AJMC Staff

Insurers in the individual market have shown improved financial results for the first 6 months of 2018 to levels not seen since before the passage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA); women can experience lingering health problems years after workplace sexual harassment or sexual assault; people addicted to opioids are trying to self-treat withdrawal by using buprenorphine, 1 of 3 federally approved medications to treat opioid use disorder.

A retrospective analysis of clinical charts across multiple institutions has found that transitioning patients with gastroenteropancreatic neuroendocrine tumors (GEP-NETs) to receive lanreotide after octreotide can be a potential therapeutic option.

Health plans sold through Iowa’s Farm Bureau will ask applicants if they have any pre-existing conditions, and some applicants could be denied coverage based on their answers; Congress this week approved rare bipartisan legislation aimed at curbing opioid use disorder, giving lawmakers something to campaign on ahead of the November midterms; a new study sought to assess the cost to produce insulin and to examine how biosimilar insulin, if manufactured on a large scale, could reduce the cost of treatment for patients with diabetes.

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Cervical cancer could be eliminated in Australia within the next 2 decades because of a free government program to vaccinate children against the human papillomavirus; employers have slowed enrollment in high-deductible health plans amid a very tight labor market and a postponement of a tax on healthcare coverage; President Barack Obama’s 2010 healthcare law is threatening Republicans in the midterms who have spent years railing against it and seeking its repeal.

Patients who receive an antibiotic prescription report being happiest with their doctor’s visit, whether or not they needed the antibiotic; the FDA has collected more than 1000 pages of documents from Juul’s headquarters as part of a surprise inspection into its sales and marketing practices; on any given day, an average of 36.6% of American adults are eating fast food, and the proportion eating fast food increases with income.

The chairman of the board of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC) told the hospital’s staff that the former chief medical officer, José Baselga, MD, had “crossed lines” and had gone “off the reservation” in his outside dealings with health and drug companies; more than any other industry, the pharmaceutical industry benefits from a patent strategy that allows small changes in existing drugs to confer continued patent protection; public health officials are worried that the latest Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo may be spinning beyond their control and could spill over into Uganda and Rwanda.

Senators Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, and Michael Bennet, D-Colorado, have introduced a new bill that would allow the FDA to include off-label uses on certain generic drug labels; in the 2017-2018 flu season, influenza killed 80,000 Americans, easily surpassing the previous record of 56,000 deaths for a regular flu season; in the last 4 years, the number of babies born with syphilis has more than doubled, reaching a 20-year high.

Aetna is selling its Medicare Part D prescription drug unit to WellCare Health Plans; Seema Verma, administrator of CMS, defended Medicaid work requirements, saying they are not intended to kick people out of the program; an experimental tuberculosis (TB) vaccine demonstrated 54% protection in a clinical trial.

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Not only do drug prices increase during shortages, but drugs prescribed as substitutes also have higher costs; small business owners have identified the cost of healthcare as the most important issue affecting them; the average enrollee share of premiums for federal employees will increase 1.5% in 2019.

Medicare will ease up on annual readmission penalties for safety-net hospitals; the House of Representatives has passed a bill prohibiting pharmacy gag clauses, sending the bill to President Donald Trump's desk; the Creating and Restoring Equal Access to Equivalent Samples (CREATES) Act of 2018 would reduce federal spending on prescription drugs by $3.3 billion from 2019 to 2028.

Gilead Sciences will sell authorized generics of its blockbuster hepatitis C drugs Epclusa and Harvoni; the pharmaceutical industry inserted a measure into an opioid bill to reverse discounts they would be required to give next year to seniors enrolled in Medicare Part D plans; the Trump administration has terminated a contract with a fetal tissue firm after being criticized by antiabortion groups and Republican lawmakers.

The Department of Homeland Security is targeting immigrants who have sought assistance from food stamps, welfare, Medicaid, Medicare Part D, and housing vouchers; there is wide variation among ketamine clinics, including the screening of patients, dosages, frequency of infusions, and coordination with patients’ mental health providers; public health advocates are upset over a decision by the Trump administration to divert nearly $200 million from health programs to fund the detention of unaccompanied migrant children who crossed into the country illegally.

