About health insurance/insurers
HHS: Medicare Part D enrollees will save $400 on average in 2025 “Caps on Medicare prescription drug costs will save Part D enrollees a collective $7.4 billion in 2025, according to a report from HHS' Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation.
The report, published July 7, broke down expected savings from price caps by state. An estimated 18.7 million people, around 1 in 3 Medicare Part D enrollees, will save on drug costs in 2025. The average annual saving per person is estimated at $396.08.”
Federal inquiry aims to protect consumers against predatory medical debt and collection practices “The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) is launching an inquiry into a practice used to coax patients into paying for routine care with medical credit cards and installment loans.
In partnership with the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Department of the Treasury, the three agencies hope to examine patients’ experiences with credit cards and loans as well as healthcare providers’ incentives to offer high-cost products.”
About hospitals and healthcare systems
US News won't rank honor roll hospitals “The publication will no longer attribute ordinal rankings to its honor roll hospitals, it said in a July 11 letter addressed to hospital leaders…
Ordinal rankings will still be listed for the 15 specialties U.S. News gauges, as well as the regions where it publishes.”
About pharma
Moderna mounts 2 new patent lawsuits against mRNA rivals Pfizer, BioNTech: report “The new lawsuits add to a complex web of ongoing mRNA patent litigation. The legal melee began last August when Moderna filed patent infringement lawsuits in the U.S. and Germany. Separately, Moderna has also sued Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech in the Netherlands, plus the U.K.
Moderna’s goal isn’t to remove Pfizer’s shot Comirnaty from the market, nor is it trying to target Pfizer’s sales in low- and middle-income countries covered by the COVAX initiative, the company insists. Instead, Moderna is pursuing compensation and damages to make up for Pfizer-BioNTech’s alleged trampling of patents detailing lipid nanoparticle delivery, spike protein encoding and more.”
About the public’s health
Millions of homes, schools may have to eliminate lead dust under EPA plan “In one of its strongest measures yet against a contaminant that poisons children, the Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday proposed tougher standards on lead in paint in older homes and schools, potentially triggering its removal in millions of buildings.
The new rules would almost completely prohibit lead dust in older buildings. The only contamination allowed would be the lowest levels that current removal efforts can’t eliminate, the agency said. It estimates that those requirements each year would reduce lead exposures for 250,000 to 500,000 children younger than 6.
The rules apply to homes, schools, day-care centers and other facilities.”
About healthcare IT
Digital health funding settles down in 2023 with fewer deals, lower check sizes “In the first six months of 2023, U.S. digital health startups raised $6.1 billion across 244 deals, with an average deal size of $24.8 million, according to an analysis by Rock Health, a venture fund dedicated to digital health. While that $6 billion seems like a hefty amount of cash, that's down considerably from $10.4 billion raised in the first half of 2022 and an eye-popping $15.1 billion raised in the first six months of 2021.”
About healthcare personnel
MONETIZING MEDICINE: PRIVATE EQUITY AND COMPETITION IN PHYSICIAN PRACTICE MARKETS “SUMMARY OF MAJOR CONCLUSIONS
● PE acquisitions of physician practices are increasing. We find that private equity (PE) firms have been increasingly acquiring physician practices across a number of physician specialties since 2012, increasing from 75 deals in 2012 to 484 deals in 2021, or more than six-fold increase in only 10 years.
● PE firms are amassing high market shares in local physician practice markets. At the local level, we find that individual PE firms are acquiring competitively significant shares of physician practice markets. In particular, in 28% of metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs), a single PE firm has more than 30% market share by full-time-equivalent physicians, and in 13% of MSAs, the single PE firm market share exceeds 50%.
● PE acquisitions are associated with price and expenditure increases. In 8 of the 10 physician practice specialties we study, we find statistically significant price increases associated with PE’s acquisition of a practice. These price increases range from 16% in oncology to 4% in primary care and dermatology. PE acquisitions are also associated with per-patient expenditure increases for 6 of 10 specialties, ranging from 4% to 16% depending on the specialty.
● Price increases associated with PE acquisitions are exceptionally high where a PE firm controls a competitively significant share of the local market. When we focus our analysis on markets where a single PE firm controls more than 30% of the market, we find further elevated prices associated with PE acquisitions in each of the 3 specialties with statistically significant results, for gastroenterology (18%), obstetrics and gynecology (16%), and dermatology (13%).”
About health technology
Illumina hit with record $476 million EU antitrust fine over Grail deal “U.S. genetic testing company Illumina was fined a record 432-million-euro ($476 million) by the EU on Wednesday for closing its takeover of cancer test maker Grail before securing EU antitrust approval.
Illumina has been fighting the EU competition watchdog on several fronts since it was forced to seek its approval in 2021 despite the deal falling short of the EU turnover threshold for scrutiny.”