politics
Price of health insurance premiums going up
The pandemic-era tax credits that helped Americans buy health insurance plans in the Affordable Care Act's marketplaces are set to expire at the end of the year and politicians on both sides seem unlikely to intervene — meaning that insurance payments could double next year.
Who will this affect? Anyone who has health insurance through the marketplace and earns around four times the federal poverty level. The Affordable Care Act provides premium tax credits to people up to that 400% cap, and those original credits will continue. But Democrats "enhanced" the credits during the pandemic to include households above that limit. That bump is likely gone, given that 13 Republicans need to vote for an extension and nobody on that side of the aisle seems to agree on what they want.
Lots more details about the fallout from STAT's John Wilkerson. Read more here.
infectious disease
An experimental flu shot & a nasty flu season?
Pfizer's experimental mRNA-based flu shot showed enhanced effectiveness against influenza A viruses in a Phase 3 trial, the company reported in the New England Journal of Medicine Wednesday. Adults 18 to 64 who got Pfizer's modified mRNA shot were better protected against flu A than people who got Sanofi's Fluzone shot. There was very little flu B activity in the year the trial was run, so the study can't estimate vaccine efficacy against those viruses.
An editorial on the results noted that the trial also tested the vaccine in adults 65 and older, an important demographic for flu vaccine. Those results were less impressive and were not reported in this paper.
The news comes as physicians gear up for what could be a nasty flu season. H3N2 viruses — a flu A subtype — have mutated in ways that may help them evade vaccine-induced antibodies. The new variant, subclade K, emerged over the summer, when it was too late for manufacturers of traditional flu shots to target these viruses in this winter's shot. Scott Hensley, a University of Pennsylvania microbiologist who is working to develop broader flu vaccines using mRNA, said the subclade K situation illustrates why having mRNA flu shots would be beneficial. The lead time for making mRNA vaccines is substantially shorter than for vaccines grown in eggs or cell cultures.
But experts also warned against skipping the flu shot because of the mutation. In fact, "if there's ever a year to get a flu vaccine, this is the year," Hensley said. Read more on why experts will be watching the upcoming flu season so closely. — Helen Branswell
politics
HHS updates its gender dysphoria report
Yesterday HHS re-released its controversial report on gender dysphoria in children. This time, it named the previously anonymous authors and published a handful of peer-review comments after the initial study was faulted for a lack of transparency. Proponents of gender-affirming care suspect that the updated report will be used to justify impending proposed rules from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid that aim to withhold federal funds from going toward such care for minors, as well as any hospital or clinic that provides it.
The new version reveals that many of the authors and reviewers have been outspoken critics of gender-affirming care, are affiliated with anti-LGBTQ+ groups, and have little-to-no experience providing clinical care for young trans people. Some have been paid to speak, consult, or testify as expert witnesses against treating children with gender-affirming care such as puberty blockers, hormones, or surgery. Read more from me and Annalisa Merelli about the contributors.
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