Jaime Rosenberg

Cigna has announced that it will acquire Express Scripts in a $67 billion deal. The deal brings health benefits and pharmacy benefits under the same roof and is the latest in a string of acquisitions and mergers as the industry attempts to address health costs.

The FDA approved the antiretroviral medication for adult patients living with HIV who have been treated with multiple medications in the past and whose HIV infection did not respond to other currently available antiretroviral therapies.

The FDA has authorized, with special controls, the first direct-to-consumer test that reports on 3 specific BRCA1/BRCA2 breast cancer gene mutations that are most common in people of Ashkenazi (Eastern European) Jewish descent.

Last week, Uber introduced Uber Health, a service that allows hospitals, doctor’s offices, and other health systems to order an Uber for their patients. Yesterday, Allscripts announced a collaboration with Lyft to let clinicians to order the Lyft service for patients through its electronic health record system.

During the 4-year time period, the rates of HIV diagnosis decreased among those aged 16 to 19 years, were stable among those aged 20 to 23, and increased among those aged 24 to 29, according to a study published by the CDC.

In a joint letter, several organizations urged CMS Administrator Seema Verma to allow certain accountable care organizations to continue in the Medicare Shared Savings Program (MSSP) Track 1 for a third agreement period, warning that these ACOs are not ready to take on a 2-sided risk.

Adults with obesity have an earlier onset of incident CVD, a greater proportion of life lived with CVD morbidity, and shorter overall survival compared with adults with normal BMI; and the proportion of adults with incident CVD events was significantly higher in adults who were classified as overweight or obese compared with adults with normal BMI, according to a study in JAMA Cardiology.

Shifting provisions of infused chemotherapy from physician offices to hospital outpatient departments (HOPDs) is increasing; however spending for commerical insurers was lower for patients treated in physician offices compared with HOPDs, according to a research letter in JAMA Oncology.

The National Comprehensive Cancer Center (NCCN) has released new NCCN Clinical Practice Guidelines in Oncology to help ensure that people living with HIV who are diagnosed with cancer receive safe and necessary treatment.

On Friday, a bipartisan group of governors unveiled a blueprint to reform the US health system in an effort to produce better health outcomes at a lower cost to governments, employers, and individuals. The plan focuses on aligning consumer and provider incentives, encouraging more competition and innovation, reforming insurance markets, expanding proven Medicaid innovations, and modernizing the state–federal relationsip.

As billing and insurance-related costs continue to largely contribute to administrative costs in healthcare, electronic health records (EHRs) were proposed as a potential solution to streamline the billing process and cut costs. However, a study in JAMA has found that EHRs do not lower administrative costs.

Traditionally, objective response rate (ORR) is used as the primary end point for phase 2 trials assessing the efficacy of anticancer therapies. However, in phase 2 trials of immune checkpoint inhibitors for advanced solid cancers, progression-free survival (PFS) is recommended as a primary end point over ORR, according to a study published in JAMA Oncology.

Recent study results showed larotrectinib was effective in patients with tropomyosin receptor kinase fusion-positive cancer, regardless of the age of the patient or the tumor type. In addition to implications for the treatment of genetic alterations across tumor types, these study results underscore the importance of molecular profiling of tumors, through which patients were identified for the studies, on ensuring precision medicine is used in practice while simultaneously providing a cost-effective tool.

With formal integration initiatives, such as accountable care organizations, having modest effects, researchers analyzed the impact of informal clinical integration on cardiac surgery payments and found that patients who were treated in health systems with higher informal integration had greater savings.

Cell-free DNA derived from liquid biopsy offers the potential for minimally invasive genome-wide profiling of tumor alterations without tumor biopsy and can predict patient survival outcomes for patients with metastatic triple-negative breast cancer, according to a team of researchers.

The FDA has tentatively approved Mylan’s New Drug Application for Dolutegravir, Emtricitabine, and Tenofovir Alafenamide Tablets, 50mg/200mg/25mg, for the treatment of HIV/AIDS, and the drug will be immediately available in developing countries as a first-line regimen.

CAR T-cell therapies tisagenlecleucel (Kymriah, Novartis) and axicabtagene ciloleucel (Yescarta, Kite Pharma/Gilead) may come with hefty price tags, but the cost-effectiveness of both therapies fell below or within commonly cited thresholds of $50,000 to $150,000 per quality-adjusted life years, according to a report by the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review.

In response to Governor C.L. “Butch” Otter's executive order allowing Idaho insurers to offer insurance plans that do not comply with the Affordable Care Act, Blue Cross Idaho introduced Freedom Blue, 5 individual health insurance plans.

The US Preventive Services Task Force recommends against screening for ovarian cancer in asymptomatic women who are not known to have a high-risk hereditary cancer syndrome because evidence shows that screening does not reduce ovarian cancer mortality.

As the conversation surrounding healthcare spending in the United States persists, topics such as drug prices, increased annual spending, and government funding stay at the forefront. Here are 5 things about healthcare spending that are being currently discussed and addressed.

A 9-week, telephone-administered interpersonal psychotherapy intervention reduced depression in patients living with HIV in rural areas, accrding to a study published in Annals of Behavioral Medicine.

First-degree family history was associated with an increased risk of breast cancer among women aged 65 and older, and risk associated with family history was not significantly modified by breast density, according to a study in JAMA Oncology.

There is a greater overall survival benefit for patients with recurrent urothelial cancer being treated with pembrolizumab versus chemotherapy, according to long-term results of the KEYNOTE-045 trial.

As value-based insurance design (VBID) continues to gain and maintain bipartisan support, the last week alone saw the introduction of the Chronic Disease Management Act of 2018 and the passing of the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018, which includes VBID components.

Medicaid expansion in Kentucky led to an increase of screening mammograms, screening coverage, and breast-conserving surgery for women aged 20 to 64 with breast cancer, according to a study published in the Journal of the American College of Surgeons. However, the study also showed that time from diagnosis to operation increased post expansion and time from operation to chemotherapy remained unchanged.

The addition of docetaxel to first-line long-term hormone therapy in patients with prostate cancer is associated with improved quality of life (QoL) benefits and cost effectiveness, according to study results presented at the 2018 Genitourinary Cancers Symposium.

There was a reduced rate of uninsured patients at the time of diagnosis and a shift to earlier stage at time of diagnosis for patients with testicular cancer in states that adopted Medicaid expansion in 2014, according to findings presented at the 2018 Genitourinary Cancers Symposium.

Daily image-guided radiotherapy, when compared to weekly control, decreases the risk of recurrence and rectal toxicity, but is associated with an increased risk of second cancer, according to study results presented at the 2018 Genitourinary Cancers Symposium.

During a session at the 2018 Genitourinary Cancers Symposium, Peter Black, MD, professor, department of urologic sciences, University of British Columbia, discussed using molecular subtypes, the Coxen model, and gene mutations to select patients and therapies for neoadjuvant chemotherapy.

During a session at the 2018 Genitourinay Cancers Symposium, Abhishek Solanki, MD, MS, assistant professor, radiation oncology, Loyola University of Chicago discussed the role of immunotherapy in patients undergoing radiation therapy for bladder cancer.