Statistics to ponder:
The United States spent $4.1 trillion on healthcare in total in 2020, an increase of $500 million over the previous year.
The Omnibus Budget Bill that Congress is expected to pass will cost $1.7 trillion.
About Covid-19
FDA approves Roche’s Actemra for the treatment of COVID-19 in hospitalised adults “Roche…announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved Actemra® (tocilizumab) intravenous (IV) for the treatment of COVID-19 in hospitalised adult patients who are receiving systemic corticosteroids and require supplemental oxygen, non-invasive or invasive mechanical ventilation, or extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO). Actemra is the first FDA-approved monoclonal antibody to treat COVID-19 and is recommended for use as a single 60-minute IV infusion.”
About health insurance/insurers
Millions to lose Medicaid coverage under Congress’ plan “The legislation will sunset a requirement of the COVID-19 public health emergency that prohibited states from booting people off Medicaid. The Biden administration has been under mounting pressure to declare the public health emergency over, with 25 Republican governors asking the president to end it in a letter on Monday, which cited growing concerns about bloated Medicaid enrollment.”
Blue Cross liable for employer's trans coverage exclusion, court rules “Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Illinois violated the anti-discrimination provisions of the Affordable Care Act by refusing to pay for a transgender teenager’s gender-affirming care through an employer plan it administers, a federal judge ruled Monday.
The health insurer, owned by Health Care Service Corp., is required to cover this care even though, as a third-party administrator, the company was carrying out its employer client's directives when it denied the lead plaintiff, Judge Robert Bryan of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington decided in a summary judgment. The employer, Catholic Health Initiatives of Englewood, Colorado, objects to these services on religious grounds. The health system, which is part of Chicago-based CommonSpirit Health, is lawfully entitled to refuse to pay for medical care that doesn't accord with its religious beliefs and is not a party to the lawsuit.”
Comment: This ruling will have huge implications for third party administrators of ERISA plans.
About pharma
Merck puts eye-popping $9.3B on the line in lopsided ADC deal with Kelun-Biotech “The exclusive licensing deal, announced Thursday, marks the third antibody-drug conjugate agreement between the two companies. Under the latest arrangement, the two companies will develop seven ADCs for cancer. Merck snagged the right to research, develop, manufacture and commercialize the ADCs and placed a hold on future candidates with an exclusive opt-in agreement. Kelun-Biotech, a subsidiary of Sichuan Kelun Pharmaceutical, will hang on to rights in mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau.
The small upfront fee [$175M] stands in stark contrast to the multibillion total offering should all go well with the ADCs. The $9.3 billion will be distributed based on future development…”
About the public’s health
As flu rages, US releases medicine from national stockpile “States will be able to request doses of the prescription flu medication Tamiflu kept in the Strategic National Stockpile from HHS. The administration is not releasing how many doses will be made available.”
U.S. life expectancy continued to fall in 2021 as covid, drug deaths surged “Even as some peer nations began to bounce back from the toll of the pandemic, life expectancy in the U.S. dropped to 76.4 years at birth, down from 77 in 2020, according to data from the National Center for Health Statistics. That means Americans can expect to live as long as they did in 1996 — a dismal benchmark for a reliable measure of health that should rise steadily in an affluent, developed nation. (In August, using preliminary data, the agency had pegged life expectancy in 2021 at 76.1 years.)
Notably, every age group in the U.S. — from young children to seniors85 and older — saw a rise in its death rate. Men, women and most racial groups lost ground. In some previous years, even when overall life expectancy declined, some groups advanced.”
About healthcare personnel
Changes in Physician Work Hours and Implications for Workforce Capacity and Work-Life Balance, 2001-2021 “In this cross-sectional study of 87 297 monthly surveys of physicians from 17 599 unique households, average weekly hours worked by individual physicians declined by 7.6% from 2001 to 2021, driven by a decrease among men, particularly fathers, while mothers’ hours increased. Total weekly hours contributed by the physician workforce per capita grew at less than half the rate of US population growth, while advanced practice professional workforce hours rose considerably over the same period.”