| | | |   | Hey again, D.C. Diagnosis readers! It’s your old author, Nick Florko, filling in for Rachel today. It’s great to be back here. And I’m looking forward to seeing lots of you at this week’s in-person event on rare diseases. If you haven’t signed up yet, there’s still time. We’ve got a great edition of D.C. Diagnosis today, chock full of reporting from me and my new colleague, Sarah Owermohle. I’ll be anchoring next week’s Diagnosis too, so send me some tips for old times' sake! I’m at nicholas.florko@statnews.com. | | | An investigation into the splashiest drug pricing deal of the decade  Just a few years ago, public health officials, drug pricing experts, and even a U.S. senator were singing the praises of a brand new type of drug pricing deal, dubbed the “Netflix model,” that was supposed to help states eliminate Hepatitis C without busting their budgets.
But in a new investigation for STAT, I reveal that both of the states that penned “Netflix deals” are nowhere near achieving their overarching goals. In fact, things are going particularly south for Washington state, where Medicaid prescribing rates for these drugs are lower now than before the deal with drugmaker Abbvie.
Washington’s struggles, along with Louisiana’s, are particularly relevant now as the White House readies its own similar Hepatitis C elimination plan. Check out my story here, which is chock full of data and scoopy details about the White House’s yet-to-be-announced initiative. | Lawmakers hammering out a deal to keep FDA running With weeks left before pink slips and potential approval delays, lawmakers are hoping to nail down an agreement this week to reauthorize FDA’s power to collect billions of dollars of user fees, my colleague Sarah Owermohle reports.
Your regular DCD author Rachel Cohrs scooped Friday that Democrats made a counteroffer to Republicans including Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), who in July demanded that the user fee legislation be stripped of other, potentially expensive, health care legislation.
Their offer hinged in part on adding in a pandemic preparedness measure led by Burr and Senate HELP Chair Patty Murray (D-Wash.), in exchange for at least one other non-FDA measure, a bipartisan House bill to improve mental health care access that’d establish a new office in the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.
At least for now, lawmakers have tabled a proposal to reform the overhaul diagnostic test regulation through a bill dubbed the VALID Act, two lobbyists and an advocacy source told Rachel on Monday.
It’s not clear yet whether Burr’s in, but the FDA agreement could hitch a ride on a government funding package this month, before the looming budget deadline, or it could pass on its own with a bipartisan deal. The current offer would extend FDA’s authorities for five years. | Biden: It’s time to ‘supercharge’ the Cancer Moonshot The president on Monday sought to reenergize a yearslong personal mission to defeat cancer, wrapping the longtime Cancer Moonshot goal in a message of national unity and bipartisanship, Sarah writes. He already rebooted the effort earlier this year, taking it from its first mandate to accelerate cancer research, at the tail-end of the Obama presidency, to a new goal of curbing cases and slashing deaths over the next decade.
However that renewed mission hasn’t been met with new funding. The Moonshot is in the sixth year of a $1.8 billion allotment from Congress, with no fresh budget in sight. “I'll use my authorities as President to increase funding, break log jams and speed breakthroughs,” he pledged.
It’s unclear how he could increase funding, what with Congress deadlocked on other budgetary goals, but that’s where the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health and its new director, Renee Wegrzyn, may come into the picture. Biden on Monday highlighted Wegrzyn, a veteran of the Pentagon agency ARPA-H is molded after, saying she’ll “bring the legendary DARPA attitude and culture bolus and risk-taking to ARPA-H to fill a critical need.”
Worth noting: ARPA-H has $1 billion in initial funding, a fraction of the $6.5 billion Biden requested to get the agency off the ground. Besides cancer, advocates want to see ARPA-H tackle Alzheimer’s disease and other health challenges like outcomes disparities. | America’s seniors deserve faster access to innovative medical technologies For millions of Medicare beneficiaries, outdated coverage processes can delay access to innovative medical technologies. Thankfully, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) can drastically improve timely access to new, groundbreaking and proven medical therapies by including an accelerated coverage pathway in the upcoming Transitional Coverage for Emerging Technologies (TCET) rule. Learn more about how Congress and CMS can accelerate coverage of innovative medical devices. | All about inflation penalties Thanks to Democrats’ signature drug pricing law, drug makers will have to start paying back Medicare for price hikes they take on their medicines, starting next year. No one knows, truly, how that policy change will impact our country’s mind bogglingly complex drug pricing system. But experts certainly are trying to make educated guesses.
In the last week alone, there was a flood of interesting new research on just this question. Here’s what caught out eye: -
West Health has a new analysis predicting that these penalties, which drug makers only have to pay to Medicare, will actually help lower employers’ drug costs as well. The group predicts the bill will save employers and their employees a whopping $31.5 billion from 2023 to 2031, the lion’s share of which comes from lower employer premiums. -
In not so good news, the Congressional Budget Office released its final predictions on how the new law will impact federal spending. The group now says the inflation penalties will only generate $6.8 billion in revenue for the government after lawmakers had to scrap a policy that would have also required drug makers to pay back price hikes for drugs sold in the commercial market. The CBO previously estimated that provision would generate more than $38 billion in revenue. -
Tradeoffs is out with a fascinating new podcast looking at potential loopholes in the rebate policy. | What we're reading - Experts urge Medicare to overhaul secretive panel that helps determine doctors’ pay, STAT
- Johnson & Johnson and a new war on consumer protection, The New Yorker
- Home Depot, other employers appeal Blue Cross Blue Shield antitrust settlement, STAT
- The sucky history of the breast pump, Smithsonian Magazine
- In Michigan, voters are newly fired up over abortion, The 19th
| Thanks for reading! More Thursday,  | | | |
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