Georgia Governor Brian Kemp released a Medicaid plan with a work requirement of 80 hours a month; a new Alzheimer drug derived from seaweed was given conditional approval in China; a study says California's vaccination law will have modest effect on childhood vaccination rates.
Yesterday, Georgia Governor Brian Kemp released a plan to expand Medicaid to the state’s poorest able-bodied adults with added work requirements to receive benefits, according to The Associated Press. The plan will assist citizens on the condition that they work, volunteer, receive job training, or attend school. The proposal, which is more limited than other states, will qualify uninsured adults in Georgia who make no more than the federal poverty level for Medicaid assistance if they spend at least 80 hours a month on the work requirement. In addition, these individuals would pay monthly premiums.
Chinese regulators granted conditional approval this past weekend to an Alzheimer drug derived from seaweed, after years of clinical failures involving experimental therapies from major drug companies, according to STAT News. The announcement comes with eagerness and caution among clinicians to see the full data on the treatment studies conducted by the drug maker, Shanghai Green Valley Pharmaceuticals, as the company said its drug, oligomannate, improved cognitive function in patients with mild to moderate Alzheimer disease compared to placebo in a phase 3 trial. Benefits were reported in patients as early as week 4 and persisted throughout the 36 weeks of the trial. The approval comes after nearly 2 decades in which no new Alzheimer drug has been approved.
A study published yesterday by the Annals of Internal Medicine found that the strict childhood vaccination law imposed by California regulators in 2016 will only provide a “modest” impact on increasing vaccination rates by 2027. The Los Angeles Times reports that supporters of the law, known as SB 277, contested the findings of the study citing the law as having already pushed up the state’s kindergarten vaccination rate to never-before-seen levels. SB 277 disallowed parents from referencing personal beliefs as a reason for not vaccinating their children. Researchers projected that under SB 277, the percentage of children who would remain unvaccinated in 2027 due to law exemption will be 1.87%, compared to 2.36% without the law.
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