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January 12, 2022 Briefs, Industry Trends, Price and Costs

BY WAYNE WINEGARDEN AND CELINE BOOKIN Part 1 of the Coverage Denied series documented how distortions in the U.S. healthcare system turned the important financial risk management service of health insurance into a barrier to care and an important driver of health care inflation. The insurance industry’s adverse impact on costs is ironic given its current focus on implementing cost control measures.  Unfortunately, the problems of increasing obstacles to care and decreasing health care affordability are the expected outcomes from the current...

January 3, 2022 Blog, Policy Proposals

Imagine you’re walking the aisles of your local supermarket, on the hunt for your favorite cereal. You usually purchase the generic version, since it tastes nearly the same and is much cheaper than the name-brand version. But today, you notice that the price of the name-brand cereal is just a few cents more expensive than the generic version. You remember that Congress just passed a law capping the price of name-brand cereal. Now, with the prices almost equal, you decide to purchase...

December 29, 2021 Industry Trends

Last week, on Dec. 19 specifically, Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., announced that he would not support the current iteration of the Build Back Better Act. His decision calls the future of the $1.75 trillion spending package into serious question. For this, Democrats have only themselves to blame. After all, Manchin's demands that Democrats scale back their ambitions are more than reasonable — especially at a moment of high inflation and economic uncertainty. Build Back Better employs a host of gimmicks to mask the bill's true cost. Indeed,...

December 29, 2021 Price and Costs

For current and future taxpayers, 2021 was a brutal year—at least when it comes to healthcare spending. Congress and the Biden administration approved tens of billions in new expenditures. Much of that money was, or will be, wasted on inefficient programs and subsidies that do little to improve the quality of care that Americans receive. But the bill will come due regardless. The president kicked off his first term with a massive $1.9 trillion stimulus package, the American Rescue Plan. About $34 billion went to...

December 29, 2021 Blog, Policy Proposals

By Henry I. Miller, M.S., M.D. and Jeff Stier When President Joe Biden nominated Obama-era Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Dr. Robert Califf to return to his old post, he made what is widely seen as a safe, if uninspired, choice. Califf is a distinguished cardiologist and clinical trial specialist, but the day-to-day regulatory decision-making happens at the organizational levels below the commissioner. The FDA, a huge and critically important but dysfunctional organization, now needs a bold, clear-thinking reformer, but Califf, the...

December 29, 2021 Blog, Policy Proposals

It's hard to find a silver lining in a pandemic. But COVID-19 has convinced the medical and policymaking establishments, perhaps unwittingly, that high-quality care can be delivered remotely. The telehealth revolution is upon us. Lawmakers waived numerous arcane and outdated regulations governing the use of telemedicine to make the service more available for everyday patients. Onerous restrictions that required patients to receive telehealth care in medical facilities and barred doctors from conducting appointments across state lines were as nonsensical before the...

December 24, 2021 Blog, Coronavirus - Alternate, Policy Proposals

By Henry I. Miller, M.S., M.D. and John J. Cohrssen Earlier this week, President Biden outlined new steps to confront the growing spread of Covid-19 from the new, more infectious Omicron variant, which, in only a few weeks, has soared from virtually nonexistent to 73 percent of all new cases. Unfortunately, Biden’s plan failed to include what could be the most important action of all: an all-out effort to make safe and effective anti-viral Covid-19 pills available—two of which have now...

December 21, 2021 Industry Trends

Even health care answers to the law of supply and demand. Before the pandemic, demand for care was surging as our nation aged. Supply has not kept up. More than 83 million Americans live in areas where there’s a shortage of primary care health professionals, according to the federal government. Rising demand coupled with limited supply is a recipe for high prices. And now, with a new variant of covid-19 in our midst, demand for care will only increase. Relaxing the laws that limit what...

December 21, 2021 Price and Costs

Wayne Winegarden, PhD, Discusses the Value of an Interchangeable Designation for Adalimumab Biosimilars December 19, 2021 Skylar Jeremias The Center for Biosimilars® interviewed Wayne Winegarden, PhD, senior fellow in business and economics at Pacific Research Institute (PRI) and director of PRI’s Center for Medical Economics and Innovation. Click here to watch. Winegarden talked about how interchangeability designations are more important for biosimilars referencing adalimumab (Humira) because they would not administered by a physician in a clinic, unlike oncology biosimilars, which pharmacists do not interact with...

