flights, regardless of their vaccination status or country of departure. Administration officials are also considering a requirement that all travelers get retested within three to five days of arrival.”
Early tests show Regeneron drug may be less effective against Omicron: “The findings were the first sign that treatments developed to tackle Covid-19 may have lost effectiveness as the virus evolves. ‘The individual mutations present in the Omicron variant indicate that there may be reduced neutralisation activity of both vaccine-induced and monoclonal antibody conveyed immunity,’ Regeneron said on Tuesday.”
About health insurance
Nevada jury sides with TeamHealth, rules UnitedHealthcare underpaid its providers: “A Nevada jury ruled this week that UnitedHealthcare underpaid physicians at three TeamHealth affiliates in the state, dealing the insurer a blow in its ongoing back-and-forth with the physician staffing company.
The jury awarded TeamHealth $2.65 million in compensatory damages and is weighing how much UnitedHealthcare will owe in punitive damages. The jury reached a decision following two days of deliberation and nearly three weeks of testimony.”
CMMI pulls seriously ill component of Primary Care First after beneficiary uptake concerns: “The Biden administration has pulled the seriously ill population component of the Primary Care First model due to concerns it won't get enough beneficiaries to participate.
The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI) announced the withdrawal of the population component on Tuesday. The center had frozen that part of the primary care model in the spring, part of a larger review of all its models.”
Supreme Court weighs whether hospital drug cuts are valid: “The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments Tuesday about whether the federal government had the authority to cut hospitals' payments for outpatient drugs…
Hospitals pocket large savings when acquiring certain drugs through a federal program called 340B.
Medicare, under the Trump administration, instituted a 28.5% cut to those drug payments starting in 2018. Research indicated some hospitals were profiting excessively from the program.
Justices peppered both sides about whether Medicare's rate adjustment abided with the law.
Zoom in: The crux of the case falls on the so-called Chevron doctrine, which says federal agencies like Medicare have some leeway to interpret ambiguous laws, and courts should defer to them.”
Chicago Woman Sentenced to 56 months for Home Health Care Fraud: “An Illinois woman was sentenced yesterday in the Northern District of Illinois to 56 months in prison and ordered to pay $6.3 million in restitution for her participation in a conspiracy to commit health care and wire fraud.
According to court documents, and the evidence presented at trial, Angelita Newton, 43, of Chicago, worked at Care Specialists, a home health care company owned by Ferdinand Echavia and later his wife, Ma Luisa Echavia. While operating between 2011 and 2017[emphasis added], Care Specialists fraudulently billed Medicare at least $6.3 million. At trial, the government demonstrated that around 90% of the patients were not homebound and did not qualify for the types of care that Care Specialists billed Medicare for. Further, many patients received cash bribes to receive home health “visits,” some of which were performed in the visiting nurse’s car. Newton facilitated the conspiracy by falsifying patient visit records which were used to support claims billed to Medicare and was convicted by a federal jury on Feb. 14, 2020.”
Enrolling Elderly and Disabled Medicaid Beneficiaries in Managed Care Can Achieve Better Outcomes and Save $150 Billion over 10 Years: From United Health Group.
About the public’s health
HIV and Gay and Bisexual Men: Differences in Knowledge of Status, Prevention, Treatment, and Stigma Exist by Race/Ethnicity: An update from the CDC. Here is a summary:
”There are ongoing racial/ethnic differences in knowledge of status and HIV prevention and treatment outcomes among gay and bisexual men.
About 20% of Hispanic/Latino, 17% of Black/African American, and 10% of White gay and bisexual men are unaware of their HIV status.
Among gay and bisexual men who could benefit from PrEP, only 27% of Black/African American, 31% of Hispanic/Latino, and 42% of White gay and bisexual men reported using PrEP in 2017.
Around 38% of Black/African American, 33% of Hispanic/Latino, and 26% of White gay and bisexual men with HIV are not virally suppressed.
Black/African American and Hispanic/Latino gay and bisexual men experience higher levels of HIV stigma, with scores more than twice the national goal.”
