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On the hot seat, feeling the Bern
Drug executives will soon have the chance to tell Congress why they’re suing Medicare over price negotiations when their companies sell drugs to all the other governments that negotiate prices, my colleague John Wilkerson reports.
Senate health committee Chair Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said he wants executives of companies that have sued to be among the witnesses at an upcoming hearing on drug prices. His office has started calling those folks to work on scheduling, but formal invitations have not gone out yet.
“These companies make significant profits in countries all over the world where prices are negotiated,” Sanders told my colleague John Wilkerson in a hallway interview. “Why do they think it’s okay to have Americans pay the highest prices in the world?”
Bertagnolli swings through cloture
The Senate voted 59-32 to invoke cloture on Monica Bertagnolli’s nomination to be director of the National Institutes of Health. That ends debate on her nomination and sets the oncologist up for one last vote, to confirm her officially and finally bring to a close a monthslong process to put a permanent director at the top of the agency, nearly two years after Francis Collins retired from the role.
The National Cancer Institute director found support from a number of Republicans who joined Democrats to largely applaud her record as a physician and health official. Still, a portion of Republican senators opposed her confirmation, with some citing concerns over NIH’s coronavirus research and other politicized care like gender-affirming procedures. More on her, from me, here.
A gas station-filled Christmas
The White House’s tiny-but-mighty regulatory office is about to have a rough holiday season. That office, known as OIRA, has slated more than 40 meetings from now until early January to discuss the FDA’s two recent proposals to ban menthol flavored cigarettes and flavored cigars, my colleague Nick Florko reports.
The meetings are yet another example of the intensifying fight over the future of brands like Newport and Black & Mild. As Nick reported last month, tobacco companies have spent the last several months trying everything to drum up opposition to the proposal, including shopping a letter to members of Congress alleging the policy would exacerbate racial inequity.
This strategy of swarming the White House with meetings has had a major impact before: When the FDA tried to ban flavored vapes during the Obama administration, tobacco companies and their allies did similar and successfully killed the policy.
The lion’s share of the meetings this time around, however, aren’t from tobacco companies at all. They’re from the gas stations and convenience stores that sell these products. The New England and Texas trade groups for convenience stores and gas stations are each meeting with the White House, as is the “Oregon Neighborhood Store Association.” So too are the National Association of Convenience Stores and the National Convenience Distributors – which despite their very similar names are actually separate groups. The Energy Marketers of America have their own meeting on the books too. The Society of Independent Gasoline Marketers of America and the National Association of Truck Stop Operators, however, have apparently agreed to have a joint meeting: They’ll be chatting with the White House today at 10:30 a.m.
CMS weighs capping Medicare Advantage broker pay
Medicare wants to rein in spending on lavish broker bonuses for MA sign-ups. But even with more guardrails in place there are still plenty of incentives to move people into MA plans, STAT’s Bob Herman writes.
If the rule is finalized, brokers won’t be able to accept more than $632 for each new Medicare-eligible person they enroll in an MA plan. That’s a little more than the base compensation they can accept right now, but Bob writes that big insurers have found other ways to lob big incentives at brokers. Of course, many smaller health plans have complained the practice tilts the scales in favor of the giants.
The new definition of broker compensation would crack down on those extra incentives. But it likely won’t stop brokers from increasingly placing people into MA plans over traditional Medicare, he writes. More from Bob.
Two secretaries, two drug pricing attacks
Two very different health secretaries took the stage Monday to defend their presidents’ plans — failed and not — to bring down high drug costs. Here’s my recap of the showdown between Xavier Becerra and former secretary Alex Azar.
Azar said Democrats’ Medicare negotiation plan would make the U.S. like the “socialist” European countries, delay new drug launches and could even unintentionally drive up copays. But no, if you were thinking the Trump favored nations plan — tying American Part B prices to those countries’ prices — is comparable, Azar says it’s not. That plan would create a system “where they wouldn’t be willing to give away the store to the Europeans because they have to pay a penalty here in the U.S. on that trade off,” he argued.
Becerra, of course, fought back. He said no one had to participate in the plan, they just would lose access to 65 million Medicare patients and be financially penalized. And so far, everyone is at the table with HHS, even if they are suing too. Also, we can all agree that it was a good call by Trump officials to scrap an original Warp Speed name. Read more.
Baker’s back in health
Former Massachusetts governor and current college sports president Charlie Baker has gotten a second job. UnitedHealth Group announced Friday that the former health official and industry executive has joined its board of executives, effective immediately.
Baker served two terms as Massachusetts governor, where he was a relatively moderate Republican and critic of President Trump. Prior to that, he was CEO of Harvard Pilgrim Health Care and worked for the state’s HHS. Since this March though, he has led the National Collegiate Athletics Association.
Baker joins the UnitedHealth board as the company rebrands a controversial care management arm and shakes up its Optum division amid sinking profits.
What we’re reading
Democrats push government to police algorithms in Medicare Advantage, STAT
Abortion debate is affecting access to drug used after miscarriages, The Washington Post
As extreme heat soars, laws to protect outdoor workers are bubbling up — and facing resistance, STAT
As transgender ‘refugees’ flock to New Mexico, waitlists grow, KFF Health News