AJMC Staff

Outgoing Senator Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, is urging fellow Republicans to oppose President Donald Trump’s International Pricing Index; after 12 patients became seriously ill from stem cell injections, the FDA issued a warning to the company that made the product and sent a letter to 20 clinics warning them that stem cell products should be regulated by the agency; Cigna has finalized its $54 billion purchase of Express Scripts.

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Nearly 30 drug makers will raise the prices of their medicines in January after a temporary halt to increases; more than 180,000 Virginians without insurance coverage will now have access to Medicaid coverage under the program’s expansion; despite lagging far behind 2017's enrollment numbers for most of open enrollment, the number of people who signed up for Affordable Care Act plans on HealthCare.gov was only down 4% after a surge of sign-ups last week.

In a deal that will allow both companies to focus more on their prescription drug business, Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline plan to combine their over-the-counter (OTC) consumer healthcare units; 2 antiabortion groups want National Institutes of Health (NIH) National Director Francis Collins, MD, to resign after he defended the agency’s funding of fetal tissue research; despite the fact that 20 veterans die a day from suicide, suicide prevention efforts at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) have slumped.

States who support the Affordable Care Act are seeking clarity after a judge ruled the health law invalid; Senator Elizabeth Warren, D-Massachusetts, is expected to release a bill that would get the federal government into drug manufacturing; since Arkansas introduced work requirements into its Medicaid program, nearly 17,000 people have lost their coverage.

Reuters examined internal J&J documents as well as court records and said they show that, from at least 1971 to the early 2000s, the company’s raw talc and finished powders sometimes tested positive for small amounts of asbestos, while the company denies the claim; Larry Merlo, chief executive officer of CVS Health, said he expects 15% to 20% of the drugstores to include an in-store medical clinic; HHS' internal watchdog will investigate the death of a 7-year-old Guatemalan girl after she was detained by US border agents.

The 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals narrowed a Trump administration order that had sought to enforce new rules that undermine an Affordable Care Act requirement for employers to provide insurance that covers women's birth control based on moral or religious grounds; House Democrats are planning to vote next year on legislation to fund research on gun injuries and deaths, reframing the issue as a public health concern; despite California being cited as a rigorous example in doctor oversight, very few sexual misconduct complaints are reported to the state medical board.

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In the final weeks of open enrollment, the number of people signing up for Affordable Care Act plans has surged, although overall numbers still lag behind 2017; a study following the progress of babies who were born to mothers infected with the Zika virus during pregnancy are showing more development problems; new research has shown that the longer women breastfeed, the greater the reduction in their risk of developing nonalcoholic fatty liver disease.

The House has passed a bill that would support state efforts to investigate pregnancy-related deaths and research how to prevent future deaths; a column in The New York Times examined 4 specific drug pricing policies and had 3 health policy experts weigh in on what the outcomes of implementing these policies could be; despite the benefits of using biosimilar filgrastim, the United States has lagged behind other countries in adopting the therapy.

The Supreme Court refused to hear 2 cases arising from efforts by states to bar Planned Parenthood clinics from the Medicaid program; the NIH will spend up to $20 million over 2 years to find and develop alternatives to using fetal tissue in research projects; whether or not the United States needs another opioid painkiller on the market has been widely debated since the FDA approved Dsuvia last month.

The authors of a study conducted in China assessed nearly 2000 women who were to identify whether premature birth leads to variability in long-term systolic blood pressure.

Battle lines are being drawn between establishment Democrats and progressive liberals in Congress over the idea of single-payer healthcare; an antitrust lawsuit filed in 2016 by states over 2 generic drugs has expanded into an investigation of alleged price-fixing involving at least 16 companies and 300 drugs; HHS will consider whether to approve work requirements for Medicaid expansion in Virginia.

An investigation in South Dakata has found that dozens of patients have died needlessly due to errors made in Indian Health Service (HIS) facilties in the state; a recent case of a Michigan woman resorting to crowdfunding to pay for post-transplant care in order to get on an organ transplant list sparked outrage, but requiring proof of payment for organ transplants and post-operative care is common; a judge in Maine denied a request by the outgoing GOP Governor Paul LePage to stay an order that the state implement Medicaid expansion, which was approved by voters last year.

