Trump taps Robert F. Kennedy Jr., vaccine skeptic, to lead health department “Kennedy, founder of one of the country’s most prominent anti-vaccine groups, has long criticized the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s recommended list of childhood immunizations, promoting debunked claims about vaccines’ link to autism. He has argued that federal agencies have not done enough research on the shots that hundreds of millions of Americans have received to protect them from measles, flu and other infectious diseases. His claims are rejected by health officials who say that vaccines have been thoroughly studied and are responsible for ending threats such as polio in the United States”
In a related story:RFK Jr.’s anti-vaccine group lost $3 million last year “After years of financial growth, Children’s Health Defense, the anti-vaccine nonprofit group founded by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., recorded a more than 30% drop in revenue last year, to $16 million, according to recent tax filings.”
About health insurance/insurers
Medicare Part D in 2025: Preferred Pharmacy Networks Fade in a Collapsing PDP Market “For 2025, DCI’s exclusive analysis of Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ (CMS) data reveals that the number of PDPs will drop to a historic low. What’s more, the share of plans with a preferred cost sharing pharmacy network will fall to its lowest rate in more than 10 years…
The destruction of the Part D market marks yet another unintended consequence of the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (IRA). The IRA makes PDPs less economically viable and will drive even more seniors into Medicare Advantage Prescription Drug (MA-PD) plans—despite the challenges facing those plans. The 2025 decline will occur even after CMS gifted $7 billion to PDPs to prevent a complete collapse of the 2025 market.”
Healthcare billing fraud: 10 recent cases FYI
How Lincare Became a Multibillion-Dollar Medicare Scofflaw A great investigative piece from ProPublica.
About hospitals and healthcare systems
Medicare Faces Barrage of Hospital Pay Cases After Chevron's End A thoughtful analysis of the impact of this Supreme Court decision vis-a-vis hospitals.
About pharma
Drug Safety:FDA Should Implement Strategies to Retain Its Inspection Workforce From the GAO: “The Food and Drug Administration paused many drug manufacturer inspections during the COVID-19 pandemic. Inspections help ensure that the drugs Americans rely on are safe.
Since resuming inspections, FDA has struggled to retain staff. From Nov. 2021 to June 2024, the vacancy rate among investigators who inspect foreign and domestic manufacturers jumped from 9% to 16%—leading to fewer inspections.
FDA said concerns with travel, pay, training, workload, and work-life balance contribute to turnover. For example, investigators can travel up to 75% of the time.
We recommended developing a plan that balances inspection needs with addressing turnover.”
About the public’s health
US overdose deaths are down, giving experts hope for an enduring decline “The decline in U.S. drug overdose deaths appears to have continued this year, giving experts hope the nation is seeing sustained improvement in the persistent epidemic.
There were about 97,000 overdose deaths in the 12-month period that ended June 30, according to provisional Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data released Wednesday. That’s down 14% from the estimated 113,000 for the previous 12-month period.”‘
Tide is turning’: STI epidemic shows signs of slowing, CDC says “Key takeaways:
More than 2.4 million STIs were reported in the U.S. in 2023 — a 1.8% decrease from 2022.
Data showed rates of gonorrhea and chlamydia decreased, whereas overall syphilis rates increased by 1%.”
Measles cases rose 20% worldwide in 2023, per new report “Measles vaccination coverage globally has still not recovered to pre-Covid levels, a fact that contributed to a 20% increase in measles cases in 2023 over the previous year, according to a new report from the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that was released Thursday.
The pandemic backsliding is hindering efforts to eliminate measles globally, and subjecting children — generally children under the age of 5 — to a health threat that can be fatal in some cases or trigger lifelong consequences such as deafness in others.”
About healthcare IT
Healthcare Cybersecurity: HHS Continues to Have Challenges From the GAO: “HHS has several initiatives intended to mitigate ransomware risks for healthcare and public health. Nevertheless, our prior work has found that the department had not adequately monitored the sector’s implementation of ransomware mitigation practices.”
This statement outlines a set of recommendations to address this problem.
About healthcare technology
PTC wins FDA approval for first brain-delivered gene therapy Kebilidi “The FDA issued its first stamp of approval for a cell or gene therapy back in 2017 to Novartis' Kymriah. Now, seven years and many approvals later, innovation in the space has hit new heights with PTC Therapeutics’ Kebilidi, the first U.S. gene therapy that’s administered directly in the brain.
The one-time therapy picked up an FDA nod to treat the ultra-rare disease aromatic L-amino acid decarboxylase (AADC) deficiency, a fatal genetic disorder that manifests in severe disability from the first months of life across the physical, mental and behavioral spectrums, according to PTC.”
Gene screening can cut early disease deaths by 25%, study shows “The scientists used Genomics’ analytical tool, known as a polygenic risk score (PRS), to identify those at high risk from birth of nine diseases. The conditions, which all have existing screening programmes globally, are breast cancer, prostate cancer, colorectal cancer, abdominal aortic aneurysm, melanoma, type 2 diabetes, hypertension, cardiovascular disease and atrial fibrillation. The researchers found very high risk individuals reached the average risk levels on which screening programmes are based 12.4 years early. In other words, if a screening programme were devised on the basis of the average risk facing a 50-year-old, this high-risk group would face the same predicted risk at age 37.6. By contrast, a group of reduced genetic risk individuals did not reach normal initial screening-age risk levels until about 17.7 years later — or 67.7 years old in the example given. Overall, the use of the genetic prediction tools and consequent early medical intervention could prevent 24.5 per cent of premature, preventable deaths that occur before screening programmes start, the researchers said.”