Gregg's Top Three Health Policy Articles

If you can only read three things about health policy this week, I suggest...

The Top Three...

NBC News: U.S. Ranks Last In Health Care Compared With Nine Other High-Income Countries, Report Finds The health system in the U.S. is failing, a startling new report finds. The U.S. ranks as the worst performer among 10 developed nations in critical areas of health care, including preventing deaths, access (mainly because of high cost) and guaranteeing quality treatment for everyone, regardless of gender, income or geographic location, according to the report, published Thursday by The Commonwealth Fund, an independent research group. (Lovelace Jr., 9/19)

Healthcare Dive: Federal Trade Commission sues major pharmacy benefit managers.  The Federal Trade Commission has sued Express Scripts, Caremark and Optum Rx, the three largest pharmacy benefit managers in the U.S., over their alleged role in inflating the cost of insulin. The agency’s complaint filed Friday alleges CVS’ Caremark, Cigna’s Express Scripts and UnitedHealth’s Optum Rx steered patients toward higher priced insulin to bring in larger rebates from pharmaceutical manufacturers. As a result, the list price of insulin rose and patients who weren’t eligible for discounted drugs faced higher costs, while the PBMs raked in billions of dollars in rebates, the FTC alleges. (Pifer, 9/20)

NPR: U.S. Sees A Sudden And Unexpected Drop In Fatal Overdoses For the first time in decades, public health data shows a sudden and hopeful drop in drug overdose deaths across the U.S. "This is exciting," said Dr. Nora Volkow, head of the National Institute On Drug Abuse [NIDA], the federal laboratory charged with studying addiction. "This looks real. This looks very, very real." National surveys compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention already show an unprecedented decline in drug deaths of roughly 10.6 percent. That's a huge reversal from recent years when fatal overdoses regularly increased by double-digit percentages. (Mann, 9/18)

For a Deeper Dive...

Roll Call: House, Senate Democrats Renew Health Care Subsidies Push House and Senate Democrats are pushing leadership to quickly pass legislation to permanently expand subsidies on the health care exchanges — ideally by the end of the year. Forty-one Senate Democrats, led by New Hampshire Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, and 154 House Democrats, led by Lauren Underwood of Illinois, sent a letter to leadership Wednesday morning urging their respective chambers to move “as soon as possible.” (Cohen, 9/18)

Modern Healthcare: CDC Diagnostic Recommendations Aim To Reduce Errors, Improve Care Works The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is launching a program to help hospitals reduce diagnostic errors and provide more safe, accurate patient care, the agency announced Tuesday. Missed, delayed or wrong diagnoses can occur due to a variety of factors, including communication breakdowns and technological issues, said Dr. Preeta Kutty, deputy associate director for science in the division of healthcare quality promotion at the CDC. (Devereaux, 9/17)

The Hill: Robert F. Kennedy Says He's Helping Trump Pick FDA, NIH, CDC Leaders Former independent presidential candidate and antivaccine advocate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said that former President Trump wants him to choose leaders for key public health agencies if he wins the election in November. Kennedy told conservative commentator Tucker Carlson that under a second Trump term, he would be responsible for eliminating “corrupt influences” from agencies, Mediaite first reported. (Ventura, 9/18)

Bloomberg: Novo Says Ozempic ‘Very Likely’ Target For Next US Price Cut Ozempic, the blockbuster diabetes shot made by Novo Nordisk A/S, is “very likely” to be one of the next drugs targeted for a price cut in bargaining with the US government’s Medicare program, a company executive said. The Inflation Reduction Act, which allows the US to directly negotiate drug prices with manufacturers for the first time, last month slashed the cost of 10 of the world’s biggest medicines by 38% to 79% for 2026. (Smith and Muller, 9/17)

Axios: Hill GOP Sets Sights On Scrapping Drug Price Talks The Trump campaign's populist rhetoric on drug pricing is colliding with more traditional GOP concerns in Congress about heavy-handed government squelching pharmaceutical innovation. The tension surfaced this week when multiple high-ranking Republicans told Axios they want to repeal the Inflation Reduction Act's Medicare drug price negotiations next year if they prevail in the elections. (Sullivan, 9/17)

For the Visual Among Us...

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