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Home / Unlabelled / Biden wants to expand drug price negotiation, early puberty's mental health risks, & microplastic in blood vessels linked to problems

Biden wants to expand drug price negotiation, early puberty's mental health risks, & microplastic in blood vessels linked to problems

March 07, 2024
March 7, 2024
Reporter, Morning Rounds Writer
Good morning. Maybe I shouldn't be surprised, but I'm a bit stunned by the study saying where microplastics end up in our bodies.

politics

Biden will float  expanding Medicare drug price negotiation in tonight's State of the Union

President Biden wants to go bigger on Medicare's new drug price negotiation program. It hasn't gone into effect yet, but 20 drugs are currently on the list of prices Medicare can negotiate each year. Biden hopes to bump that number up to 50, and bring more drugs into the negotiation process sooner. He'll propose these and other changes in tonight's State of the Union address.

These policies have little chance of passage this year with a Republican-led House of Representatives, STAT's Rachel Cohrs notes, but they are part of a White House push to lower prescription drug costs and protect patients from surprise medical bills. Among other ideas: expanding the $2,000 annual cap on out-of-pocket drug costs and penalties for drug price hikes to apply to patients with insurance through their jobs, not just Medicare. Read more about other ideas and their chances.

business

Study: Nursing home owners can hide most profits 

Follow the money, a Watergate tipster famously said (at least in the movie). A new study does just that, discovering that some nursing homes shift nearly two-thirds of their profits off their books and into their owners' pockets in ways that make them harder to see. The end result is nursing homes look poorer than they really are, helping them make the case to Congress that the industry can't meet certain proposed quality standards or survive potential Medicare payment cuts. The practice also shields profits from legal settlements.

The study helps explain why facilities with slender and sometimes negative margins still aren't closing. Instead, private equity and other investors are buying them. "Something doesn't add up," David Grabowski of Harvard Medical School told STAT's Brittany Trang. "The real contribution of this paper is connecting those two dots." Two nursing home industry groups denied that hiding profits is common. Read more.

health

Microplastics detected in blood vessels are linked to higher risk of heart problems

Tiny pieces of plastics are everywhere, including inside our bodies. Micro- and nanoplastics have been found in the placenta, liver, and lungs, but what they're doing there and how they might affect health aren't known. A new NEJM study can't draw a direct line between cause and effect, but it can point to an association: People who had pieces of plastic inside the fatty plaques that build up in blood vessels were at a 4.5-fold higher risk of heart attacks, strokes, or death compared to people who had no plastic detected in their plaques.

The researchers also found that the amount of plastic pieces in plaques was correlated with levels of certain inflammatory markers. These are everyday plastics: polyethylene is found in plastic bags and bottles, while polyvinyl chloride is found in pipes, insulation, and medical devices.  STAT's Elaine Chen has more on how the study was done, and why microplastic contamination is expected to grow.

closer look

Puberty is coming earlier than ever for girls, carrying mental health risks
PrecociousPuberty_v3_Illustration_MollyFerguson_030524

Molly Ferguson for STAT

It's called precocious puberty, and it's happening more and earlier around the world, for reasons that aren't well understood. What is increasingly clear is the burden young girls carry: mental health challenges from hormonal fluctuations, bullying, unwanted sexual attention, and intense feelings of isolation. When an adolescent girl doesn't receive sex education and support from her school, health care providers, or family, she's often left feeling alone and trapped in a body she hardly recognizes.

"I didn't get to explain the educational part of puberty to her before it took place," one mother said. "We were stuck dealing with the changes and learning all at the same time." STAT's Alexa Lee talked to parents, researchers, and women who went through precocious puberty and explores some theories for why this trend is accelerating and which groups may be hardest hit. And it's not just girls. Read more.

health

Morehouse research team awarded $25 million to study cancer disparities

Yesterday, Morehouse School of Medicine announced that a team of its researchers were awarded $25 million from Cancer Research UK and the National Cancer Institute to address cancer disparities in populations of African ancestry, STAT's Deborah Balthazar tells us. The effort, led by a research group known as Team SAMBAI (Societal, Ancestry, Molecular, and Biological Analyses of Inequalities), seeks to understand the complex interactions between social determinants of health, environmental exposures, genetics, and tumor biology in breast cancer outcomes in Black women. 

Even though Black women have a lower incidence rate of breast cancer compared to white women, they are 41% more likely to die from aggressive forms of breast cancer. SAMBAI and four other global teams have been selected by the funding initiative Cancer Grand Challenges to tackle "cancer's toughest challenges," including areas that are under-investigated. Back in August 2023, Debbie wrote about a similar worldwide initiative focusing on the African Cancer Genome Registry headed by the Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center in Miami.

reproductive health

1 in 8 voters say keeping abortion legal is key 

About 1 in 8 U.S. voters say abortion is the most important issue in the coming presidential election, and they want to keep it legal, a new KFF Poll says. That's a swing from elections before the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, when opposition to abortion animated more voters. Today's poll reports that a broad swath of voters believe abortion is their key issuemore than 1 in 4 Black women voters, about a fifth of Democratic women, about a fifth of women living in states where abortion is banned, about a fifth of women planning to vote for President Biden, and about 1 in 6 women of reproductive age (18 to 49). Other findings:

  • Large majorities of Democrats, independents, and Republicans support access to abortion during pregnancy-related emergencies, including miscarriage. 
  • About two-thirds oppose making it a crime for health care providers to mail abortion pills to patients in states where abortion is prohibited.
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What we're reading

  • America's first IVF baby is fighting for the treatment that gave her life, Wall Street Journal

  • Ashish Jha: The CDC's new, relaxed Covid isolation guidance makes perfect sense, STAT
  • Senate panel advances bill to ban some Chinese biotechs, with Sen. Paul taking up industry's cause, STAT

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