BECERRA AND THE BUDGET
In budget debate, Alzheimer's drugs are top of mind
Senators kicked off months of 2024 budget discussion yesterday with two hearings that saw health secretary Xavier Becerra defending everything from Medicare's plans to negotiate drug prices to his agency's work to place migrant children and his efforts to insure Americans after the Medicaid freeze ends in April.
But members of both caucuses in the Senate Finance committee repeatedly returned to one topic in particular: How to speed Alzheimer's disease treatments to market, and how to pay for them. The debate comes almost three months after Medicare opted to add the second FDA-approved Alzheimer's drug, Eisai's Leqembi, to a limited coverage plan started with Biogen's pricey drug Aduhelm. Both were approved through the accelerated pathway, which Medicare says hasn't given them enough data to prove the drugs' benefits.
While Democrats hedged on complaints about the decision, noting more data was important, Republicans attempted to bridge seniors' limited access to the new drugs to the Biden administration's overall approach to lower costs through plans for Medicare to negotiate prices. On that front, Becerra said officials are working hard to meet the September deadline for the first 10 targets, or "beat it," but: "We've never done this before." Read more from Sarah here.
Hours later, in a Senate appropriations subcommittee hearing, Republicans also questioned the Medicare decision, with Becerra defending the agency: "Even [the] FDA is asking the drug manufacturer to continue to provide evidence of the efficacy of the drug," he said.
HEALTH TECH
Medicare payment for ... virtual reality headsets?
For many health tech companies, carving out a spot in Medicare's payment system is the holy grail of achievements in Washington. And AppliedVR, a company working on chronic pain, just paved the way for a new generation of digital therapeutics and earned itself a Medicare payment code, my colleague Lizzy Lawrence reports.
The device, which consists of a virtual reality headset and software to guide patients through pain management exercises, is categorized as "durable medical equipment." The software was closely tied to the hardware, which gave the company a regulatory advantage compared with companies trying to get coverage for apps alone. Read more about the decision's implications for other innovative companies, too.
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