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Think tank RAND is suggesting that long-time heroin users who have failed on other treatments might be treated with pharmaceutical-grade heroin; House Democrats want more scrutiny on healthcare mergers as consolidation continues to lead to rising prices; a new study has found that migrants tend to be healthier and live longer than residents of the wealthy countries that they are traveling to.

The number of cases of a mysterious polio-like illness called acute flaccid myelitis are falling; Apple’s latest watch, the Series 4, has new features designed to detect falls and heart problems, and is aimed at attracting an older demographic; dentists who prescribe opioids to teenagers and young adults after removing their wisdom teeth may be putting their patients at risk of addiction.

GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) is buying cancer biotech firm Tesaro for for $5.1 billion; Republicans in Congree are giving up efforts to cut Planned Parenthood funding; Medicare is using financial incentives to reward or punish nursing homes based on how often their residents ended up back in hospitals within 30 days of discharge.

Researchers described the study as one of the first to examine how strength training can reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease, separate from the effects of aerobic activity like running or long walks

Patients with a rare neuromuscular disease called Lambert-Eaton myasthenic syndrome are now terrified the cost for their treatment could soar to $100,000 without insurance because of a quirk in pharmaceutical approvals and pricing; Bloomberg Philanthropies will donate $50 million to 10 states fighting the opioid epidemic; Republican lawmakers in the GOP Doctors Caucus expressed their concerns about President Trump's controversial proposal to lower drug prices in a meeting this week with HHS Secretary Alex Azar.

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For the first time in a decade, the number of children without health insurance rose; CVS Health has officially acquired Aetna after New York and New Jersey provided the last 2 state approvals necessary for the merger to occur; although the Federal Bureau of Prisons has imposed a policy to provide better care and oversight for inmates with mental health issues, a new report has found that treatment has not been expanded.

A generic competitor to the EpiPen will not cost any less than the version that is already on the market; a new service from Amazon will use machine learning to pull key information from patient records; a new report from the European Commission has noted that generic and biosimilar products will be key to curbing wasteful spending in healthcare.

The FDA will revamp the process for approving most medical devices, which has long been criticized by experts for failing to catch problems with risky implants and related products; the $69 billion merger between CVS and Aetna is expected to close Wednesday after New York signed off on the deal; the Government Accountability Office (GAO) will investigate whether members of President Donald Trump’s private club in Florida improperly influenced the Department of Veterans Affairs.

HCR ManorCare, the second-largest nursing-home chain, exposed its roughly 25,000 patients to increasing health risks in the 5 years preceding its bankruptcy; Clostridium difficile, or C. diff, is spreading outside of healthcare settings like hospitals and nursing homes and scientists are not exactly sure why; the US government released new autism numbers.

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The 2019 outlook for health insurers in the United States looks stable; Senator Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, and Representative Ro Khanna, D-California, have released a bill that takes cues from President Donald Trump’s proposal to reduce Medicare drug costs through the use of an international pricing index; older Americans should be aware of what is in their medical records and whether the data are accurate.

Rep. Frank Pallone Jr, D-New Jersey, who is set to be chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, supports the concept of a single-payer “Medicare-for-all” bill in the next Congress, but said the votes aren’t there and there are other priorities; an emergency department doctor was shot and killed by her former fiancé at Mercy Hospital in Chicago, along with a first-year pharmacy resident and a city police officer who rushed into the chaos; Kaleo, which sells a voice-activated auto-injector device that delivers a version of naloxone, raised the price of its opioid antidote product by more than 600% between 2014 and 2017.

A California union that provided major funding for successful ballot campaigns to expand Medicaid in 3 red states this year, is looking ahead to 2020; smoke from the wildfire in Northern California has created dangerous air quality that exceeds pollution levels in China and India; the World Health Organization evacuated 16 people working to contain the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo following a rebel attack.

President Donald Trump is planning to announce details of his plan to expand the role of the private sector to deliver healthcare to veterans; research looking at connections between mental health and gun violence is not so clear cut; the suicide rate among Americans of working age (between 16 and 64) increased 34% from 2000 to 2016 across 17 states.