About Covid-19
Biden administration will stop buying Covid-19 vaccines, treatments and tests as early as this fall, Jha says “‘My hope is that in 2023, you're going to see the commercialization of almost all of these products. Some of that is actually going to begin this fall, in the days and weeks ahead. You're going to see commercialization of some of these things,’ he said.”
About health insurance
CMS discontinues medical device forms to ease physician administrative burdens “The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services announced Wednesday it will discontinue the certificates of medical necessity (CMN) and durable medical equipment information forms (DIF) starting in 2023.
Both forms are currently needed to get reimbursement for medical equipment to ensure they are medically necessary. However, CMS rethought the need for the forms recently…
Earlier this month, CMS suspended prior authorization requirements under certain circumstances for orthopedic medical equipment like prosthetics. Congress is also considering legislation that would mandate electronic prior authorization processes for Medicare Advantage plans and streamline a process that physicians say consumes too much of their time.”
About hospitals and healthcare systems
NRC Health Consumer Loyalty Award 2022 Award Winners FYI
About pharma
FDA approves one of the priciest new treatments of all time — bluebird's gene therapy for beta thalassemia “And while bluebird said it will charge up to $2.8 million for the therapy, drug pricing watchdog ICER previously said the therapy would be cost-effective up to $3 million per dose, Thomas Klima, chief commercial officer at bluebird told Endpoints News in an interview earlier this week. He said the price makes sense considering it can cost $6.4 million for a lifetime of transfusions…
Bluebird is also saying it will provide up to an 80% rebate if the patient doesn’t hit or maintain transfusion independence.”
Endo files for Chapter 11 as it looks to finish off its opioid litigation ”The company has filed Chapter 11 proceedings in the US Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York, with the company expected to file recognition proceedings in Canada, the UK and Australia. The company’s bankruptcy filing showed the company had assets and liabilities in the range of $1 billion to $10 billion.”
Since Biden took over, Big Pharma has spent $205 million to protect drug price status quo, analysis finds “Since 2020, the year Biden moved into the White House, the industry has spent more than $205 million battling to preserve the status quo, an analysis from Accountable.US finds. The figure includes $149 million in lobbying efforts aimed specifically at drug pricing and more than $57 million in television, cable, radio and social media ads opposing Medicare price negotiations.”
J&J Unit Tells Appeals Court Only Bankruptcy Can Settle Talc Claims “The subsidiary, LTL Management LLC, said in court papers filed on Monday that chapter 11 is the only option for compensating all claimants relatively quickly.
LTL, which J&J created last year to move mass talc litigation to bankruptcy, laid-out a defense of its strategy in its filing in the Third U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which is considering a request by injury claimants to have the subsidiary’s chapter 11 bankruptcy thrown out of court.”
About the public’s health
CDC, under fire, lays out plan to become more nimble and accountable “A background briefing document shared with The Washington Post spells out some of CDC’s most pressing problems and proposed solutions.
Some measures, such as new authority to mandate state data reporting, hire people faster and offer competitive salaries to recruit and retain top people, will require action from Congress. Others are internal changes that Walensky can make, such as having science and laboratory sciences offices, two key divisions that would be out front on a public health crisis, report directly to her. And some will require negotiations with unions.”
Read the article for more details.
About healthcare personnel
Primary Care Matters Medi-Cal Study “Key Findings
The level of investment in primary care — defined as the percentage of a health plan’s overall spending dedicated to primary care services — varied widely among the 13 Medi-Cal managed care plans that participated in the study, with a low of 5% to a high of 19%. The average was roughly 11%.
A significant statistical relationship was observed between plans with higher primary care spending percentages and those that scored higher on the Aggregated Quality Factor Score, a composite measure of overall care quality, which includes the percentage of plan members who complete well-child visits, receive immunizations, have control of their diabetes, and receive recommended cancer screenings, among other measures.
When individual measures of quality were studied, a relationship was found between plans with a higher percentage of spending on primary care and better performance on 9 of 11 measures. Three of these measures met criteria for statistical significance.
Plans that spend a higher percentage on primary care were more likely to get a better plan rating from the National Committee for Quality Assurance. NCQA evaluates health plans on the quality of care patients receive, measures of patient experience, and health plans’ efforts to keep improving.”