Allison Inserro

Republican leaders begin work Monday reconciling the differences in the Senate and House tax legislation, hoping to send a final bill to President Trump before Christmas. Senate Republicans passed the bill by 51-49 just before 2 am on Saturday.

Federally qualified health centers (FQHCs) saw the benefit of funding from an American Cancer Society (ACS) program aimed at strengthening colorectal cancer screening rates over a 3-year period.

Researchers find brake mechanism that prevents an essential shell from forming on virus that causes AIDS.

The immunotherapy drug pembrolizumab has demonstrated manageable side effects and durable antitumor activity in patients with heavily pretreated, advanced esophageal cancer. The immunotherapy drug results, released from the KEYNOTE-028 trial, showed an overall response rate of 30%.

Health insurers warned that giving states the ability to define their own essential health benefits will confuse consumers and undermine the insurance markets.

A study of cost trends for tumor necrosis factor (TNF) inhibitors for rheumatoid arthritis (RA) after the entry of new competition showed that the newer drugs did not lower costs, and in fact, the annual treatment costs of the existing medicines rose by $17,390. Taxpayer funds shouldered all of the increases, and the “findings illustrate a market failure contributing to the rising costs of prescription drugs,” according to the researchers.

A study of cost trends for tumor necrosis factor (TNF) inhibitors for rheumatoid arthritis (RA) after the entry of new competition showed that the newer drugs did not lower costs, and in fact, the annual treatment costs of the existing medicines rose by $17,390. Taxpayer funds shouldered all of the increases, and the “findings illustrate a market failure contributing to the rising costs of prescription drugs,” according to the researchers.

A Canadian advisory council is recommending the use of biosimilars in a final report that lays out 60 recommendations for how the country can create a $15.3 billion (approximately US $11,408,521,500) universal, single-payer, public system for pharmaceutical coverage.

Korean drug maker Celltrion Healthcare recently presented new findings from a 2-part study at the Annual European Congress of Rheumatology 2019 meeting about subcutaneous biosimilar CT-P13 (Inflectra, Remsima).