Gregg's Top Three Health Policy Articles

Health policy impacts everyone, but it can be hard to know what is important. If you can only read three things about health policy this week, I suggest...

The Top Three...

AP: Biden Launches New Push To Limit Health Care Costs, Hoping To Show He Can Save Money For Families President Joe Biden on Friday plans to roll out a new set of initiatives to reduce health care costs: a crackdown on scam insurance plans, new guidance to prevent surprise medical bills and an effort to reduce medical debt tied to credit cards. Biden’s remarks would build on previous initiatives to limit health care costs, with the Department of Health and Human Services releasing new estimates showing 18.7 million older adults and other Medicare beneficiaries will save an estimated $400 per year in prescription drug costs in 2025 because of the president placing a cap on out-of-pocket spending as part of last year’s Inflation Reduction Act. (Boak, 7/7)

Roll Call: Expected Alzheimer’s Drug Approval Signals New Era In Treatment The Food and Drug Administration’s expected approval of Biogen and Eisai’s Alzheimer’s drug Leqembi, or lecanemab, is set to broaden access and accelerate a new class of treatments for the degenerative disease. A number of patient advocacy groups are eagerly awaiting the decision, which would trigger broader access under Medicare. But the drug still faces coverage restrictions, along with critics who don’t believe it should be on the market at all. (Clason, 7/6)

AP: Maternal Deaths In The US More Than Doubled Over Two Decades. Black Mothers Died At The Highest Rate  “It’s a call to action to all of us to understand the root causes — to understand that some of it is about health care and access to health care, but a lot of it is about structural racism and the policies and procedures and things that we have in place that may keep people from being healthy,” said Dr. Allison Bryant, one of the study’s authors and a senior medical director for health equity at Mass General Brigham. (Ungar, 7/3)

For a Deeper Dive...

The New York Times: People With Private Medicare Plans Can’t Find Psychiatrists, Study Shows People with private Medicare coverage may not be getting the mental health services they need because they cannot find a psychiatrist within their plan’s network, according to a new study. More than half of the counties the researchers studied did not have a single psychiatrist participating in a Medicare Advantage plan, the private-sector counterpart to traditional Medicare. Some 30 million people, just over half of all participants in the federal program, are enrolled in these private plans. (Abelson, 7/5)

Roll Call: Senate Releases Bipartisan Draft Of Emergency Preparedness Bill  The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee on Monday released a bipartisan draft of a bill to reauthorize a wide-ranging emergency preparedness law, although leaders in both parties are also seeking feedback on two outstanding legislative proposals. Both chambers are contending with a Sept. 30 deadline to reauthorize the law. Negotiations in the House Energy and Commerce Committee are apparently deadlocked over a rift about prescription drug shortages. The Senate draft includes provisions to launch pilot programs for data sharing and state medical stockpiles, improve wastewater detection capabilities and boost research on treatments for viral pathogens, among other things. (Clason, 7/3)

NPR: July Has Already Seen 11 Mass Shootings. The Emotional Scars Won't Heal Easily These are among the 11 mass shootings — defined as acts of gun violence injuring or killing at least four people — that have occurred this month, and 346 mass shootings since the beginning of the year, according to the Gun Violence Archive. Mass shootings have been rising in recent years, as have other kinds of gun violence, making firearms a major public health issue. This year alone, more than 21,000 people have died due to gun violence. Of those deaths, 12,210 were suicides. (Chatterjee, 7/4)

Axios: Medicaid Payment Proposal For Health Aides Rankles Home Health Companies Home health agencies say they could be driven out of business by a Biden administration proposal that would require them to spend the majority of their Medicaid dollars on higher pay for direct care workers. The proposal aims to improve stability in the home- and community-based care workforce, which is shrinking as the demand for services increases. (Goldman, 7/5)

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A few years ago I started a weekly e-mail for friends and colleagues who want to keep up on major federal health policy developments but did not have time to plod through all the minutiae--they were busy doing important things like running organizations and taking care of patients! Much to my surprise, it became pretty popular. I have now converted to a weekly newsletter format so you can manage your own subscription preferences and forward to others that might be interested.

These summaries represent my judgement on health policy issues that may not on the front pages, but are relevant to clinicians, administrators, and educators. I monitor many news sources and clipping services to identify content for this newsletter and I try hard to be as factual, balanced, and non-partisan as possible. While the articles are written by others (with credit attributed), the choice of what to include is entirely mine. If you are interested in receiving a daily summary of health policy news, you might consider signing up for the KHN Morning Briefing. If you enjoy podcasts, I suggest What the Health? and Tradeoffs.

-Gregg S. Margolis, PhD