Axios

The FDA Commissioner, Scott Gottlieb, said Monday he is going to try lowering drug prices by giving top priority to approving new generic drugs in markets where there are fewer than three generic competitors.

Why it matters: Drug prices aren't officially a part of the FDA's mandate — it is barred from taking prices into account when it decides whether to approve a new drug — but Gottlieb is identifying steps the agency can take that might have an indirect impact.

Gottlieb said the FDA would also be knocking out a backlog of 2,640 generic-drug applications pending review in the next year.

We reported earlier this month that the large publicly traded health insurance companies have reaped enormous profits so far in 2017. But the not-for-profit Blue Cross Blue Shield plans — the ones that have been the linchpins of the volatile Affordable Care Act marketplaces — have been doing a lot better than last year, too.

In states where a Blue Cross Blue Shield affiliate was the only ACA option, each company turned a net profit in the first quarter, according to an Axios review of financial documents. That's a big turnaround from last year, when most of them lost money.

What it means: The ACA's individual marketplaces have problems, but they are not in a "death spiral," nor are they imploding. The latest financial data also indicate that many Blue Cross Blue Shield plans — even the most vulnerable — have figured out how to make money on ACA plans, and illuminate why the entire industry wants to eliminate the ACA's insurer tax permanently.