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What We're Reading: Valeant Could Reduce Prices of Expensive Heart Drugs
What we're reading, April 28, 2016: Valeant officials express remorse over price hikes of heart drugs; Paul Ryan proposes placing consumers with serious medical conditions in high-risk pools; and a British medical organization is urging smokers to switch to e-cigarettes.
Faced with unhappy lawmakers, Valeant Pharmaceuticals could reduce the prices of 2 heart drugs that the company previously marked up. According to STAT, the drug maker’s board could meet to discuss reducing the prices of Isuprel and Nitrpres by 30%. Unlike when former Turing Pharmaceuticals CEO Martin Shkreli appeared unrepentant on Capitol Hill, Valeant board member Bill Ackerman, outgoing CEO Michael Pearson, and former executive Howard Schiller express contrition for the raising prices to aggressively.
Paul Ryan has called for consumers with serious medical conditions to be placed in high-risk pools. The US House of Representatives Speaker said protections for very sick individuals under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) has raised costs for healthy consumers and he suggested that putting individuals with health issues into high-risk pools would open up competition and increase choice for everyone, according to Reuters. This proposal may be part of a Republican alternative to the ACA.
While American public health officials remain concerned about the use of e-cigarettes, a major British medical organization is urging smokers to make the switch to e-cigarettes. The Royal College of Physicians summarized a growing body of evidence that found the benefits e-cigarettes far outweigh the potential harms, reported The New York Times. The report found that e-cigarette devices are helping people more than harming them.
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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