About Covid-19
Novavax’s Effort to Vaccinate the World, From Zero to Not Quite Warp Speed: “Looking forward has kept Novavax afloat for decades ― along with its deep ties to grant makers and federal agencies. With its focus on developing vaccines, including for the SARS and MERS pandemics… Novavax is ‘built for this moment.’ Still, the 34-year-old startup has never brought one to market.”
It differentiates itself fro other manufacturers in its “proprietary secret ingredient… Matrix-M, an immune booster. Executives say the additive ― derived from Chilean soapbark trees ― works so well that less of an antibody-producing antigen would be needed with it in a vaccine.”
The article is a good case history for what happened to this promising company.
States are sitting on millions of surplus Covid-19 vaccine doses as expiration dates approach:
”Several state health departments told STAT they have repeatedly asked the federal government to redistribute their supply to other countries, many of which are facing a third wave of the Covid-19 pandemic. Officials in Washington have rejected those requests, citing legal and logistical challenges.”
Vaccine offers 99% protection against death in Delta strain, finds NIV study: “Scientists from the National Institute of Virology conducted the largest study to date in India to understand why people got COVID-19 despite taking one or two vaccine doses…
This study indicated that a majority of the clinical cases in the breakthrough were infected with the Delta variant and only 9.8% cases required hospitalisation, while fatality was observed in only 0.4% cases…"
COVID-19 Antibodies Persist at Least Nine Months After Infection: “Testing of an entire Italian town shows antibody levels remain high nine months after SARS-CoV-2 infection, whether symptomatic or asymptomatic…
The team found that 98.8 percent of people infected in February/March showed detectable levels of antibodies in November, and there was no difference between people who had suffered symptoms of COVID-19 and those that had been symptom-free.”
Survey Shows Majority of Unvaccinated Americans Believe Microchips Are in Vaccines: “One in five Americans believe that the U.S. government is using the vaccine to plant microchip tracking devices into people, the survey found. A significant number of those who reject vaccines also cite the belief that inoculation in general causes autism.”
Is the cure really worse than the disease? The health impacts of lockdowns during COVID-19: “It appears clear from evidence to date that government interventions, even more restrictive ones such as stay-at-home orders, are beneficial in some circumstances and unlikely to be causing harms more extreme than the pandemic itself.”
Judge: Indiana University can require COVID-19 vaccinations: ”In a ruling dated Sunday, U.S. District Judge Damon Leichty in South Bend rejected a request from eight IU students who sought to block the requirement while they pursue a lawsuit claiming that the university’s policy violated their constitutional rights by forcing them to receive unwanted medical treatment…
Leichty wrote that the students haven’t presented evidence showing they could prevail in the case, and that the Constitution ‘permits Indiana University to pursue a reasonable and due process of vaccination in the legitimate interest of public health for its students, faculty and staff.’”
About health insurance
'Gold Cards' Allow Texas Docs to Skip Prior Authorization: Health insurance contracts typically cover contingencies for behavior from the worst performers, thus penalizing high quality, efficient providers. This measure should be a start for benchmarking laws in other states to help solve the problems of prior authorizations.
”The law was passed in June and will take effect in September. It excuses physicians from having to obtain prior authorization if, during the previous 6 months, 90% of their treatments met medical necessity criteria by the health insurer. Through this law, doctors in the state will spend less time getting approvals for treatments for their patients.”
Will Humana Stock Continue Its Rally After A 10% Rise In A Month?: “Humana has benefited from higher Medicare Advantage premium income as well as increased healthcare services revenues. The company has seen a strong 29% growth in individual Medicare Advantage membership from 3.1 million members in 2018 to a little under 4.0 million members in 2020, aiding its premium revenue growth. Separately, Humana has been focused on enhancing its offerings for home-health services, and it recently announced its plans to acquire One Homecare Solutions, a home care provider. This acquisition comes just months after Humana announced the acquisition of the remaining 60% stake (Humana owned 40% earlier) in Kindred At Home, the largest home-based care provider in the U.S. These developments have boded well for HUM stock in the recent past.”
Large Self-insured Employers Lack Power to Effectively Negotiate Hospital Prices: “Self-insured employers cover more people than Medicare, Medicaid, or direct purchasers of private insurance.This study examined the ability of self-insured employers to negotiate hospital prices and the relationship between hospital prices and employer market power in the United States…
In most areas of the United States, self-insured employers lack market power to negotiate hospital prices….
Self-insured employers may consider building purchase alliances with state and local government employee groups to enhance their market power and lower negotiated prices for hospital services.”
About pharma
New York reaches $1.1B settlement with opioid distributors: “New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) released the settlement obtained with the McKesson Corporation, Cardinal Health Inc. and AmerisourceBergen Drug Corporation on Tuesday, saying the state is holding the distributors ‘accountable’ for their alleged role in the epidemic.
The three distributors will pay the $1.1 billion to New York state, with more than $1 billion of that being designated to opioid treatment, recovery and prevention. The payments will start in two months and continue over 17 years.
