State healthcare laws debuting in 2024 FYI
About Covid-19
CDC says JN.1 variant accounts for about 62% of COVID cases in US “The CDC said currently there is no evidence that JN.1 causes more severe disease and added current vaccines are expected to increase protection against JN.1.”
And in a related article: New COVID vaccine induces good antibody response to mutated viral variants “Researchers at Karolinska Institutet and Danderyd Hospital in Sweden have followed recipients of the new updated COVID-19 vaccine and analysed the antibody response to different SARS-CoV-2 variants. The results published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases show a surprisingly strong response to the now dominant and highly mutated Omicron variants.”
Hydroxychloroquine could have caused 17,000 deaths during Covid, study finds “The anti-malaria drug was prescribed to some patients hospitalized with Covid-19 during the first wave of the pandemic, "despite the absence of evidence documenting its clinical benefits," the researchers point out in their paper, published in the February issue of Biomedicine & Pharmacotherapy.
Now, researchers have estimated that some 16,990 people in six countries — France, Belgium, Italy, Spain, Turkey and the U.S. — may have died as a result.”
About health insurance/insurers
Medpac public meeting Go to this site to sign up for the January meeting on the web.
Elevance Health sues HHS over Medicare Advantage star ratings changes “Elevance Health and its insurance subsidiaries are suing HHS for "unlawful, and arbitrary and capricious" methodology changes to how Medicare Advantage and Part D star ratings are calculated.
Using a system of 40 quality and performance measures, Medicare Advantage plans must receive star ratings of four or higher to earn quality bonus payments from CMS. The overall average MA star rating declined slightly in 2024, to an average of 4.04.
In October, Elevance said it is expecting to lose around $500 million in revenue in 2025 as a result of declining star ratings.”
About hospitals and healthcare systems
Midwest systems Essentia Health, Marshfield Clinic call off merger plans “Duluth, Minnesota-based Essentia Health and Marshfield, Wisconsin-based Marshfield Clinic Health System have scrapped their plan to merge into a 25-hospital Midwest system.
The two nonprofit health systems said in a statement that they have ‘engaged in meaningful discussion’ over the last two years about how the organizations could combine their unique strengths.
’We have decided that a combination at this time is not the right path forward for our respective organizations, colleagues and patients,’ the health systems said in a statement posted to Essentia Health's website Friday.”
About healthcare IT
Amazon rolls out service to connect customers with digital health benefits, taps Omada Health as launch partner “Amazon plans to collaborate with digital health companies to connect customers with virtual care benefits for managing conditions like diabetes and hypertension. The online retail giant tapped virtual-first chronic care provider Omada Health as its first partner.
Amazon's new health conditions program, which officially launched on Monday, aims to help customers find and enroll in virtual care benefits available to them through their employer or health plan at no extra cost.
Omada will be the first virtual diabetes prevention, diabetes and hypertension provider available in Amazon’s health conditions program…”
About healthcare finance
J&J beefs up ADC pipeline by acquiring Ambrx for $2B “ Johnson & Johnson has fattened up its antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) pipeline via the acquisition of Ambrx Biopharma for $2 billion.
By paying $28 per share, which J&J noted was a 105% premium of the La Jolla, Calif-based biotech’s closing price Friday, the pharma giant will get its hands on ARX517, an ADC that has had some success in prostate cancer during an early-stage trial.”
Isomorphic signs $3B in AI drug discovery pacts with Lilly, Novartis “Alphabet launched Isomorphic Labs in 2021 to build on Google DeepMind's AlphaFold 2 AI technology that can be used to predict the structure of proteins in the human body, and ultimately help scientists identify new target pathways to deliver drugs for fighting disease. The latest version of AlphaFold extends its application to small molecules and nucleic acids.”