Walgreens Boots Alliance, former CEO Gregory Wasson and former CFO Wade Miquelon each settled with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which charged them with making misleading profit forecasts in 2013 and 2014.
The bottom line: This is another example of why financial projections should not be viewed as gospel.
The Congressional Budget Office score of the House opioids bill is in, and billions of dollars are shuffling around in the health care industry.
Winners: Inpatient behavioral hospitals, which would receive more than $1 billion in increased federal Medicaid payments from 2020–2023 for patients addicted to opioids.
Premiums for benchmark Affordable Care Act plans are projected to drop in 2019, the first time that has happened since the law has been implemented, HHS Secretary Alex Azar announced yesterday.
The big picture: Premiums are expected to drop 2% nationally, and the number of insurers participating on exchanges will increase for the first time since 2015, Azar added.
Every 15 minutes, a baby is born dependent on opioids. In Baltimore, doctors at Mt. Washington Pediatric Hospital say babies born with Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome — a set of conditions caused by withdrawal from exposure to drugs — now account for 25% of the hospital’s admissions.
Why it matters: Nationally, the number of babies born with the syndrome has increased by over 400 percent since 2004. For Baltimore Health Commissioner Dr. Leana Wen, the community must first recognize addiction as a disease to address the larger trend of the opioid epidemic. But as drug-related deaths continue to increase, the future remains uncertain.
Editor's note: This post has been corrected to show that babies are born with opioid dependence, not addiction.
The last flu season was particularly severe — causing at least 80,000 American deaths including 180 children and 900,000 hospitalizations — because of the types of influenza strains and the fact that certain groups did not get inoculated, public health officials said Thursday. They made these announcements as they kicked off their #FightFlu vaccination campaign.
Why it matters: Many of those deaths were preventable, according to U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams. Even when the vaccine's effectiveness is not as high as hoped, as happened last season, the shots or FluMist can still boost the immune system enough to limit how hard the virus hits as well as minimizing its spread.
"80,000 people died last year ... Guess what? They all got the flu from someone."
The latest findings from the Global Burden of Disease Study (GBD) show 4.57 million children under five living with autism, or about one in 138 kids. The largest numbers of young autistic children live in developing or low- and middle-income countries, including over one million children each in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa, while the highest rates of childhood autism are seen in the Middle East, Central Asia and North Africa.
Why it matters: So much of the dialogue surrounding autism is focused on the U.S., Canada, and Western Europe that we often forget much of the world's childhood autism is concentrated in regions where health resources are limited.
Last season's flu epidemic is estimated to have killed 80,000 Americans — the highest level for at least four decades, Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told the Associated Press in an interview. It also caused the deaths of at least 180 children, 80% of whom were not vaccinated, per the CDC.
Why it matters: U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams and other public health officials will kick off a campaign today to promote seasonal flu vaccinations, in an effort to prevent a repeat of last year's terrible flu season.
Aetna announced Thursday that it will sell its Medicare prescription drug plan business to WellCare Health Plans. Financial terms were not disclosed, although Aetna said in a disclosure that the purchase price was not material.
Why it matters: This divestiture is dependent on antitrust officials signing off on CVS Health's takeover of Aetna — meaning CVS and Aetna believe this sale will resolve any antitrust concerns and foreshadows imminent federal approval.
HHS Secretary Alex Azar will criticize Democrats' "Medicare for All" proposals today, during a speech in Nashville.
Why it matters: Medicare and Medicaid administrator Seema Verma also has come out against the idea. It's hardly surprising that they would be opposed to "Medicare for All." But it is somewhat unusual for the people running executive agencies to make such an aggressive case about proposals that exist largely in theory.
Employers hire consultants to help them manage their prescription drug costs. But industry sources say those consultants don’t steer companies toward the best deals.
Why it matters: Prescription drugs represent one-fifth of employers’ spending on health benefits. Employers and employees alike are increasingly worried about drug prices and how those prices affect their premiums.
Congress yesterday sent a funding bill for the Department of Health and Human Services to President Trump's desk — the first time it has completed that bill in more than 20 years.
Why it matters: For all the chaos consuming Washington, this is a notable achievement for leadership, especially Speaker Paul Ryan. This bill has historically been bogged down by the politics surrounding abortion and the Affordable Care Act.
Each of the predominant health care consulting firms — Aon, Mercer and Willis Towers Watson — has its own prescription drug coalition made up of employers. The conventional wisdom is firms use the combined scale to negotiate lower drug prices with large pharmacy benefit managers, but there's no hard evidence the coalitions provide meaningful savings.
What we're hearing: "The contracts are basically no different from what an individual company can get from a PBM, which means that all the individual company is doing is adding a layer of additional fees from the coalition," said Linda Cahn, an independent consultant who has reviewed coalition PBM contracts.
