DRUG PRICING
Trump delays decision on drug price negotiation loophole
For months, Trump has publicly called on drugmakers to lower their prices for Americans. Now, the Trump administration is delaying a proposal to crack down on a loophole that allows drugmakers to avoid Medicare price negotiation, STAT's John Wilkerson reports.
Earlier this year, the administration took an interest in plugging a supposed-loophole in the drug negotiation program that allows drugmakers to avoid price negotiations by combining ingredients. That guidance would apply to drugs in the coming years.
But the final version of that guidance states that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is putting off that policy for another year. This decision is the latest example of the administration going easy on drugmakers, even as President Trump publicly calls on drug companies to do more to lower their prices. Read more from John here.
FIRST OPINION
Trump administration's autism rhetoric is reviving eugenic thinking
Health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s characterization of autism as an epidemic in need of immediate attention is not just factually wrong, writes Shoumita Dasgupta, a professor of medicine at Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine. It also dehumanizes autistic people in ways that echo the eugenic policies of the early 20th century.
"The Trump administration is reviving eugenic thinking," Dasgupta writes, by restricting acetaminophen use during pregnancy, withholding vaccines from children, and identifying and eliminating the genetic causes of autism.
"This problematic framing of autistic people as problems to be solved … takes a very unidimensional view on autism or other related identities, focusing exclusively on deficit," she writes. Read more about the echoes of the past in the present here.
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