An artificial intelligence startup with ties to employees and board members of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center is sparking dissent at the venerable institution; the American Medical Association (AMA) is opposing a change to patient privacy laws contained in a massive opioids bill; Republicans are struggling to find a healthcare message to sell to voters as the midterm elections draw near.

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States, communities, and organizations received more than $1 billion in grants from HHS to help them fight the opioid crisis; a preliminary study has found that children conceived through infertility treatments could be at higher risk for cardiovascular disease; the State of California is alleging that AbbVie boosted sales of Humira through kickbacks to prescribers and a network of nurse ambassadors.

With healthcare costs growing, a bipartisan group of senators has unveiled draft legislation that would protect patients from surprise bills and prevent medical bankruptcies; at least 17 hog-waste lagoons may have released feces and urine into flood waters in North Carolina, putting people at risk of viruses, parasitic infections, and rashes; African Americans accounted for fewer than 5% of patients in 24 trials for cancer drugs approved since 2015.

The Senate passed a massive opioid bill 99-1, but public health experts and first responders are concerned it won’t do enough to stop the crisis; pharmaceutical companies with manufacturing plants in North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia put emergency plans in place last week as Hurricane Florence bore down to avoid shortages of drugs and vaccines; the cannabis industry is booming, and one of the fastest growing group of users are people over age 50.

The approval comes 6 months after the 2 companies fist made an announcement of the proposed merger.

Patient and advocacy groups filed a lawsuit seeking to block the Trump administration’s plan to let people buy short-term health insurance that doesn’t comply with the Affordable Care Act; members of the federal Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access Commission advisory panel expressed concerns that 4350 low-income people in Arkansas had lost Medicaid coverage because they failed to show they were complying with new work requirements; half as many people tried heroin for the first time in 2017 as in 2016, but marijuana use grew.

José Baselga, MD, the chief medical officer of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, resigned after it was reported that he failed to disclose any industry ties in 60% of the nearly 180 papers he had published since 2013; an idea to give a push to the president’s plan to disclose drug prices on television was sunk this week by House Republicans; transgender adolescents attempt suicide at a much higher rate than young people whose gender identity matches the sex on their birth certificates.

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BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee is the latest insurer to announce it will no longer pay for OxyContin and will instead cover newer abuse-deterrent opioids; a new prototype may upend the way people get vaccinated during an influenza pandemic through patches with microscopic needles; as Hurricane Florence prepares to hit the Carolinas, health officials are trying to protect seniors, who tend to be the most vulnerable and bear the brunt of storms.

Not only do pharmacy benefit managers profit thousands of percent using spread pricing, but the spreads are growing; support for Medicare for all is growing among Democrats in Congress, but it's still unclear how such a drastic chage would impact the complex American healthcare system; while precision medicine has great potential, it still has far more failures than successes, but that isn't usually discussed.

The Senate appears ready to pass a package of opioid bills this week; Michigan is asking for the Trump administration’s approval for work requirements for Medicaid; the 8th US Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a 2017 ruling that blocked enforcement of a Missouri law that kept the state from enforcing new regulations on doctors providing abortions.

Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center’s chief executive emailed all staff telling them they “need to do a better job” of disclosing industry relationships in the wake of a published report that the cancer center’s chief medical officer failed to disclose his extensive industry ties; the remedy to balance billing (the surprise bills patients receive after their insurance plan has paid the contracted amount with a provider) may lie at the federal or state level or possibly the courts; marijuana health research applications are stalled at the Drug Enforcement Administration, 2 years after it began taking the requests.

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Speaking at a conference organized by the Association for Accessible Medicines, an FDA official said the Trump administration’s restrictions on hiring foreign scientists are making it more difficult for the agency to attract top scientific talent; HHS Secretary Alex Azar met with Republican lawmakers on the House Ways and Means Committee to discuss ways to lower drug prices; previously secret emails from Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s time working for President George W. Bush provoked new scrutiny during his Supreme Court confirmation hearing regarding his views on abortion and other women’s health issues.

Lawmakers in at least 10 states will consider taxes on makers of opioids in the upcoming legislative session depending on the results of the November election; the numbers may be low, but overdose deaths in Alaska involving fentanyl more than quadrupled in 2017; a new company created by health systems to address drug shortages and high-cost generics is taking shape with a name and a chief executive officer.