| Chuck Grassley is talking with "big pharma" about a possible drug pricing deal. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) is floating an intriguing possible deal to get a long-stalled drug pricing bill moving. He says he is in talks with "big pharma" about a deal that would allow his bill to spur introductions of cheaper generic drugs to move forward, in exchange for a separate fix that PhRMA, the drug lobby, wants. "I think we're getting some talk between us and Big Pharma," Grassley told reporters Monday evening. "Big Pharma's interested in the money that it brings in to offset some things they want done, and so we're in talks on that and I hope it can get done." Between the lines: Grassley is indicating he thinks PhRMA might want a fix on a separate issue, undoing a Medicare change that shifted costs onto drug companies, badly enough that they will agree to his drug pricing bill on generics, known as the Creates Act. Watch the House, too: Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said last week that House lawmakers are working on a "compromise" version of Grassley's Creates Act. We detail the negotiations here. HHS Secretary Alex Azar announced the U.S. would contribute up to $7 million to fight a new Ebola outbreak in the Congo. Azar made the announcement in Switzerland at the World Health Assembly, the decision making body of the World Health Organization (WHO), while urging other member states to contribute to "ensure we defeat this outbreak." Read more here. Red states aren't getting a free pass on Medicaid waivers. Red states are getting a reality check from the Trump administration in just how conservative they can remake their Medicaid programs. CMS administrator Seema Verma earlier this month rejected Kansas's request to impose lifetime limits on Medicaid beneficiaries, and followed that up last week by saying the agency would not approve lifetime limits in any state. Why this matters: Kansas was the first time the administration completely rejected a policy favored by conservatives, showing there is no blank check for red states just because they're conservative. What's next: The administration has yet to make a decision on other conservative wish list policies, such as Wisconsin's proposal for drug testing Medicaid recipients, and partial Medicaid expansion, which would let states expand coverage for only a fraction of the population and still receive full federal funding under ObamaCare. The challenge: Lawsuits. Experts said CMS is treading carefully, and will only approve waivers that they believe will survive the inevitable lawsuits that follow. We break it all down here. The gap between Medicaid expansion states and the holdouts is widening. According to new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, people are twice as likely to be without insurance in states that have refused to expand Medicaid as in those that have expanded coverage. In the 32 Medicaid expansion states (plus Washington, D.C.), 9.1 percent of people were uninsured in 2017, compared with 19 percent in the holdout states. The CDC survey also found that the total number of uninsured Americans hasn't changed much over the last years; it's basically held right around 9 percent since 2015. What about the Trump effect? On the surface, the numbers seem to be a counter to Democratic arguments that the Trump administration sabotage is increasing the number of uninsured people. But the effects of the biggest Trump-era policies-- repeal of the individual mandate penalty and expanding access to short-term plans-- haven't been felt yet, and likely won't until 2019. More on the numbers here. | 
沒有留言:
張貼留言