The Biden administration doubled its order of Pfizer’s COVID-19 antiviral drug; California is now the first state to require health insurance plans to cover at-home STI tests; the Supreme Court will hear in-person arguments Friday to decide whether to block federal vaccine mandates.
President Biden announced Tuesday that his administration doubled its order of Pfizer’s COVID-19 antiviral drug, The New York Times reported. The Pfizer pill has been shown to reduce hospitalizations, and this upcoming supply increase will eventually provide enough pills for an additional 10 million Americans, bringing the government’s total order of the drug to 20 million treatment courses. According to a senior administration official, there will be 35,000 additional courses delivered in January and 50,000 more in February, in addition to 350,000 treatment courses that were already expected over the next 2 months. This announcement comes after the US set a global record for COVID-19 cases Monday.
In an effort to address the sexually transmitted infection (STI) epidemic, California is now the first state to require health insurance plans to cover at-home tests for HIV, chlamydia and syphilis, and other STIs, as reported by Kaiser Health News. Part of a broader law, this rule took effect January 1 for people with state-regulated private insurance plans and will go into effect later for the millions of low-income California citizens enrolled in the state’s Medicaid program. Similar to COVID-19 testing kits, some STI tests require patients to send samples to a lab for analysis, while some at-home oral HIV tests give results in a few minutes. Infectious disease experts hope the new rule will bring better disease monitoring to rural and underserved parts of California, reduce the stigma patients experience when seeking care, and give patients more control over their health.
The US Supreme Court will hear in-person arguments Friday in preparation to decide whether to block Biden's vaccine mandates for large businesses and health care workers, Reuters reported. The court will hear from business and religious groups, multiple Republican-led US states, and other groups, with rulings expected soon after. The opposition to the mandates claim the administration is overstepping its authority by establishing vaccine mandates on the federal level. In the past, the Supreme Court has rejected several religious-based challenges to state vaccine requirements, but Friday's cases are the first to address the federal government's authority to issue its own vaccine mandates.
ACOs’ Focus on Rooting Out Fraud Aligns With CMS Vision Under Oz
April 23rd 2025Accountable care organizations (ACOs) are increasingly playing the role of data sleuths as they identify and report trends of anomalous billing in hopes of salvaging their shared savings. This mission dovetails with that of CMS, which under the new administration plans to prioritize rooting out fraud, waste, and abuse.
Read More
New Research Challenges Assumptions About Hospital-Physician Integration, Medicare Patient Mix
April 22nd 2025On this episode of Managed Care Cast, Brady Post, PhD, lead author of a study published in the April 2025 issue of The American Journal of Managed Care®, challenges the claim that hospital-employed physicians serve a more complex patient mix.
Listen
Contributor: For Complex Cases, Continuity in Acute Care Is Necessary
April 23rd 2025For patients with complex needs and social challenges like unstable housing, the hospital has become their de facto medical home—yet each visit is a fragmented restart, without continuity, context, or a clear path forward.
Read More
Personalized Care Key as Tirzepatide Use Expands Rapidly
April 15th 2025Using commercial insurance claims data and the US launch of tirzepatide as their dividing point, John Ostrominski, MD, Harvard Medical School, and his team studied trends in the use of both glucose-lowering and weight-lowering medications, comparing outcomes between adults with and without type 2 diabetes.
Listen