Read today’s Kaiser Health News
About health insurance/insurers
CBO: GOP Medicaid plan would make 7.6 million people uninsured: The Medicaid portion of the House GOP’s massive domestic policy bill would result in 10.3 million people losing Medicaid coverage by 2034 and 7.6 million people going uninsured, according to a partial (CBO) Congressional Budget Office estimate.
CMS proposes including Part B drugs in Medicare price negotiations: 5 key updates: CMS has proposed including select Medicare Part B drugs in the third round of its drug price negotiation program, according to draft guidance released May 12.
The agency said the proposal is designed to enhance transparency, focus on high-expenditure drugs and ensure that efforts to establish fair pricing do not stifle pharmaceutical innovation.
Comment: Recall drug negotiations have been about Part D drugs.
Expect More Downside Risk in Medicare's Payment Models, CMS Official Says: Physicians should expect to see more Medicare alternative payment models that involve downside risk, Abe Sutton, JD, director of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI), said Tuesday.
"We've found at the innovation center that when we have 'upside-only' payment models, there's not necessarily an incentive ... for participants to change how they engage in care delivery," Sutton said…
Also on Tuesday, Sutton outlined a new approachopens in a new tab or window that CMMI is taking to its work, focused on three "pillars":
Promote evidence-based prevention
Empower people to achieve their health goals.
Drive choice and competition.
About hospitals and healthcare systems
Recognizing Outstanding Care: Healthgrades Announces 2025 Top Hospitals for
Patient Experience : FYI
About pharma
AbbVie paying $355M, potentially billions more, in deal for new RNA tech:AbbVie is entering a collaboration and license option deal with ADARx Pharmaceuticals to develop a new type of RNA technology for disease areas like neuroscience, immunology and oncology.
The deal could net San Diego-based ADARx several billion dollars in payments, if successful.
Late clinical-stage biotech ADARx is working on small interfering RNA, or siRNA, therapeutics, a class of molecules capable of regulating gene expression and protein production.
About the public’s health
EPA will weaken rule curbing forever chemicals in drinking water: The Environmental Protection Agency announced Wednesday that it plans to rescind and reconsider limits on four “forever chemicals” under a landmark drinking water standard implemented last year by President Joe Biden.
US Children Living With a Parent With Substance Use Disorder: Nearly 19 million children were estimated to be living in a household with at least 1 parent with SUD, accounting for one-quarter of all US children in 2023. Children in such households are more likely to develop adverse health outcomes than their peers without exposure to parental SUD.
Greater sedentary behavior is related to neurodegeneration and worse cognition.
Associations differed by APOE-ε4 carrier status in cross-sectional models.
Sedentary behavior is an independent risk factor for Alzheimer's disease.
About healthcare IT
A decade of AI rules on ice?: The proposed bill prohibits state and local governments from enforcing “any law or regulation regulating artificial intelligence models, artificial intelligence systems, or automated decision systems during the 10-year period beginning on the date of the enactment of this Act.”
About healthcare personnel
The World Is Wooing U.S. Researchers Shunned by Trump: For examples:
—Last week, at the urging of more than a dozen members, the European Union announced it would spend an additional 500 million euros, or $556 million, over the next two years to “make Europe a magnet for researchers.”
—Of 1,600 people who responded to a March poll in the journal Nature — many of them Ph.D. or postdoctoral students in the United States — three out of four said they were considering leaving the country because of the Trump administration’s policies.