About Covid-19
U.S. to lift covid testing requirements on travelers from China “U.S. officials are set to relax coronavirus testing requirements on travelers from China as soon as Friday, a decision that comes amid declining covid cases in that country, according to three officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the plan.
The White House declined to comment on the plan, which the officials said was being finalized on Tuesday.”
About health insurance/insurers
Joe Biden: My Plan to Extend Medicare for Another Generation Basically comes down to increasing negotiations to lower pharmaceutical costs and raising taxes on unearned income.
CMS ISSUES PAYMENT AND COVERAGE GUIDANCE AS PANDEMIC WAIVERS APPROACH EXPIRATION This article is a good summary of the many changes after the PHE expires.
The Challenges of Choosing Medicare Coverage: Views from Insurance Brokers and Agents “Most brokers and agents said they personally would choose traditional Medicare with Medigap, believing that combination offers better coverage and choices than Medicare Advantage, particularly as people age.”
10 Medicare Advantage startups with the most venture funding FYI. It will be difficult to find profitability data as many of these companies become part of larger corporations. Recently, Bright Health reported a net loss of $1.4 billion in 2022, compared to a $1.2 billion loss a year prior. Oscar Health recorded a net loss of $606 million in 2022, compared to a net loss of $572 million in 2021.
About pharma
Cuban breaks into brand-name drug market “Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Co. has entered into an agreement with IBSA Pharma to sell Tirosint, a medication for hypothyroidism. It will be the first brand-name drug offered by Mr. Cuban's pharmacy.”
California to not do business with Walgreens over abortion pills issue, Governor says “California will not do business with Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc state Governor Gavin Newsom said in a tweet on Monday, days after the pharmacy chain said it would not dispense abortion pills in some Republican-dominated states.
The state refuses to do business with Walgreens or ‘any company that cowers to the extremists and puts women's lives at risk,’ said Newsom, a Democrat.
A spokesperson for the governor said ‘all relationships’ between Walgreens and the state were now under review but declined to detail how business ties might change.”
From one store in Massachusetts to $105B healthcare giant: A timeline of CVS' disruption FYI
FDA Grants Leqembi Priority Review for Full Approval “The FDA has granted priority review to Eisai’s and Biogen’s supplemental biologics license application (sBLA) for their Alzheimer’s treatment candidate Leqembi (lecanemab-irmb), supporting the biologic’s conversion from Accelerated Approval (AA) to traditional approval.”
About the public’s health
Vitamin D supplementation and incident dementia: Effects of sex, APOE, and baseline cognitive status “Across all formulations, vitamin D exposure was associated with significantly longer dementia-free survival and lower dementia incidence rate than no exposure (hazard ratio = 0.60, 95% confidence interval: 0.55–0.65). The effect of vitamin D on incidence rate differed significantly across the strata of sex, cognitive status, and APOE ε4 status.”
About healthcare IT
Key Drivers of Clinician EHR Satisfaction “Similar to a net promoter score, the NEES [Net EHR Experience Score] represents the overall landscape of clinician satisfaction with the EHR…”
Look at the charts for the essential findings of the survey. For example, the top two areas for improvement are system efficiency enablement and response time.
About health technology
A Novel Breakthrough in Wrist-Worn Transdermal Troponin-I-Sensor Assessment for Acute Myocardial Infarction Troponin is assayed in the blood when a patient is suspected of having a heart attack.
The test is almost always done the the ER or hospital. This technology would allow a non-invasive test to be used in the patient’s everyday environment.
”A wrist-worn transdermal infrared spectrophotometric sensor is clinically feasible for rapid, bloodless prediction of elevated hs-cTnI in real-world settings. It may have a role in establishing a point-of-care biomarker diagnosis of myocardial infarction and impact triaging patients with suspected [heart attack].