In exchange, New York will file to remove McKesson, Cardinal and AmerisourceBergen from its continuing opioid trial in Suffolk County State Supreme Court.”
Feds call on insurers to fully cover HIV prevention drug PrEP without cost-sharing: “The Biden administration issued guidance Monday directing most insurers to offer pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) to beneficiaries at no cost.
The guidance released Monday by the Department of Labor comes after HIV patient advocacy groups have found that insurance plans have been slow to offer preventative drugs without cost-sharing obligations.”
With pandemic restrictions lifted, FDA restarts U.S. inspections and seeks to whittle its massive backlog: “While most of the lingering inspections covered sites that produce food products, delays have also hit the biopharma industry. Of the 857 outstanding inspections for human drugs as of May, the agency had 515 domestic inspections yet to complete and 342 overseas.
In all, 48 drug applications had been affected by site inspection delays, the FDA said.”
Scandal aside, Biogen's Aduhelm sales set to reach $1B next year and $6B+ by 2025: analysts: A survey of neurologists “suggests that Aduhelm could nab about 8% of Alzheimer's patients over the next six months.
While a small share of the total pool, that could lead to $3.8 billion in annual revenue…”
Biden’s July Executive Order Includes Drug Pricing Provisions. But Will They Do Enough?: “KHN has teamed up with our partners at PolitiFact to analyze Biden’s promises during the 2020 presidential campaign — and, so far, experts generally say the jury is still out on how meaningful these efforts will be.”
One strategy is to allow importation of cheaper drugs from other countries. This measure has always been a bad idea for several reasons. First, the documentation of the custody chain is not always accurate- imported drugs could be expired, adulterated or not stored under optimal conditions. Second, pharma companies can regulate what they sell abroad so that there will not be excesses available for resale to the US. Finally, why would other countries sell needed drugs to the US, when we can manufacture our own?
Read the report for more details.
About healthcare IT
Introducing new ways to help you find answers to your health questions: A new YouTube initiative: “Starting this week, you’ll see new features next to some health-related searches and videos. We’re adding new health source information panels on videos to help viewers identify videos from authoritative sources, and health content shelves that more effectively highlight videos from these sources when you search for specific health topics. These context cues are aimed at helping people more easily navigate and evaluate credible health information. People will still be able to find relevant videos from a range of sources in their search results.”
And from Amazon comes an expansion/repackaging of services they have been developing: Introducing AWS for Health – Accelerating innovation from benchtop to bedside: “To help customers accelerate their transformation, we are introducing AWS for Health, an offering of curated AWS services and AWS Partner Network solutions used by thousands of healthcare and life sciences customers globally. AWS for Health provides proven and easily accessible capabilities that help organizations increase the pace of innovation, unlock the potential of health data, and develop more personalized approaches to therapeutic development and care. AWS for Health simplifies the process for healthcare and life science enterprises and innovative startups to identify industry-leading, cloud-based solutions across 16 critical solution areas in Healthcare, Genomics, and Biopharma. For example, solutions offered in AWS for Health are helping customers create holistic Electronic Health Records to help clinicians make data-driven care plans, accelerate research and discovery to bring new therapies to market faster, and power population genomic initiatives to expand precision medicine accessibility.”
Walmart files to provide healthcare in 37 states as it pushes deeper into telehealth: “In April and May, Walmart filed to conduct its healthcare business in 16 states. In June and July, the retail giant added another 17 states, according to public documents.
Aside from operating 20 medical clinics in Arkansas, Georgia and Illinois, Walmart in the last few months has been working to posture itself as a one-stop-shop for comprehensive medical care.”
Where the VA, Cerner EHR rollout stands: 11 updates in the past 21 days: If you are following this multi-year debacle, this article is a good summary.
About hospitals and health systems
Semi-Annual Hospital Price Transparency Compliance Report July 2021: “We estimate that only 5.6% of hospitals were compliant with the rule, and 94.4% were noncompliant, because one or more price transparency requirements were not met. The majority of noncompliant failures were the result of non-posting or incomplete posting of the negotiated prices clearly associated with all of the payers and plans accepted by the hospital. The second significant failure was due to a lack of publishing the full list of discounted cash prices.” And in a related article:
CMS proposes increasing penalties for hospitals not meeting price transparency rule: “The Biden administration wants to include a per-bed monetary penalty for larger hospitals that do not comply with a price transparency rule after several analyses have shown widespread noncompliance among facilities.
The administration included the provision in the proposed 2022 Outpatient Prospective Payment System (OPPS) proposed rule released Monday by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services….”
In the past, penalties were less than the cost of compliance for many hospitals.
HCA sees revenue grow 30% to $14B in Q2: “Nashville, Tenn.-based HCA Healthcare saw its revenue grow 30 percent in the second quarter of 2021, as inpatient, outpatient and emergency department visits saw double-digit percentage growth year over year.
The for-profit healthcare system with 186 hospitals posted revenues of $14.4 billion in the quarter ending June 30, up from $11.1 billion recorded in the same period last year. The second quarter of 2021 results included a gain of $8 million from sales of facilities and $12 million in losses tied to the retirement of debt. “