What We're Reading: Constituents' Health Law Input; Enrollment Cap Requests; Predicting Trial Results

Republican Senators Hear Reactions to Health Bill During Parades

At Independence Day parades and celebrations across the country, constituents made their voices heard to their Republican senators, either to support or oppose the proposed Senate healthcare bill, reported the Washington Post. Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) said she heard encouragement for her stance against the bill, but residents asked Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nevada) to vote for a revised bill, even though he opposed the first draft. Other Senators, like Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), said their constituents simply implored them to put the interests of their state first.

Insurers Seek Enrollment Caps on Exchange Plans

A Houston-based insurer, Community Health Choice, is considering asking CMS to let it cap its exchange enrollment in 2018, citing unsustainable financial burdens from an influx of enrollees, according to Modern Healthcare. It is not the first insurer to seek this solution, as plans in Minnesota and Kansas have already instituted enrollment caps. Generally, the plans that would benefit from caps tend to serve smaller regions where other insurers have exited the market, leading to a sudden spike in members and costs.

Scientists May Provide Inaccurate Predictions of Clinical Trial Results

A new study finds that scientists are often too optimistic in their assessment of whether clinical studies will yield significant results, according to NPR’s summary of the findings. When investigators asked 200 professors, postdocs, and graduate students to predict the results from 6 cancer trials being replicated from prior studies, they mostly overestimated the likelihood of the trials having significant effects. The study authors say these findings point to the need to be sufficiently skeptical of trial design instead of relying on intuition.