The Host
Well being care was a recurring theme all through President Joe Biden’s 2023 State of the Union tackle on Capitol Hill this week. He took a victory lap on current accomplishments like capping prescription drug prices for seniors on Medicare. He urged Congress to do extra, together with making everlasting the boosted insurance coverage premium subsidies added to the Reasonably priced Care Act through the pandemic. And he sparred with Republicans within the viewers — who jeered and known as him a liar — over GOP proposals that will minimize Medicare and Social Safety.
In the meantime, abortion rights advocates and opponents are anxiously awaiting a federal court docket determination out of Texas that would lead to a nationwide ban on mifepristone, one among two medication utilized in medicine abortion.
This week’s panelists are Julie Rovner of KHN, Alice Miranda Ollstein of Politico, Rachel Cohrs of Stat, and Sarah Karlin-Smith of the Pink Sheet.
Among the many takeaways from this week’s episode:
- President Joe Biden’s State of the Union tackle emphasised current victories towards excessive well being care prices, like Medicare protection caps on insulin and out-of-pocket caps on prescription drug spending. Biden’s energetic, casual alternate with lawmakers over potential cuts to Medicare and Social Safety appeared to steal the present, although the political struggle over slicing prices in these entitlement applications is rooted in a key query: What constitutes a “minimize”?
- Biden’s requires bipartisanship to increase well being applications like pandemic-era subsidies for Reasonably priced Care Act well being plans are anticipated to conflict with conservative calls for to slash federal authorities spending. And final yr’s Senate fights exhibit that typically the opposition comes from inside the Democratic Social gathering.
- Whereas some abortion advocates praised Biden for vowing to veto a federal abortion ban, others felt he didn’t speak sufficient in regards to the looming challenges to abortion entry within the courts. A call is anticipated quickly in a Texas court docket case difficult the long run use of mifepristone. The Trump-appointed decide’s determination might ban the drug nationwide, that means it might be barred even in states the place abortion continues to be authorized.
- The FDA is on the heart of the abortion capsule case, which challenges its approval of the drug a long time in the past and will set a precedent for authorized challenges to the approval of different medication. In different FDA information, the company not too long ago modified coverage to permit homosexual males to donate blood; introduced new meals security management in response to the infant formulation disaster; and kicked again to Congress a query of how you can regulate CBD, or cannabidiol, merchandise.
- In drug pricing, the top-selling pharmaceutical, Humira, will quickly attain the top of its patent, which is able to supply a telling have a look at how competitors influences the value of biosimilars — and the issues that stay for lawmakers to resolve.
Additionally this week, Rovner interviews Kate Baicker of the College of Chicago a couple of new paper offering a doable center floor within the effort to ascertain common medical insurance protection within the U.S.
Plus, for “further credit score,” the panelists counsel well being coverage tales they learn this week they suppose you must learn, too:
Julie Rovner: The New York Occasions’ “Don’t Let Republican ‘Choose Consumers’ Thwart the Will of Voters,” by Stephen I. Vladeck
Alice Miranda Ollstein: Politico’s “Mpox Is Simmering South of the Border, Threatening a Resurgence,” by Carmen Paun
Sarah Karlin-Smith: KHN’s “Selections by CVS and Optum Panicked Hundreds of Their Sickest Sufferers,” by Arthur Allen
Rachel Cohrs: ProPublica’s “UnitedHealthcare Tried to Deny Protection to a Chronically Ailing Affected person. He Fought Again, Exposing the Insurer’s Inside Workings,” by David Armstrong, Patrick Rucker, and Maya Miller
Additionally talked about on this week’s podcast:
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