drug pricing
Can six drugs be one?
When Medicare came up with the first 10 drugs for price negotiation, it counted six of Novo Nordisk's products as a single drug because they all contain the same active ingredient: insulin aspart.
A federal appeals court is considering a case over whether judges are allowed to second guess Medicare when it lumps together multiple drugs.
This case hasn't gotten much attention compared to the constitutional challenges to Medicare drug price negotiation. That's understandable. But the outcome of the lawsuit could have a big impact on the government's ability to control Medicare drug spending. That's especially true in the short term if Medicare decides to cover weight-loss drugs, which for now it has declined to do. But that could change.
Read my rundown of the oral arguments, judges' questions, and what can be gleaned from them.
drug tariffs
The luck of the Irish may run out
STAT's European correspondent Andrew Joseph traveled to Dublin and County Cork, Ireland, to hear about what pharmaceutical tariffs would mean for both the Irish and Americans.
President Trump said he plans to levy tariffs on pharmaceuticals, and he has singled out Ireland, which is a major hub for big pharmaceutical companies. The U.S. trade imbalance with Ireland is largely driven by pharmaceutical exports, which Trump sees as a particular injustice. As a result, the industry is now caught in his crosshairs, anxiously awaiting details from the administration.
The tariffs are meant to return drug manufacturing to the United States, but experts say that's unlikely, at least anytime soon. Instead, they predict increased costs on medicines in the U.S. and the possibility of drug shortages.
autism research
RFK Jr.'s shifting timeline to figure out autism
After promising to find the cause of autism by September, Kennedy clarified the timing.
"I think we'll have some preliminary answers in six months, but we — it'll take us probably a year from then before we can have definitive answers because a lot of these studies will not go out until the end of the summer," Kennedy told Fox News host Sean Hannity on Friday.
Kennedy said HHS will "farm the studies out to 15 premier research groups." Those groups will study food additives, pesticides, drugs and, yes, vaccines.
When STAT's Isabella Cueto called nearly two dozen prominent voices from mainstream autism research and the anti-vaccine world, she couldn't find any who had yet been contacted about doing the studies.
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