Senator Orrin Hatch and Senator Kamala Harris ask Attorney General Jeff Sessions to get the DEA to allow medical marijuana research; current and former executives of pharmaceutical distributors are scheduled to testify before Congress May 8 about their role in the opioid epidemic; 14 patients on Vieques, a Puerto Rican island just east of the main island, are flying 3 times a week for lifesaving dialysis more than 6 months after Hurricane Maria.
Bipartisan senators wrote Attorney General Jeff Sessions to ask him to cease efforts by the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) to slow medical marijuana research. Senator Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, and Senator Kamala Harris, D-California, said that they are concerned the Justice Department is effectively blocking the DEA from taking action on at least 25 formal applications from manufacturers to produce federally approved research-grade marijuana, The Hill reported. Such research is needed for “evidence-based decision making,” they wrote.
Current and former executives of pharmaceutical distributors are scheduled to testify before Congress May 8 about their role in the opioid epidemic, reported The Washington Post. The hearing before a House Energy and Commerce Committee oversight panel is being likened to when tobacco executives were called to testify before Congress in 1994. Under oath, the executives are expected to face tough questions about why their companies sent so many highly addictive pain pills into West Virginia and other states, fueling the drug crisis.
Fourteen patients on Vieques, a Puerto Rican island just east of the main island, are flying 3 times a week for lifesaving dialysis more than 6 months after Hurricane Maria because the only hospital and dialysis clinic was destroyed, Kaiser Health News reported. When patients with diabetes and kidney failure will be able to regain their treatments locally is uncertain, as federal, local officials, and nonprofit groups debate strategy and finances. The responsibility of paying for the flights, which turn into 12-hour ordeals to get from Vieques to the main island, continues to switch between groups.
Urticaria Diagnosis Challenged by Overlapping Pruritic Skin Conditions
April 23rd 2025Urticaria is complicated to diagnose by its symptomatic overlap with other skin conditions and the frequent misclassification in literature of distinct pathologies like vasculitic urticaria and bullous pemphigus.
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
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
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