Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand — a 2020 presidential contender — released a statement of support on Saturday for the action Rockland County, a small suburb of Manhattan, is taking to combat the "horrible measles outbreak."
Driving the news: Rockland County declared a state of emergency on Wednesday, barring unvaccinated children under age 18 from countywide public spaces unless they are under 6 months or have a medical exemption. The community — which only had a 72.9% vaccination rate in people under 18 — is paying the price with 156 cases reported as of March 28.
The Trump administration is plowing ahead on drug prices, hoping to break through the cycle of legal and political setbacks that have stymied the rest of its health care agenda.
The big picture: The administration has several proposed rules that take on some aspect of the drug-pricing system, and is quietly talking with congressional Democrats on the issue, too.
New data from the Health Care Cost Institute tries to pin down just how often patients end up with the most common form of a surprise hospital bill — the kind that arises when patients go to a hospital that's in their insurance network, but are seen by a doctor who's out-of-network.
By the numbers: Nationwide, about 14% of in-network hospital admissions included a bill for out-of-network care, per HCCI.
Xarelto will be the first drug to include pricing information in its TV ads, even before the Trump administration finalizes rules that will require those disclosures.
Why it matters: There's been plenty of uncertainty about how this would work and what it will look like. The administration wants drugmakers to include list prices, which most people don't pay, and critics say that could give patients an unrealistically inflated view of their costs.
There’s a scientific and economic revolution happening in medicine, and the political debate over drug prices isn’t keeping up. Not only are policymakers struggling to agree on solutions, they’re mostly talking about yesterday’s problems.
Why it matters: Medical innovation is already hurtling toward a new era of highly specialized drugs — some are even tailor-made for each individual patient. They may be more effective than anything we’ve seen before, and also more expensive. But the drug-pricing debate is more focused on decades-old parts of the system.
