The prices of hospital procedures, drugs and other health care services increased just 1.1% from September 2016 to September 2017, according to the latest data from the Altarum Center for Sustainable Health Spending. That's the lowest annual price growth rate since December 2015, when it was at a historically low 0.9%.
The first week of Affordable Care Act open enrollment for next year was strong, with more than 601,000 people signing up for health coverage, according to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. Of those, more than 137,000 were new customers, and more than 464,000 were people renewing their plans.
Context: Last year, ACA open enrollment signups in the first 12 days totaled over 1 million.
Why it matters: This year's early enrollment appears to be faster than last year's, revealing that the ACA is definitely not dead yet. However, it's important to note that the 2018 enrollment is only for six weeks, as opposed to three months last year — so it doesn't really tell us what the final numbers will be.
The UPMC health system in Pittsburgh said this week it will spend $2 billion to build three new, glitzy specialty hospitals that focus on treating specific diseases. But UPMC's plan, and other similar hospital system investments, raises concerns about whether hospital organizations that hold a lot of financial and political power are wasting health care dollars to entrench their positions.
The catch: These kinds of projects can just be ways to maximize revenue, experts say — especially since UPMC will be investing in new treatments that are expensive, and since its new facilities don't really match what the health care system needs.
Scientists successfully used stem cell and gene therapy to replace 80% of the skin of a 7-year-old boy affected by an incurable genetic skin disease, they report Wednesday in Nature.
Why this matters: This is the first time researchers have been able to regenerate virtually the entire epidermis and also provides a blueprint for other stem cell and gene therapies. And, while the scientists cautioned more testing is needed to see if this could be used for the roughly 500,000 people worldwide with different forms of this particular disease, they said this experiment was a success.
