Democratic House committee chairs have written new letters to White House Counsel Pat Cipollone and Attorney General Bill Barr demanding information on the administration's decisions about the latest Affordable Care Act lawsuit.
Why it matters: The Department of Justice last year announced that it would no longer defend the ACA against a lawsuit brought by GOP attorneys general alleging that the 2017 tax law made the health care law unconstitutional.
The White House is reviewing a 2020 payment rule for Medicare outpatient services, and companies that make devices for a procedure that serves as a substitute for opioids are trying to persuade Medicare to create a new payment model.
Driving the news: Earlier this month, lobbyists with Smiths Medical and InfuSystems pushed federal officials for a new, separate medical code for "continuous peripheral nerve block," according to federal lobbying records.
The Affordable Care Act was supposed to open the door to a new class of drugs that would spark competition and lower prices for some of the most expensive therapies in the world. But that effort has barely gotten off the ground — less than a dozen of these new products are actually available to patients, and few deliver significant savings.
Why it matters: The future of drug development is hurtling toward complex, expensive biological products. If the market for cheaper versions of those treatments doesn’t get a jump-start, the health care system will see its drug spending climb to new heights.
A majority of the health care industry's profits in the first three months of 2019 went to the top 10 companies, and 9 of those 10 companies were pharmaceutical manufacturers, according to Axios' quarterly analysis of industry financial reports.
The bottom line: Quarter after quarter after quarter shows drugmakers continue to wield the highest profit margins in the industry even though the political and public uproar over drug prices has somewhat dampened their stocks.