Nation’s first overdose-prevention centers for street drug users open in New York: “The nation’s first overdose-prevention centers opened in New York City on Tuesday, a major step in the adoption of a harm-reduction approach to the drug epidemic as the number of U.S. overdose deaths continues to soar.
Trained staff at two locations operated by a nonprofit organization in northern Manhattan will monitor drug users as they consume street drugs, prepared to step in if anyone overdoses, according to New York City health officials.
They are equipped with the opioid antidote naloxone and oxygen, the two critical tools in reversing overdoses from narcotics such as fentanyl, by far the most common killer of drug users.”
Today the Supreme Court reconsiders Roe v. Wade: A really good overview of the issues and how the justices may vote.
Higher Coffee Consumption Is Associated With Slower Cognitive Decline and Less Cerebral Aβ-Amyloid Accumulation Over 126 Months: Data From the Australian Imaging, Biomarkers, and Lifestyle Study: “Our results further support the hypothesis that coffee intake may be a protective factor against AD, with increased coffee consumption potentially reducing cognitive decline by slowing cerebral Aβ-amyloid accumulation, and thus attenuating the associated neurotoxicity from Aβ-amyloid-mediated oxidative stress and inflammatory processes. Further investigation is required to evaluate whether coffee intake could be incorporated as a modifiable lifestyle factor aimed at delaying AD onset.”
About pharma
Jury Says BGI Owes Illumina $8M For Infringing DNA Patents: “A California federal jury determined Tuesday that four out of five of Illumina's patents behind its next-generation genome-sequencing technology were valid, finding that Illumina's Chinese rival BGI Genomics and its subsidiaries willfully infringed the patents and must pay Illumina $8 million in damages, according to a person familiar with the case. After about a week of deliberations, the jury determined that BGI — China's largest provider of sequencing services — willfully infringed Illumina's patents, while also determining that Illumina's U. S. Patent 7,541,444 is invalid as obvious, the source said.”
U. of Washington Scientists Invent Wearable Device for Opioid Overdoses: “The wearable injector system measures respiration and apnea associated with an opioid overdose using a pair of on-body sensors and administers naloxone subcutaneously upon detection of a halt in breathing.”
Get ready for M&A: Large biopharma companies will have $1.7T in dealmaking firepower next year, analyst says: “Eighteen large-cap U.S. and European biopharmas will have more than $500 billion in cash on hand by the end of 2022, SVB Leerink analyst Geoffrey Porges and his team wrote in a Wednesday note. The companies could use the money to strike deals, pay down debt or offer returns to shareholders through dividends or share buybacks, the analysts said.
Because the companies can leverage their assets to borrow additional capital, the theoretical firepower of the 18 drugmakers would be enormous at more than $1.7 trillion, the analysts wrote.”
23andMe Earmarks Cash From SPAC Deal for Drug Development: “Sunnyvale, Calif.-based 23andMe went public in June through a merger with VG Acquisition Corp., a special-purpose acquisition company backed by British billionaire Richard Branson. The company, founded in 2006, raised roughly $592 million in gross proceeds through the transaction. It had about $700 million in cash on hand as of Sept. 30.
23andMe plans to deploy the cash from its SPAC deal largely to fund ongoing investments into drug discovery, Chief Financial Officer Steve Schoch said. After years of selling at-home tests, the company created a therapeutics division six years ago, aiming to use its massive database of genetic information to identify new treatments. The database had information from about 11.9 million consumers as of Sept. 30.
By querying its database, 23andMe can find causal links between genetic variations and diseases and use that information to develop new treatments, Mr. Schoch said. Among its findings so far: evidence of genetic variants that bolster the immune system and decrease the risk of cancer….
The company has used its database to identify more than 40 possible drug targets to treat types of diseases.”
About healthcare IT
Planned Parenthood Los Angeles says hack breached 400,000 patients’ information: “A hacker gained access to the personal information of hundreds of thousands of Planned Parenthood patients last month, the reproductive health-care group’s Los Angeles branch said Wednesday.
The breach is limited to the Los Angeles affiliate, and spokesperson John Erickson said there is no indication at this point that the information was ‘used for fraudulent purposes.’”