Medicare moving to reference pricing?

That is the summary takeaway I had form reviewing the 91 page CMS guidance on the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) maximum fair price (MFP) negotiation released about 10 days ago. Below, I summarize some of the key findings. SELECTING DRUG FOR PRICE NEGOTIATION Unsurprisingly, CMS is looking for the highest cost drugs among the 10…

Links

Threats to Medicare’s new drug negotiation power Drugs likely to be involved in Medicare price negotiation. Future of the US vaccine programs. Will GPT automate your job out of existence?  Drone delivery of medical supplies (and other things) explained.

Diffusion of pharmaceuticals and the patient’s influence

Through what mechanisms are patients and physicians made aware of new pharmaceuticals and decide to prescribe them. It is well known that physician peer networks often help share information about new pharmaceuticals including clinical information as well as the providers own experience using the new treatment. Other studies have shown that direct to consumer advertising…

Is it time to end 340B?

A Health Affiairs Forefront article by DiGiorgio (2023) argues the 340B has outlived its purposes. He writes:  By mandating that drug companies give a large discount to covered entities, the majority of which are hospitals with disproportionate share or critical access designations, the 340B program was intended to provide a financial buffer for institutions such as the…

Links

The public health effect of legalizing marijuana. Source of cross-country health care spending differences. Sociodemographics and HVBP scores. Nursing homes: Cash flow and COVID-19 cases. Affirmative action in health care? Plus a few AI links: AI comes to Google Workspace. AI and productivity.

Pediatric mortality rates rising

Some troubling statistics published recently by Woolf et al. (2023) using CDC WONDER data: Between 2019 and 2020, the all-cause mortality rate for ages 1 to 19 years increased by 10.7%, and it increased by an additional 8.3% between 2020 and 202…These increases, the largest in decades, followed a period of great progress in reducing…

COVID’s health spillovers

Interesting paper from Ziedan, Simon and Wing (2023): The contraction in health care consumption at the start of the pandemic provides insight into central economic questions of waste and productivity in the U.S. health care system. Using linked mortality and Electronic Medical Records, we compare people who had outpatient appointments scheduled for dates in 30…