| |   | Hello and happy Thursday, D.C. Diagnosis readers! I’m feeling a little earnest this morning, as this week is my two-year STAT-iversary. It’s a dream come true to be able to write about nerdy health care policy and pop into your inbox every week. As always, if you have any tips or ideas for coverage in year three, give me a shout at rachel.cohrs@statnews.com. | | | Medicare lays out a timeline for its drug price negotiation Attention, drug pricing wonks: Medicare officials unveiled a detailed plan for implementing its brand new Medicare drug price negotiation program. We’re going to have a lot more information about how the program will be set up this spring, according to the timeline. And HHS is actually seeking more public input than they’re legally required to.
The process will likely be fraught, as the pharmaceutical industry will be closely watching the rollout for any opportunity to file lawsuits challenging either the process or the substance of the negotiation program. I’ve got a post up with all the highlights. | A new frontier for CAR T Medicare officials have taken a step toward making a cutting-edge cancer treatment called CAR-T cell therapy available in physicians’ offices, my colleague John Wilkerson spotted. It would be a big change, as the cancer treatment is almost always administered by hospitals. It’s a complex procedure with a lot of serious side effects that must be closely monitored. The tweak could help physicians prepare in case CAR-T is approved for more common cancers. Learn more about the fix for Medicare’s billing glitch and what it means for patients in John’s new story. | Will America ever have a reckoning over public health?  WIN MCNAMEE/GETTY IMAGES After 9/11, Congress created an entirely new government agency to address the threat of terrorism, and Americans are still taking off their shoes in airports more than 20 years later. After a pandemic that killed more than 1 million people in the United States alone, very little about the federal government has changed at all, and it may not for a long time, according to experts and reform advocates across the political spectrum. Congress has a deadline in September to reauthorize the Pandemic and All Hazards Preparedness Act, which could provide a chance for some ambitious public health reform. Some early think tank efforts at building momentum for reforms have sputtered out, but others are still working to find ideas and compromise. Read more about where things stand, and whether America can truly break its cycle of apathy over public health preparedness. | You’re invited to STAT’s JPM Recap On Jan. 13, get a full rundown of the deals, data, and scuttlebutt from the STAT reporters who attended the conference, and come away with insights you won’t get anywhere else. Sign up here. | Should we be talking about every new variant? It’s inevitable — every so often there’s a new buzz about a variant of Covid-19 that’s more infectious than the last. My esteemed colleague Helen Branswell writes this morning about whether it’s worth having a breathless dialogue about every new variant at all. If there truly is a super-variant that could evade immune system protections in a fundamentally new way, that could be a different story. But some experts think ominous coverage of every new variant may not be appropriate or helpful. Not every expert agrees, and some believe that having the public aware of how the virus is evolving could prompt more people to get booster shots. Read Helen’s full breakdown of the debate. | A wrap on #JPM23 A whirlwind week at the JPM Healthcare Conference wraps today, and STAT reporters have been all over the news. Here are a few highlights for those who didn’t brave the nasty weather to get to San Francisco: | What we're reading -
HHS will decide how to resolve $1 billion in payments for 340B hospitals, STAT -
Opinion: For the nation’s health, break up the Food and Drug Administration, The Washington Post -
Lawmakers again urge the Biden administration to use federal law to widen access to a cancer drug, STAT -
Florida Democrat to vote for China select committee, The Hill | Thanks for reading! More next week,  | | | |
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