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The Republican and Democratic leaders of the Senate Finance Committee this week unveiled a sweeping proposal that seeks to decrease prescription drug costs for the Medicare and Medicaid applications. The invoice promptly drew opposition from the highly effective pharmaceutical trade. But each events appear set on making an attempt to move a drug worth invoice prematurely of the 2020 elections.
Meanwhile, the bipartisan leaders of the opposite Senate committee that oversees pharmaceuticals introduced that their invoice wouldn’t come to the Senate ground earlier than the chamber’s summer season recess, that means the earliest the complete Senate would take up any drug pricing points is that this fall.
This week’s panelists are Julie Rovner from Kaiser Health News, Paige Winfield Cunningham of The Washington Post, Rebecca Adams of CQ Roll Call and Alice Miranda Ollstein of Politico.
Among the takeaways from this week’s podcast:
As key drug pricing plans transfer by way of Congress, Democrats are caught with a tough actuality: passing modifications which may fulfill voters additionally offers President Donald Trump an enormous win on one among his marketing campaign points. Republicans, then again, really feel pressured to maneuver a invoice alongside as a result of a number of of the administration’s initiatives have cratered. Critics of Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley’s plan argue that though it’d maintain the price of present medicine decrease for a lot of sufferers, it does nothing to cease drugmakers from placing exorbitant costs on new medicine. Under stress generated by former late-night TV character Jon Stewart, Congress handed and despatched to Trump laws to replenish the fund that pays for 9/11 first responders who grew to become sick from publicity to poisonous substances. A decide’s determination to permit short-term medical health insurance plans that don’t meet ACA requirements once more focuses consideration on the truth that the president and his administration have nice leeway in decoding many provisions of the well being legislation. The decide famous that the ACA didn’t put any restrictions on the short-term plans however that the Obama administration had. Trump was free to vary that. Oklahoma’s swimsuit towards Johnson & Johnson, alleging it helped gas the opioid epidemic within the state, has garnered a lot consideration. But a fair bigger lawsuit is coming in September primarily based in Ohio. That swimsuit is being in comparison with an effort within the 1990s by a consortium of states that sued tobacco firms and received an enormous settlement.
Also, Rovner interviews KHN’s Jenny Gold, who wrote the newest KHN-NPR “Bill of the Month” characteristic in regards to the excessive value of kidney dialysis. If you’ve gotten an outrageous medical invoice you’d wish to share with us, you are able to do that here.
Plus, for further credit score, the panelists suggest their favourite well being coverage tales of the week they assume you must learn too:
Julie Rovner: The Los Angeles Times’ “Rising Health Insurance Deductibles Fuel Middle-Class Anger and Resentment,” by Noam Levey
Alice Miranda Ollstein: The New York Times’ “Neil Armstrong’s Death, and a Stormy, Secret $6 Million Settlement,” by Scott Shane and Sarah Kliff
Rebecca Adams: ProPublica’s “Health Insurers Make It Easy for Scammers to Steal Millions. Who Pays? You.” By Marshall Allen
Paige Winfield Cunningham: The New York Times’ “Politicians Tackle Surprise Bills, but Not the Biggest Source of Them: Ambulances,” by Sarah Kliff and Margot Sanger-Katz
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Kaiser Health News (KHN) is a nationwide well being coverage information service. It is an editorially impartial program of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation which isn’t affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.
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