About health insurance/insurers
UnitedHealth continues to lead the way on insurer profits in Q3. Here's how its competitors fared “In the third quarter, UHG reported $5.3 billion in profit. It's next-closest competitor, Cigna, posted $2.8 billion in profit. UnitedHealth is also comfortably out in front on profit through the first three quarters of the year, with the healthcare giant reporting $15.35 billion in profit through the first nine months of 2022.
Cigna also reported the second-highest profit through the first nine months of this year, posting $5.5 billion.
UnitedHealth Group edges out CVS Health for the highest revenue through the first three quarters of 2022, reporting $241.4 billion. CVS Health posted $238.6 billion in revenue through Sept. 30 of this year.”
About pharma
Patent wars: Moderna’s battle for the spoils of Covid vaccines “In autumn 2020, as drugmakers raced to get vaccines to market in the face of the biggest public health crisis in a generation, Moderna made a bold pledge: it would not enforce its patents against rivals developing Covid-19 jabs. This year, however, almost two years after Pfizer and BioNTech beat it to the first approved mRNA jab, Moderna fired back with a lawsuit over patents for a technology that could open the door to many more vaccines. If Moderna wins, it could gain a slice of billions of dollars in revenues from the BioNTech/Pfizer Covid jab. Perhaps more importantly, it would also signal to investors and Big Pharma that the Massachusetts-based company is primed to dominate the future mRNA market.”
Gilead dodges Supreme Court review—and a $1.2B fine—in CAR-T patent feud with Bristol Myers “After years of courtroom drama and amid a market clash, Bristol Myers Squibb has failed to open a new legal front in its cell therapy war with Gilead Sciences.
Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear BMS’ case to resurrect a $1.2 billion win in the five-year dispute over a BMS CAR-T patent and Gilead’s cell therapy Yescarta.”
Troubled Lupin suspends manufacturing of drugs bound for US “Indian generics manufacturer Lupin has suspended production of drugs bound for the U.S. from a troubled active pharmaceutical ingredient plant in India, according to an FDA warning letter.”
About the public’s health
Physician Attitudes About Using Life Expectancy to Inform Cancer Screening Cessation in Older Adults—Results From a National Survey ”This study found that approximately a quarter of physicians did not consider life expectancy a reasonable criterion for stopping cancer screening in older adults. Together with a study showing that older adults do not perceive life expectancy as relevant in cancer screening,4 our findings question whether reframing guidelines away from the life expectancy label may be more acceptable to physicians and patients. For example, life expectancy and age-specific cancer mortality have been combined to estimate the risk of dying from that cancer in one’s remaining lifetime.1 Although this calculation fundamentally relies on life expectancy, framing screening cessation as when cancer mortality risk is too low to justify the harms involved may be more acceptable.”
Don’t bother with dietary supplements for heart health, study says “Some people believe that common dietary supplements – fish oil, garlic, cinnamon, turmeric, plant sterols and red yeast rice – will lower their ‘bad’ cholesterol. ‘Bad’ cholesterol, known in the medical community as low-density lipoproteins or LDL, can cause the buildup of fatty deposits in the arteries. The fatty deposits can block the flow of oxygen and blood that the heart needs to work and the blockage can lead to a heart attack or stroke…
None of the people who took the supplements saw any significant decrease in LDL cholesterol, total cholesterol or blood triglycerides, and their results were similar to those of people who took a placebo. While there were similar adverse events in all the groups, there were a numerically higher number of problems among those who took the plant sterols or red yeast rice.”
Express Scripts to shell out $3.2M in prescription drug pricing case “Express Scripts agreed to settle for $3.2 million in a Massachusetts case that accused the pharmacy benefit manager of overcharging for some injured workers' prescriptions.
Attorney General Maura Healey said Express Scripts allegedly "billed and obtained payment for prescription drugs from payers of workers' compensation claims in excess of amounts" permitted by state law at CVS, Walgreens and Rite Aid locations, according to a court document filed Nov. 7.”
About healthcare IT
Telehealth Utilization in Nation as a Whole Remained Relatively Stable “Telehealth utilization in the nation as a whole, as measured by telehealth’s share of all medical claim lines, remained relatively stable in August 2022, as it had in July. Nationally, telehealth utilization increased 1.9 percent, from 5.3 percent of medical claim lines in July to 5.4 percent in August. In the Midwest and Northeast there was no change in telehealth utilization. In the South, telehealth utilization increased 4.7 percent and, in the West, it decreased 1.4 percent.”
About healthcare personnel
Oak Street reports $130M net loss even as revenues rise significantly “Oak Street Health, which operates a network of over 160 primary care clinics for Medicare patients across 21 states, reported a net loss of $130.4 million for the third quarter ending Sept. 30. The net loss for the first nine months of the year was $375.3 million.
Those numbers come as the company reported revenues rising to total $545 million for the third quarter and almost $1.6 billion for the nine month period. Those figures compare with revenues of $388.7 million and $1.04 billion in the respective periods in 2021.”
About health technology
First ever clinical trial of laboratory grown red blood cells being transfused into another person “Red blood cells that have been grown in a laboratory have now been transfused into another person in a world first clinical trial.
The manufactured blood cells were grown from stem cells from donors. The red cells were then transfused into volunteers in the RESTORE randomised controlled clinical trial.
This is the first time in the world that red blood cells that have been grown in a laboratory have been given to another person as part of a trial into blood transfusion.”
Air power: UConn researchers charge neurostim implants by collecting electricity from breaths “Somewhat similar to a pacemaker, a deep brain stimulator delivers pulses to the brain multiple times per second to regulate its electrical activity. The implants can help patients with Parkinson’s disease better control their motor muscles or potentially reduce the symptoms of severe depression.
But while a pacemaker’s batteries can last as long as a decade under certain conditions, brain stimulators use much more power and typically require surgery to swap them out every two to three years.
But according to the UConn researchers, their implant never needs its batteries changed. It relies on a small device that uses the expansion and contraction of the chest each time the user takes a breath to generate and store small amounts of electricity.”
About healthcare finance
Oracle Sells $7 Billion of Debt to Help Fund Cerner Purchase “Oracle also increased its previous term loan by $1.3 billion
Acquisition was funded with $15.7 billion of bridge loan debt”