December 21, 2021 Policy Proposals

A health insurance “public option” is a long-cherished goal for many Democrats. Yet, progress on that goal has stalled at the national level. But three states — Washington, Nevada, and Colorado— have gone ahead with such schemes. Another 16 are considering them. Washington’s public plan is about to complete its first year in business. Colorado officials, meanwhile, have to create their standardized health benefit plan by the end of this year. We can be sure that the White House and Democrats in...

December 20, 2021 Policy Proposals

Open enrollment on Obamacare’s health insurance exchanges is in full swing. Consumers in most states, including the 33 that use the federally operated HealthCare.gov, have until Jan. 15 to sign up for coverage for 2022. The Biden administration says things have never been better, and that premiums are declining, more insurers are participating in the markets, and enrollment is at an all-time high. Dig a little deeper, and Obamacare’s troubles become evident. Premiums are ticking down only after rising for years. Much of the coverage on offer...

December 20, 2021 Policy Proposals

Senate Democrats have delayed action on their multi-trillion-dollar Build Back Better Act until the New Year. If it passes, even more people will be dependent on the federal government for health coverage. It would represent the latest stepping-stone toward single-payer health care, which progressives like Senator Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., have dreamed of implementing for some time. New research from the Fraser Institute, a Canadian think tank, offers a glimpse of what can happen when the government completely dominates the healthcare market. This year, Canadians faced...

December 16, 2021 Coronavirus - Alternate

Dr. Henry Miller joins the John Batchelor Show to talk about the latest news coming out of the United Kingdom, NHS reports on omicron, how the new variant compares to other variants of the COVID-19 virus, and what it means for Europe and the United States. Miller also talks about how transmissible omicron is, how effective vaccines and boosters could be, and it's impact on lockdowns, mask mandates, and travel. ...

December 16, 2021 Industry Trends

Last week, President Joe Biden emphasized the importance of the drug pricing proposals in the Democrats' roughly $2 trillion Build Back Better spending package. "I think it's safe to say that all of us, all of us, whatever our age, wherever we live, we can agree that prescription drugs are outrageously expensive in this country," Biden said. "Under my Build Back Better bill, which has passed the House of Representatives, it won't be the same way." Build Back Better would make significant changes to drug pricing...

December 13, 2021 Coronavirus

Good public health policy is welcome, even when long delayed. So we should cheer the Biden administration's announcement earlier this month that Covid-19 rapid-result antigen tests (RATs), which tell you in as little as 15 minutes whether you're infected, will be covered by private insurance. For uninsured Americans, the government would make 50 million free tests available, to be distributed through health clinics and other sites in rural and underserved communities. Assuming that they can detect the new Omicron variant along with...

December 13, 2021 Price and Costs

Using the ruse of “price negotiation”, the proponents of the Build Back Better legislation are pushing an ill-fated drug price control plan. Patients will bear exceptionally large costs should their idea of government-directed prices become law. These costs will include lower health outcomes due to reduced access to innovative drugs. They will also include increases in other types of healthcare spending as less drug access would, ironically, increase hospitalizations and use of other healthcare services and could more than offset any...

December 13, 2021 Policy Proposals

In the midst of the Covid-19 crisis, there's some good news on the health care front. Cancer mortality rates are declining in the United States, according to a recent report from the National Cancer Institute. Sadly, patients in other countries may not be so lucky. Though the United States has a higher incidence of cancer, other wealthy nations report worse outcomes in terms of recovery and survival. This points to the effectiveness of American health care and reveals the flaws in other...

December 13, 2021 Industry Trends

Earlier this month, President Joe Biden unveiled a plan to make at-home COVID-19 tests free for people with private insurance. They'll have to pay for the tests first, then submit receipts to their insurer to get reimbursed. Only the government could come up with a plan so unnecessarily complicated. The Biden administration defended the overly bureaucratic policy on the grounds of cost. But bureaucracy is one of the main reasons at-home tests have been so difficult to find in the first place. As...

December 9, 2021 Industry Trends

The Center for Biosimilars® interviewed Wayne Winegarden, PhD, senior fellow in business and economics at Pacific Research Institute (PRI) and director of PRI’s Center for Medical Economics and Innovation. Winegarden said that because of the high costs associated with Humira (reference adalimumab) and Enbrel (reference etanercept), biosimilars of these agents are needed to establish a competitive marketplace and to drive down costs. He said the long exclusivity periods that the makers of Humira and Enbrel have secured must end to allow greater affordability;...

December 7, 2021 Coronavirus

Dr. Henry Miller and John Batchelor breakdown the latest developments of Omicron, a new variant of the coronavirus that was recently detected in South Africa. Miller talks about the latest information regarding infections, vaccine efficacy, and how countries are responding to the news. ...