medical devices
Some breakthrough devices are kinda meh
The FDA's breakthrough device program is meeting its promise to industry of faster reviews for novel devices, but it's not clear that benefits are breaking through to patients, Katie Palmer writes.
At issue is whether many medical devices with the breakthrough designation are better than existing treatments. Another problem is that some devices have been allowed on the market without clinical testing because they're similar to existing products, even though breakthrough devices are supposed to treat unmet needs.
Katie was ahead of the curve on this one. Her story is based on a paper published Monday in JAMA Internal Medicine, but she and Mario Aguilar came to a similar conclusion three years ago after their own investigation. Read more for details of what researchers found.
research funding
French-poached scientists
The French are among the most aggressive headhunters of American scientists who have been left out to dry by Trump administration firings and funding cuts, reports STAT European Correspondent Andrew Joseph.
But France and other European countries haven't been funding science all that well either, and underpaid scientists in those countries bristle at efforts to woo American researchers.
Andrew provides some perspective. The European Union has put up an additional 500 million euros to make the region "a magnet for researchers." The Trump administration has called for cutting the $47 billion budget of the NIH by 40%.
Read more.
politics
Bracing for midterms
Democrats with health and science backgrounds have launched political campaigns in 125 races, according to a memo from the Democratic group 314 Action.
Daniel Payne reports that 25 of those candidates are running in federal and statewide races, many of them competitive. The rest are running in down-ballot races.
The group argues that Republicans' Medicaid funding cuts offer these Democrats an advantage in the next election.
fraud
Stealing from Medicare, allegedly
HHS and the Justice Department criminally charged 324 people, many of them medical professionals, in health care fraud schemes of more than $14.6 billion, Chelsea Cirruzzo reports. That includes a massive federal investigation, dubbed Operation Gold Rush, first reported on by the Washington Post last year.
The charges include a foreign criminal organization accused of using stolen identities to bill Medicare $10.6 billion in fraudulent claims for catheters and other devices.
The Trump administration has made a big deal of fighting fraud. While $14.6 billion is a lot of money, it pales in comparison to the more than $1 trillion in cuts to federal health care spending in Republicans' tax bill that they say comes from cutting waste, fraud, and abuse.
No comments