Peter Wehrwein

It is a statistical model not actual data. But calculations by Brown University School of Public Health and Microsoft researchers show that 318,000 of the 641,305 deaths from COVID-19 between Jan. 1, 2021, and April 30, 2022, might have been prevented if vaccination coverage among U.S. adults had reached 100%.

Findings reported in this month’s Health Affairs show high use of telehealth in disadvantaged neighborhoods among beneficiaries after Medicare restrictions on telehealth were waived.

Findings from phase 2 trials reported in Journal of Clinical Oncology seed hopes that winnowing out certain types of T cells from peripheral blood stem-cell transplants will make chronic graft-versus-host disease less common. Randomized trials are underway to test the proposition.

Healthcare insurance in the U.S. can be spotty, even with expansion of coverage under the Affordable Care Act. One of the remaining problem areas is coverage for people who are leaving prison or jail.

Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, but drug price trends are in the way you crunch the numbers.

At the 2022 Asembia Specialty Pharmacy Summit, healthcare policy experts at Avalere shared insights into the politics of a less ambitious Build Back Better bill and the healthcare provisions it might include. If a "skinny bill" doesn't get passed, the healthcare action of the Biden administration might shift to CMS Innovation Center and payment models, including a successor to the Oncology Care Model, they said.

Ryan Urgo, Managing Director, Health Policy at Avalere addressed the Biden administration’s healthcare priorities and if the Build Back Better legislation will include provisions that deal with drug prices? Urgo spoke at this year's annual Asembia Specialty Pharmacy Summit in Las Vegas on the subject, as well.

Many patients don’t fill their prescriptions because of the cost. TailorMed is a software platform that connects patients to possible sources of financial assistance.

In a session on ecommerce and pharmacy, Amazon Pharmacy executives said they want to make the online pharmacy experience easy to navigate and pricing transparent.

The former FDA commissioner and Asembia keynote speaker was sanguine about the future course of the COVID-19 pandemic and biosimilars. He is concerned, though, that the CMS Aduhelm coverage decision set a bad precedent.

IQVIA’s Lucas Greenwalt says manufacturers need to provide patient assistance if they want their new brands to meet sales goals as payers devise strategies to cope with cost and the increasing number of ultra-expensive medications skyrockets.

MMIT’s Jayne Hornung says that coverage of prescription digital therapeutics is “very slim” right now but that would likely change with Medicare coverage. And legislation to do just that has been introduced in the House and Senate.

The approval includes a REMS program because some patients experience a worrying drop in left ventricular ejection fraction.

About 6,000 attendees are expected for the meeting next week that will also have Adam Fein and Doug Long as featured speakers.

Research of the real-world effect of asthma interventions among Black and Latino patients is limited. Findings reported in the New England Journal of Medicine will help fill that void.

Patient and patient advocate Beth Waldron used her social media platform to criticize CVS Caremark’s removal of Eliquis (apixaban) from its national formulary. CVS took notice.

Findings published in the April issue of Health Affairs show a huge jump in telehealth visits, but the researchers also detected that a pattern that suggests that people with conditions such as schizophrenia did not make the switch to telehealth as readily as people with anxiety and some other disorders.

“The most remarkable change in patterns of health during the (past) century has been the largely successful conquest of infectious diseases,” wrote Allan Brandt, Harvard medical historian, in “No Magic Bullet: A Social History of Venereal Disease in the United States Since 1880."

A new kind of specialist is needed at academic medical centers to cope with public health emergencies such as the COVID-19 pandemic: physician-public health practitioners.

Enrollment in Affordable Care Act marketplace plans has reached record levels, and the Biden administration is using those numbers to push for continuation of enhanced subsidies that have lowered premiums for the plans.

The Access to Prescription Digital Therapeutics Act, introduced in March, has the backing of the Academy of Managed Care Pharmacy.

Pear Therapeutics’ Yuri Maricich says the company hasn’t “put a stake in the ground” on the question but says standardizations is important.

A COVID-19 risk score helped steer outreach efforts to people who weren’t getting vaccinated by the pharmacy chain earlier in the pandemic.

Real-world studies are increasing as real-world data for new drugs for cancer and autoimmune disease have “matured,” says Laura E. Happe, Pharm.D., M.P.H., the editor-in-chief of Journal of Managed Care and Specialty Pharmacy.

“Popping a pill” makes cancer treatment more convenient, but research presented at the AMCP annual meetings shows that almost half of cancer patients on oral therapies are nonadherent. Oral administration typically moves a drug to the pharmacy benefit, which can mean high out-of-pocket costs and, in turn, nonadherence.

Using a claims database, researchers found a steady increase in the prevalence of alopecia areata from 2016 to 2019 among those with employer-based health insurance. They also found a higher prevalence and incidence rate among women than among men.

Dupixent (dupilumab) ushered in a new era and a growing number of treatment options has brought awareness to the condition. But the panelists also discussed problems with step therapy, delays and denials of treatment and the lack of a “gold standard” test for diagnosis.

Kaiser Family Foundation researcher found that 26% of those with an insulin prescription who have bought health insurance coverage in the individual market would benefit from a cap of $35 on monthly out-of-pocket costs for insulin.

Summary: In this second installment of his interview with Managed Healthcare Executive®, Gorevic discusses ambitious goals for increasing per-participant, per-month revenues to $68.

The longtime CEO of Teladoc discusses the company's deal with Amazon and providing telehealth services via Alexa in this first part of a three-part article series.