Roses are red. Violets are blue. I love health policy, how about you?
Public Health Gap: This week a poll found that a quarter of Americans see healthcare access and affordability as their top public health concern and think it would be best solved on the federal level. Among Democrats, 32% had it as their top concern compared to Republican-leaning respondents (19%). I always want to ask a follow-up question, what does affordable mean to you?
Wonky Reading: Avalere released a paper that considers alternative approaches for valuing drugs with multiple indications in the Medicare negotiations (i.e. Ozempic/Wegovy). The way it stands now, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) weights the utilization of different indications for a drug with the associated price. But it could, instead, factor in prevalence in the Medicare population, clinical input on the importance of the drug and the indication relevance and/or unmet patient need.
Good Luck?: This week the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review (ICER), England’s National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), and Canada’s Drug Agency (CDA-AMC) said that there were forming joint effort to look at health economics and health technology assessments (HTA). I’m kind of curious how it will go. Okay, okay, I’m skeptical. But not in a cynical way. I just don’t know how you look at countries with such different values and ways of pricing treatments and say anything meaningful. The Brits have a totally different culture than we do in the U.S. when it comes to expectations of healthcare and then you get to the WAC, ASP, AMP, Best Price, 340B of it all. That being said, fifteen years ago I wondered why global and U.S. HEOR departments at pharma companies didn’t talk more so… I don’t disagree with the effort. Cautiously curious.
Listed: I do love a list. Top 10 longest ski runs in North America. Top 15 foods that Americans eat that Europeans think are gross. Less fun but Republican Ways and Means members created a list of Biden policies that could be upended to save money. Open argument about whether repealing counts as saving but still worth a look.
The Case of the Missing Data: Part D enrollment data for January is gone. I think maybe there was a problem with the data or maybe it has just fallen off in the void of pull it and see if anyone notices.
