The Inflation Reduction Act, passed by Democrats in 2022, made several changes to Medicare’s drug benefit, known as Medicare Part D. All were aimed at lowering drug prices and drug costs for both seniors and the federal government. The most well-known policies cap annual out-of-pocket drug costs for seniors, limit their monthly insulin costs, and direct Medicare to negotiate drug prices.

The law also made changes to Medicare Part D that matter to insurers but aren’t well-known to the general public. Among them, insurers now must pay a much greater share of seniors’ catastrophic drug costs, which are out-of-pocket costs that exceed $2,000, starting next year. The federal government used to cover the vast majority of those costs.

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But despite spiking meth overdose rates and the Biden administration’s expressions of support for high-quality addiction treatment, contingency management has failed to gain traction. Instead, it has been held back by politics: namely, a longstanding $75 annual cap for contingency management services funded by select federal programs.

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STEMM funding by federal agencies has fueled the great success of U.S. science, advancing knowledge production and improving the human condition worldwide. Each of the major U.S. funding agencies — the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and the Department of Defense has a distinct mission, and in 2024 they will together distribute more than $90 billion dollars in research grants.

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The use of this term goes back as far as the late 1500s, when it referred to insanity. It’s an inaccurate, outdated, and stigmatizing term that I and others living with cognitive impairment want to see retired permanently. Not only is it offensive, but it actively holds back early diagnosis, effective care, and faster research progress towards new, life-changing treatments.

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WADA bases its policies on a prohibited list of banned or performance-enhancing substances. To be placed on the list, a substance must meet at least two of three criteria: it is performance-enhancing; harmful to health; or a violation of the spirit of sport. Sanctions for using a substance on the list are severe, ranging from months of ineligibility and loss of rankings and earnings to lifetime bans from sport.

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To encourage robust, good-faith discussion about issues raised in First Opinion essays, STAT publishes selected Letters to the Editor received in response to them. You can submit a Letter to the Editor here, or find the submission form at the end of any First Opinion essay.

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Researchers from the University of San Diego and the University of Pécs in Hungary found that semaglutide ordered from these illegal sites contained significantly more of the drug than labeled. One sample also contained signs of potential bacterial contamination during manufacturing.

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The zoonosis hypothesis proposes that SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, was naturally transmitted from an animal to one or more humans in a so-called wet market in Wuhan selling fresh produce, meat, fish, and live animals. The lab leak hypothesis posits that the virus was modified (possibly through gain of function maneuvers), or even created, in the Wuhan Institute for Virology (WIV) and somehow escaped the laboratory.

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The FDA has approved a cutting-edge treatment for a rare soft tissue cancer, STAT tells us. The therapy equips T cells, an important class of immune cell, to target synovial sarcomas, cancers that can form in muscles and ligaments. The drug is the first approved product by Adaptimmune, a biotech with operations split between Philadelphia and Oxford in the U.K.

Eli Lilly’s CEO says a shortage of its weight loss drug will end soon, Bloomberg notes. CEO David Ricks expects Zepbound to come off the FDA’s shortage list in the coming days. That announcement has already led to a sharp drop in share price for Hims & Hers Health, a telehealth company that sells a compounded or copycat version of a different weight loss drug, Wegovy.

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In a letter made public Friday, the board said that Wojcicki’s proposal failed to offer a premium to 23andMe’s current stock price, did not have committed financing from other investors, and came with other conditions it rejected. The letter also asked Wojcicki to withdraw her opposition to an alternative transaction so that the board can assess whether there is interest from other potential buyers.

“Our expectation after months of work was that you would submit a fully-financed, fully-diligenced, actionable proposal that is in the best interests of the non-affiliated shareholders,” the committee wrote.

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Good morning and happy Friday. We discuss a new innovative immunotherapy, and we take a look at some of the earnings highlights yesterday.

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During the Republican National Convention, Trump called Right to Try “a big deal.” He claimed it helps terminally ill patients “use our new space-age drugs,” suggested the law is “saving thousands and thousands of lives,” and indicated it was an accomplishment others had failed to achieve for more than half a century.

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This latest one is different. It involves the country’s biggest private health insurer, UnitedHealthcare, and its biggest hospital chain, HCA Healthcare. If they can’t strike a deal on prices by Sept. 1, 38 hospitals and their affiliated physician groups and surgery centers across four states — Texas, Colorado, South Carolina, and New Hampshire — would become out-of-network for UnitedHealthcare members.

“This very much seems like a battle of the giants, because United: huge, HCA: huge,” said Morgan Henderson, director of analytics and research at The Hilltop Institute, a research group at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. “This is going to be very interesting to see how this plays out.”

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It’s time for more answers about why women athletes — of all skill levels and in all sports — disproportionately experience this painful injury. Women are three to six times more likely than men to endure an ACL tear.

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Blood culture bottles are key in diagnosing sepsis, a deadly infection of the bloodstream caused by a number of different bacteria. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about half of U.S. labs get their bottles from a company known as BD, the supplier that is in shortage, meaning that the shortage could have big implications for patient care. Every hour that antibiotics are delayed in treating sepsis results in a 7.6% decrease in patient survival.

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Liquid biopsy technologies are maturing at a rapid pace. They are already being used as a precision medicine tool, helping clinicians match a patient’s cancer to targeted therapies. Additional uses are on the horizon. The Food and Drug Administration’s approval this week of a liquid biopsy test for colorectal cancer is the latest step forward in the effort to make this approach part of the existing toolbox to detect hidden cancer. Liquid biopsy is also demonstrating promise in monitoring how individuals are responding to treatment and in detecting cancer recurrence.

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The medicine, called Tecelra and developed by Adaptimmune Therapeutics, is what’s known as a T cell receptor therapy. The approach has similarities to the CAR-T therapies that have dramatically improved the treatment of some blood cancers, but it has tricks up its sleeve that allow it to target solid tumors, which CAR-Ts have struggled to fight. 

The Food and Drug Administration granted Tecelra, also known as afami-cel, accelerated approval for patients with synovial sarcomas, which can form in muscles and ligaments throughout the body, the company said Thursday night. The one-time treatment is the first authorized medicine from Adaptimmune, which has operations split between Philadelphia and Oxford in the U.K. 

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Private equity firms TowerBrook Capital Partners and Clayton, Dubilier & Rice are teaming up to buy R1, the companies said Thursday. TowerBrook, in a partnership with the Catholic hospital system Ascension, already owns 36% of R1 — which made TowerBrook and Ascension the company’s largest combined shareholder. TowerBrook and CD&R are buying the rest of the company for $14.30 per share in cash, valuing R1 at $8.9 billion.

The bidding war for R1 highlights private equity’s appetite for “revenue cycle management” companies, which run the medical billing, collections, patient registration, and other administrative services for hospitals and physician groups.

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We discuss all that and more in this week’s episode of “The Readout LOUD,” STAT’s biotech podcast. Andrew Joseph, our Europe correspondent, joins us to talk about his special report on the 40-year quest to develop the world’s first malaria vaccines.

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Okay, I know it’s unoriginal to express awe at the speed at which time passes, but like … how is it already August? Okay, instead I will recall Louise Glück’s “Matins.” (“You want to know how I spend my time?”) (“And soon the summer is ending, already / the leaves turning, always the sick trees / going first”) (Bye!!)

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