About health insurance
VA plans to offer gender-confirmation surgery to transgender veterans, reversing ban: “The Department of Veterans Affairs is moving to provide gender-confirmation surgery through its health-care coverage, reversing a 2013 ban, VA Secretary Denis McDonough announced Saturday.”
It appears the VA will outsource the procedures but pay for them.
Democrats seek new ways to expand Medicaid in holdout states: “There are currently 12 states where Republicans have refused to accept the expansion of Medicaid eligibility provided under ObamaCare, meaning 2.2 million low-income people are left without coverage they otherwise would have…
Efforts to entice the holdout states to expand the program with financial incentives have run into a wall, so Democrats are now turning to the idea of having the federal government step in and provide coverage.
The details of how to do that, however, are still up for debate and pose thorny questions of cost and potential health care industry opposition.”
In a related article: Pandemic Swells Medicaid Enrollment to 80 Million People, a ‘High-Water Mark’: “The latest figures show Medicaid enrollment grew from 71.3 million in February 2020, when the pandemic was beginning in the U.S., to 80.5 million in January, according to a KFF analysis of federal data. (KHN is an editorially independent program of KFF.)
That’s up from about 56 million in 2013, just before many states expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. And it’s double the 40 million enrolled in 2001.”
About COVID-19
Public is Relaxing its Pandemic Precautions: “Overall, 39% are satisfied with the speed in which local restrictions to prevent the spread of the coronavirus have been rescinded. Nearly as many, 34%, are concerned that the restrictions have been lifted too quickly, while 27% feel things haven’t been relaxed soon enough. But people in urban areas are much more likely to say restrictions have been lifted too quickly than those in the suburbs or rural areas. Democrats are also more likely to regard the restrictions as having been rescinded too quickly compared with Republicans.”
21% of Americans fear contracting COVID-19 from someone they know well, the lowest number since the pandemic began.
How vaccines stack up against CDC's 5 variants of concern: A really good summary. The good news is the vaccines are very protective.
About healthcare financing
23andMe rises in stock market debut after Branson-backed merger: “23andMe went public Thursday through a merger with Richard Branson's blank check company and raised nearly $600 million.
The deal values the personalized medicine and consumer genetic testing company at $3.5 billion.”
Physician social network Doximity plans IPO at $4B valuation: “Doximity, a social network for doctors, plans to raise nearly $536 million through an initial public offering.
At the midpoint of the proposed range, Doximity would command a fully diluted market value of $4.5 billion.”
About pharma
HHS pulls 340B advisory opinion after it fails to throw out AstraZeneca lawsuit: “The Department of Health and Human Services has pulled a controversial advisory opinion that stated drug makers must provide products discounted under the 340B program to contract pharmacies after a heated legal fight with AstraZeneca…
But HHS has not withdrawn a series of letters it sent to AstraZeneca and five other drugmakers last month calling for them to end the restrictions to contract pharmacies.
The Health Resources and Services Administration, which oversees 340B, does not mention the advisory opinion in the letters. The agency wrote that drug makers violated the federal 340B statute when they restricted sales to contract pharmacies.”
Amarin's Vascepa patent defense ends in a loss at the Supreme Court: “On Monday, the United States’ top court declined to take up Amarin’s challenge on a patent loss handed down last September, leaving the prior decision in place. Amarin’s stock was trading down about 10% on Monday morning.
In September, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled in favor of Hikma and other generic challengers, finding that patents on Amarin’s fish oil-derived heart drug Vascepa were invalid based on obviousness.”
The top 10 ESG pharma companies in 2021: “Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) is the new corporate sustainability yardstick. And investors are pushing ESG accountability—thanks in part to the pandemic—to the front page across industries, including pharma.” The article explains these three features and profile the top 10 pharma companies according to those measures. Boehringer Ingelheim tops the list.
About healthcare IT
Patients are looking to go back to brick-and-mortar post pandemic: “The research found that Gen Z and Millennials were the most likely to be open to telehealth, with 47% of millennials saying they would prefer telehealth over in-person visits once the pandemic has ended. Nearly three-quarters of younger generations reported that one reason they prefer telehealth is convenience.
The silent generation and the Baby Boomers were the least likely to favor in-person visits over telehealth.”
HIPAA and the Leak of “Deidentified” EHR Data: “Although the HIPAA Privacy Rule governs uses of identifiable data, it doesn’t apply to data that are considered deidentified, either as determined by experts or under the ‘safe harbor method,’ which requires removal of 18 specific identifiers (such as name, address, and date of birth)…
Even after many deidentification-related processes, individual patients can potentially be reidentified on the basis of only a handful of attributes. Deidentification technologies relying on encryption could be vulnerable to future advances in computing.
…the United States doesn’t have a comprehensive data-privacy law, and none of the various privacy-related laws or regulations protects patients from the potentially harmful use of deidentified data. There is no duty to report instances in which data have been reidentified or linked to external data sources, such as financial records, and patients have little or no opportunity for redress in cases of reidentification…
Broadly speaking, two approaches could help address the torrential leak of deidentified health record data. One approach would be to establish best practices for data protection among data providers. The other would be to strengthen legal and regulatory protections for patients.”
About the public’s health
AMA adopts guidelines that confront systemic racism in medicine: “Members of the AMA’s House of Delegates representing their peers from all corners of medicine voted to adopt guidelines addressing systemic racism in medicine, including discrimination, bias and abuse, including expressions of prejudice known as microaggressions. The AMA will recommend that health care organizations and systems use the new guidelines to establish institutional policies that promote positive cultural change and ensure a safe, discrimination-free work environment.”
If you read the recommendations, they appear to be identical to those for sexual harassment.