The Trump administration on Wednesday signed off on a regulation crafted during Tom Price's days that will revert to a system in which Medicare will pay medical equipment suppliers more money, starting June 1 and going through the end of the year.
The bottom line: Companies that make oxygen tanks, scooters, insulin pumps and other medical equipment will get $360 million in additional revenue this year, with taxpayers and seniors footing the bill.
There is an outbreak of Ebola in the northwest of the Democratic Republic of Congo, with 2 confirmed cases, per the BBC. The World Health Organization says there have been 21 suspected cases of viral hemorrhagic fever and 17 deaths over the past five weeks.
Flashback: This is the 9th time an Ebola outbreak has been recorded in the DRC, where the virus was first discovered in 1976. More than 11,000 people were killed in Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia during the 2014 outbreak of Ebola in West Africa.
Sen. Lamar Alexander has officially thrown in the towel on a bipartisan bill to stabilize the ACA. He said in a letter to allies that "Democrats are not willing even to make modest temporary changes with which they agree. So now efforts to help Americans paying skyrocketing premiums will turn to the Trump Administration and the states."
Between the lines: Alexander praised the administration's proposal to expand access to association health plans — policies that allow similarly situated people to band together basically as if they were under the umbrella of one large employer.
Health and Human Services secretary Alex Azar is a lot different than his predecessor, Tom Price. He's invested in policy goals that Price did not necessarily share, and his no-drama ethos and experience with the HHS bureaucracy will likely help him achieve them.
The big picture: Azar and Price do have one big thing in common: using the regulatory powers at their disposal to chip away at the Affordable Care Act, and presiding over efforts to roll back Medicaid. But underneath those shared goals are big differences in their leadership style and their other priorities.
The actual prices hospitals charge private health insurers are closely guarded trade secrets. But a widely circulated health economics paper, which received some new updates, uses actual claims data from three national insurers to show the inner workings of how hospitals get paid.
The bottom line: Hospitals make a lot of money off patients who get their health coverage through their jobs, and hospitals with little or no competition have the power to set their rates at will.
Republican Rep. Gregg Harper asked five top executives of drug distributors at a hearing Tuesday if their companies contributed to the opioid epidemic. Every executive said no, except for Joseph Mastandrea, board chair of Miami-Luken, who said "yes."
Why it matters: Mastandrea's response was a stunning moment of honesty and stood in stark contrast to the denials of the CEOs of the much larger drug wholesalers.
Simulation of what may happen if a highly contagious and lethal airborne pathogen were to occur today. Map: Institute for Disease Modeling
The U.S. won't be ready to face a flu pandemic until it improves its vaccines, health care infrastructure, and coordination with other countries — all of which are top priorities for the White House, a National Security Council official said Monday.
"Influenza is a priority to the White House, and represents both a health security and a national security threat... Today, however, we cannot respond with the speed that we need to.""
— Luciana Borio, White House, National Security Council
After a few weeks of back-and-forth, Takeda Pharmaceutical and Shire have officially agreed to a deal in which Takeda will buy Shire for roughly $62 billion, and the merged company will slash research costs and thousands of jobs as a way to save $1.4 billion per year.
Why it matters: Takeda and Shire will become the eighth-largest global drug firm by revenue, if shareholders and regulators approve the merger. It’s unclear what would happen to the prices of their products.
Get ready for about six more months of headlines like this: Insurers in Maryland are proposing premium hikes as high as 91% for coverage sold through the Affordable Care Act.
Why it matters: This will keep happening, nationwide. Proposed increases have been steep in Maryland and Virginia, the first two states to release them. But all signs point to steep hikes across the country, especially in rural areas. Some insurers also will likely decide to simply quit offering coverage in some parts of the country.
