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What We're Reading: Virginia Makes Naloxone Widely Available for Opioid Overdoses
What we're reading, November 22, 2016: Virginia declares opioid addiction a public health emergency; House calls for a pause of ongoing Obamacare lawsuit; and Anthem-Cigna antitrust trial begins.
After declaring opioid addiction a public health emergency, Virginia’s health commissioner has made the drug naloxone, used to treat overdoses, widely available. According to The Washington Post, 3 people every day die in Virginia from an overdose and emergency room visits for heroin overdoses are up 89% year over year. Now, the state has issued a blanket prescription for all residents in Virginia to have access to naloxone, and the state’s pharmacies should keep an adequate supply of the drug.
A lawsuit challenging the Affordable Care Act (ACA)’s subsidy program is currently in the Federal Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit, but the House of Representatives is asking the court to pause the lawsuit. The move would allow the new administration to have time to decide how to repeal the ACA and unwind the exchanges, reported POLITICO. Without the Department of Justice (DOJ) to defend the health law, the lower court’s ruling against the ACA would stand, eliminating the subsidies and immediately destabilizing the exchange market.
The antitrust trial for the Anthem-Cigna merger kicked off on Monday with the DOJ and Anthem presenting opening statements that provided different perspectives of the impact of the proposed merger. The DOJ is arguing that the merger would reduce competition, while Anthem’s lawyer argued that the merger would increase the scale of operation and allow Anthem to offer better rates, according to The Wall Street Journal. Joseph Swedish, Anthem’s CEO took to the stand yesterday, and is expected to continue testifying today.
An Overview of Health Care and Pharmaceutical Trends, 2023-2024
April 19th 2024Douglas M. Long, BA, MBA, was featured as the keynote speaker on the closing day of The Academy of Managed Care Pharmacy 2024 annual meeting, with a session dedicated to surveying the health care and pharmaceutical trends of the last year.
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Navigating Health Literacy, Social Determinants, and Discrimination in National Health Plans
February 13th 2024On this episode of Managed Care Cast, we're talking with the authors of a study published in the February 2024 issue of The American Journal of Managed Care® about their findings on how health plans can screen for health literacy, social determinants of health, and perceived health care discrimination.
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Government agencies have created an online portal for the public to report potential anticompetitive practices in health care; there are changes coming to the “boxed warning” section for chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapies (CAR T) to highlight T-cell blood cancer risk; questions about the safety of obesity medications during pregnancy have arisen in women on them who previously struggled with fertility issues.
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Drs Raymond Thertulien, Joseph Mikhael on Racial Disparities in Multiple Myeloma Care Access
December 28th 2023In the wake of the 2023 American Society of Hematology Annual Meeting and Exposition, Raymond Thertulien, MD, PhD, of Novant Health, and Joseph Mikhael, MD, MEd, FRCPC, FACP, chief medical officer of the International Myeloma Foundation, discussed health equity research highlights from the meeting and drivers of racial disparities in multiple myeloma outcomes.
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Gene, Light Therapy Combo Shows Promise Against Prostate Cancer Cells in Proof-of-Concept Study
April 18th 2024In their preclinical model, the researchers found efficacy both in vitro and in vivo by using CRISPR-Cas9 to mimic porphyria and combining the technology with light therapy.
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