Honestly? Not a lot caught my eye this week. Maybe we were all heads down getting stuff done before a long weekend? You say MPPP, I say smoothing. Late yesterday afternoon the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services released Draft 2 guidance for the Medicare Prescription Payment Plan. I’ve heard Michael Ward from Alliance for…
A whirlwind of a week. I regrouped on Wednesday and got a run in and some pottery wheel time and then it all fell apart again (in a good way) on Thursday where I forgot to leave my desk for hours and hours. One of those “I love working” and forget time exists. So much…
It is rare for me to print things anymore; limited access to a giant corporate printer cuts down on the urge. But today I got the printer going, grabbed the highlighter and dug in. The paper? “Is the price right? Paying for value today to get more value tomorrow.” If I were a health policy…
It used to be that pharmaceutical manufacturers had to worry (mostly) about federal health policy. Every few years manage through a big piece of legislation from Congress and then the regulation on Medicare, Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act and any regulation that came out of the legislation. But over the past few years, the drug…
One of my resolutions for this year is to get outside for a good walk every day. Get some air, get some steps, listen to a podcast. A break from work. Unless the podcast on money in university sports gets the thoughts spiraling to work parallels. Yesterday I was listening to the New York Time’s…
Orange you glad? Florida got approval from the Food and Drug Administration to import drugs from Canada. Ho-hum. The “how” still has to be figured out and approved and that isn’t easy. Canada has about the population of California. It doesn’t want to supply the United States with drugs. It’s one of those ideas that…
Driving home (the message.) Yesterday President Biden drove up to the National Institutes of Health and gave a speech about drug prices. My main issue with it is the traffic caused by shutting down the beltway and all the roads around my neighborhood. Okay and I think that a lot of the inflation penalties for…
Yesterday, the Kaiser Family Foundation released survey results that showed that only 25% of adults over 65 knew about the Medicare prescription drug benefit (Part D) out-of-pocket cap starting in January 2024. Coincidentally, I also spent a chunk of yesterday explaining the $0 patient cost-sharing in catastrophic to two different groups yesterday. Both of whom…
Marching right past. Senator Bernie Sanders held up the head of the NIH hearings because he wanted to make sure march-in rights were part of the policy conversations on drug pricing. I can’t decide if march-in rights are like your 1st grade teacher asking for part of your salary because she was part of your…
Patient no more. A few weeks ago I wrote about how thanks to the HIV Hepatitis Policy Institute, the Diabetes Leadership Council and the Diabetes Patient Advocacy Coalition and their suit against the Department of Health and Human Services, accumulator programs were dealt a blow. They can only be used if it is for a branded…