100 Million People in America Are Saddled With Health Care Debt “In the past five years, more than half of U.S. adults report they’ve gone into debt because of medical or dental bills, the KFF poll found.
A quarter of adults with health care debt owe more than $5,000. And about 1 in 5 with any amount of debt said they don’t expect to ever pay it off.”
About Covid-19
FDA authorizes coronavirus vaccine for young kids with shots likely next week “More than a year and a half after the oldest Americans gained access to coronavirus vaccines, the nation’s youngest citizens are poised to start getting shots next week, a move made possible when federal regulators Friday authorized vaccines for children as young as 6 months.”
Congressional covid funding deal appears ‘dead’ after GOP criticism “A congressional deal for billions of dollars in additional coronavirus funding appeared all but dead Thursday after Senate Republicans accused the White House of being dishonest about the nation’s pandemic funding needs.
Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), who brought the Senate close to a bipartisan $10 billion covid funding deal in March, said the Biden administration had provided “patently false” information about its inability to buy additional vaccines, treatments and supplies. He cited a newly announced White House plan to repurpose some existing funds to cover the country’s most pressing vaccine and treatment needs.”
WHO set to back use of Covid variant-specific vaccines as third shot “The interim advice could be published as early as Friday, according to the people. The WHO did not respond to specific questions and said it was ‘aware’ that a statement from the technical group was ‘forthcoming’. The WHO would only make a real-world policy recommendation once safety and other data had become available for variant-specific vaccines, the people said. No variant-specific vaccine is on the market.”
Surveys for compliance with Omnibus COVID-19 Health Care Staff Vaccination Requirements CMS is changing the frequency of reporting Covid-19 vaccinations. “Survey oversight of the staff vaccination requirement for Medicare and Medicaid- certified providers and suppliers will continue to be performed during initial and recertification surveys, but will now only be performed in response to complaints alleging non-compliance with this requirement, not all surveys. Under prior guidance, all surveys included oversight of the staff vaccination requirement.”
DeSantis says Florida is ‘affirmatively against’ Covid-19 vaccines for young kids “Florida GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis on Thursday railed against providing Covid-19 vaccines to young children, saying Florida will not provide state programs to administer vaccinations for toddlers or infants.
DeSantis, speaking at a press conference in Miami, said that Covid-19 vaccines have not gone through enough testing and clinical trials to determine that they are effective and added that kids are least likely to suffer serious health consequences from Covid.”
Effects of Previous Infection and Vaccination on Symptomatic Omicron Infections “The effectiveness of previous infection alone against symptomatic BA.2 infection was 46.1%…The effectiveness of three doses of BNT162b2 and no previous infection was 52.2%... The effectiveness of previous infection and two doses of BNT162b2 was 55.1%…, and the effectiveness of previous infection and three doses of BNT162b2 was 77.3%... Previous infection alone, BNT162b2 vaccination alone, and hybrid immunity all showed strong effectiveness (>70%) against severe, critical, or fatal Covid-19 due to BA.2 infection. Similar results were observed in analyses of effectiveness against BA.1 infection and of vaccination with mRNA-1273.”
Risk of long COVID associated with delta versus omicron variants of SARS-CoV-2 “Overall, we found a reduction in odds of long COVID with the omicron variant versus the delta variant of 0·24–0·50 depending on age and time since vaccination. However, the absolute number of people experiencing long COVID at a given time depends on the shape and amplitude of the pandemic curve.”
WTO ministers reach deals on fisheries, food, COVID vaccines “More controversial was an agreement on a watered-down plan to waive intellectual property protections for COVID-19 vaccines, which ran afoul of advocacy groups that say it did not go far enough — and could even do more harm than good.”
About health insurance
MedPAC’s June Report to Congress This version summarizes the extensive research and commentary that is in the full version of this annual report.
Cigna Announces $3.5 Billion Accelerated Stock Repurchase Agreements The headline is the story.
About pharma
Whistleblower suit: CVS prevented Part D members from accessing generics “A newly unsealed whistleblower suit claims that multiple CVS Health subsidiaries coordinated to prevent members from accessing generic drugs in a bid to boost the bottom line.
The suit, first obtained by Stat, was filed by Alexandra Miller, who worked at CVS for nearly two decades before leaving the company three years ago. Miller says that when she reported the behavior to a superior, she was told that the company had decided the benefits of the alleged scheme outweighed the likelihood of being caught.
Miller claims that CVS' SilverScripts Part D subsidiary as well as its Caremark pharmacy benefit manager and retail pharmacies worked together to prevent access to generics, which allowed it to pocket higher rebates because members were pushed to buy branded medications rather than lower-cost options.”
About healthcare IT
Epic Announces Plan to Join TEFCA, Champion Next Step in Evolution Toward Universal Interoperability “Epic is announcing its plan to join a new health information exchange framework to improve health data interoperability across the country. The Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement (TEFCA) will bring information networks together to help ensure that all people benefit from complete, longitudinal health records wherever they receive care. In the future, TEFCA will expand to support use cases beyond clinical care, such as public health.
Epic collaborated with ONC, The Sequoia Project, and the broader healthcare community to build consensus around the principles and procedures of TEFCA. When the application process opens later this year, Epic will apply to join TEFCA as an inaugural Qualified Health Information Network.”