Policy

Coverage from "Navigating the PBM Landscape: How a Heath Care Economist Sees It," at Patient-Centered Oncology Care 2023.

A ruling against Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America marks victory for efforts to lower health care costs; new guidelines align with flu and respiratory syncytial virus protocols; children and pregnant individuals are burdened with long-term health symptoms in the aftermath of COVID-19.

The federal State Health Insurance Assistance Program (SHIP) provides counseling and education on Medicare coverage options. This article highlights potential inequities in in-person SHIP service access.

Over the past 20 years, Medicare physician pay has plummeted by 26% when adjusted for inflation, while hospital reimbursement has surged by 70%, prompting over 100,000 doctors to abandon independent practice for hospital or corporate employment since 2019.

A wave of drug supply chain problems would occur if the FDA pulled cough and cold medications containing the active ingredient phenylephrine from shelves; lawmakers in 19 states are considering bills allowing medically assisted death; tuberculosis awareness is lagging as state and local health departments lack the resources to keep up with prevention and control efforts.

A provision in the Inflation Reduction Act will implement a $2000 out-of-pocket cap on Medicare beneficiaries’ prescription drug spending, which could save money for more than 1 million enrollees when it takes effect next year.

Amazon and Health Warehouse’s direct-to-consumer pharmacies had the most expensive and commonly used generic drugs available in 2020, whereas Walmart only had a small fraction.

States channel billions into housing for the homeless using Medicaid funds; AstraZeneca invests $300 million to discover and develop cell therapies; the CDC highlights dangers of menthol cigarette addiction.

Although 30-day mortality rates did not worsen for Medicare beneficiaries at hospitals with high proportions of Black patients compared with other hospitals, gaps in outcomes widened for Black adults with pneumonia under the Medicare Value-Based Purchasing Program.

Novo Holdings to acquire Catalent for $11.5 billion; cancer incidence is expected to surge 77% by 2050; Silicon Valley’s county takes a bold step to address the rising loneliness crisis.

The Center on Health Equity and Access provides real-time updates, shares cutting-edge research, and supports continuous efforts dedicated to tackling health care disparities and enhancing widespread access to high-quality health services.

The article emphasizes the significance of accreditations in addressing health disparities and promoting health equity, highlighting programs for achieving accreditation and advocating for the integration of social determinants of health (SDOH) and health equity practices within pharmacy and health care.

Payers, health systems, and health professionals will experience expanded accountability for performance in closing health disparity gaps in 2024.

Medically integrated dispensaries could be in violation of the Medicare Physician Self-Referral Law, known as the Stark Law, due to an interpretation of the law released in 2021.

The Inflation Reduction Act will likely change incentives surrounding single-indication launches and postapproval research for additional indications in small molecule drugs, affecting patient access.

Bevey Miner, executive vice president of health care strategy and policy, Consensus Cloud Solutions, discusses the complex landscape of proposed health care rules, and the potential impact of CMS' Advancing Interoperability and Prior Authorizations Rule.

Days spent obtaining health care outside the home may show access to needed care, but also add up to substantial time, effort, and cost burdens to patients and those who care for them, according to the study authors.

Drug prices in the US increased 4.4% annually and median out-of-pocket (OOP) costs increased 9.6% annually from 2009 to 2018, but there was no direct link between these amounts for individual drugs.

Research on the state of health care, health outcomes, and health inequities in the criminal justice system continually advocates for structural-level reform and the recognition that carceral health issues are in fact public health issues.

Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) medication packets are found with incorrect pills; CMS data reveal record numbers of providers and beneficiaries participating in accountable care organizations (ACOs); Supreme Court will hear arguments over FDA regulations on abortion medication in March.

Bevey Miner, executive vice president of health care strategy and policy, Consensus Cloud Solutions, discusses the historic progression of health information technology and the role interoperability plays in secure exchanging of patient data.

Biden administration launches partnership with Instacart; critics raise concerns over pharmaceutical industry influence in negotiations; patients seek alternatives as Novo Nordisk halts insulin production.

The authors call on Congress to reform Medicare reimbursement for dialysis, saying the recent rule puts clinics at risk of closure.

Meeting the 2024 deadline for an international agreement on pandemic response may not happen; the Biden administration announces measures to counter restrictive state laws on abortion; cervical cancer incidence declines as more women receive the human papillomavirus vaccine.

Families with workplace health insurance may have missed out on $125,000 in earnings over the past 3 decades due to rising premiums; so far, there have been about 600 drug price hikes in January; experts worry that minority and low-income people will not have easy access to zuranolone, the first FDA-approved postpartum depression pill.

Shifting from an opt-in to an opt-out approach boosted palliative care consults from 16.6% of eligible patients to 43.9%, the investigators found.

New program seeks to revitalize struggling rural health care facilities; NIH director advocates for actions to address unaffordable medications; WHO reveals significant drop global tobacco use

Merck’s pembrolizumab (Keytruda) gains expanded approval for advanced cervical cancer; delay of final rules banning menthol cigarettes and flavored cigars; high rates of diagnostic errors lead to harm and deaths, study finds.

Bevey Miner, executive vice president of health care strategy and policy, Consensus Cloud Solutions, shares how extraction artificial intelligence is helping train machine learning models to recognize and extract information from documents, providing structured data with confidence scores.

Congress is being urged to reverse a cut to physicians’ Medicare payments; Bayer announced encouraging results on Monday of 2 phase 3 trials for its nonhormonal drug candidate meant to treat hot flashes; more students are turning to online mental health support rather than school counselors.