Quotation of the Day
A great conversation is between two people who think the other is wrong. A bad conversation is between those who think something is wrong with you. Micah Goodman, as written in David Brooks’ book How to Know a Person
Links
More people want to expand ACA vs. repeal it. What is a person’s social cost of being corrected by AI? Guidance on the promise and pitfalls of using AI in healthcare. “….people systematically misremember their past policy preferences regarding how to best fight the Covid-19 pandemic” Consequentialists vs. deontologists: “…which moral principle prevails appears to…
55% of US Rural Hospitals Are No Longer Offer Birthing Services
That is according to an article in JAMA based on a report from the Center for Healthcare Quality and Payment Reform. The report states: More than half (55%) of the rural hospitals in the U.S. do not offer labor and delivery services, and in 10 states, more than two-thirds do not. Over the past decade,…
Did President Biden backtrack on his pledge for increased public access to Medicare data?
The Biden Administration promised more access to Medicare data. Then the reverse happened. ProPublica explains: In January, the Biden administration pledged to increase public access to a wide array of Medicare information to improve health care for America’s most sick and vulnerable. Some Medicare plans’ lack of transparency “deprives researchers and doctors of critical data…
How will Medicaid pay for cell and gene therapies?
One approach CMS has is the Cell and Gene Therapy (CGT) Access Model. Under the CGT Access Model, CMS (at the federal level) will negotiates outcomes based agreements (OBAs) with manufacturers, which will include pricing terms and outcomes to be evaluated. Then states can elect to participate in the contract terms negotiated by CMS or…
Friday Links
Impact of the Great Recession on health. A loneliness epidemic? Medicaid’s increasing pressure on state budgets. Physician reimbursement to decline 3.4%. Are children spending too much time on enrichment activities?
Why Does the United States Pay, by Far, the Highest Prices in the World for Prescription Drugs?
That is the topic of a U.S. Senate hearing last week. One person testifying was an economist, USC Professor Darius Lakdawalla. While his full testimony is here, his key points of contention are worth reading. These include: The challenge for public policy is to sustain the pace of medical innovation while ensuring that valuable new…
Utilization management for biosimilars
When we think of utilization management (e.g., prior authorizations, step edits), we often think payers only use these for higher cost branded products including biologics. Generic drugs should have low cost sharing and limited utilization management. One question, however, is whether payers’ utilization management practices for biosimilars mirror those of biologic products, or small-molecule generics,…
How do HEOR studies handle missing data?
That is the questioned answered in a paper by Mukherjee et al. (2023). The authors define an “HEOR study” for this paper as …real-world evidence studies that conducted a secondary/post-hoc analysis using randomized controlled trial (RCT) data, and a within-trial cost-utility analysis in which the outcome of interest was costs or PROs including preference-based utilities…
Valuing treatments for rare disease
That is the topic of a recent white paper from the Innovation and Value Initiative titled “Valuing Rare Disease Treatments in Healthcare: Real Experience, Real Impact“. The report notes a number of challenges in assessing treatment value in rare disease (see my white paper “Challenges in Preserving Access to Orphan Drugs Under an HTA Framework”…