STAT+: House panel takes first steps toward reining in hospitals with ‘site-neutral’ changes
WASHINGTON — A key House panel on Wednesday advanced several health care bills on Wednesday,…
Category: Congress
Opinion: How ‘Lessons From the Covid War’ falls short
The stream of books about the government response to the pandemic that began with Michael…
STAT+: AI leaders issue a plea to Congress: Regulate us, and quickly
During an extraordinary hearing Tuesday, members of a Senate subcommittee called for aggressive regulation of…
AstraZeneca is third member to leave PhRMA in five months
WASHINGTON — AstraZeneca has decided to leave the brand drug lobbying powerhouse PhRMA halfway through…
Opinion: Compounding pharmacies offer a fix for shortages of essential drugs
In the early days of the Covid pandemic, gravely ill patients began to fill America’s…
STAT+: Senate panel passes a suite of drug pricing bills — but fails to advance one major PBM reform
WASHINGTON – The Senate health committee on Thursday passed a package of bills aimed at…
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Key House Democrat demands NIH answer for pace of long Covid research
WASHINGTON — A powerful Democratic lawmaker is interrogating the National Institutes of Health over its…
STAT+: Wyden decries ‘astonishingly low’ tax rates for pharma companies as he probes business maneuvers
Thanks to changes in tax law six years ago, several of the largest pharmaceutical companies…
STAT+: Insulin makers, PBMs echo old finger-pointing in Senate hearing
A Senate hearing on high insulin costs billed as a blockbuster showdown with drugmakers and…
STAT+: Q&A: Sen. Sanders on insulin costs and his committee’s generic drug kerfuffle
WASHINGTON — Wednesday’s Senate hearing on high costs for insulin “is not the end” of…
Opinion: The IRA’s nonsensical distinction between small- and large-molecule drugs
Thanks to advances in science, notably the completion of the Human Genome Project 20 years…
STAT+: Senator pushes NIH for ‘formal’ review of Covid response
WASHINGTON — Republicans continued to press top health officials on the coronavirus response during a…
STAT+: Biden’s pick to lead NIH stares down an increasingly political litany of questions
WASHINGTON — President Biden’s presumed pick to lead the National Institutes of Health, Monica Bertagnolli,…
STAT+: Disagreements and digs upend an otherwise bipartisan hearing on PBM reform
WASHINGTON — The first Senate health committee markup under Chairman Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and ranking…
STAT+: Senators delay start date for possible PBM reforms
WASHINGTON — Pharmacy benefit managers may have gotten themselves a slight reprieve. Senators drafting reforms to…
Biden officials propose slate of Medicaid transparency changes
WASHINGTON — The Biden administration on Thursday rolled out proposals to set national standards for…
STAT+: Pharma executives flood Bill Cassidy with campaign cash
WASHINGTON — Sen. Bill Cassidy’s new perch as the top Republican on the Senate health…
STAT+: Another powerful congressional committee is ready to take on PBMs
WASHINGTON — House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer plans to hold a hearing on the…
STAT+: Sens. Bernie Sanders, Bill Cassidy reach deal on PBM, generic reform
WASHINGTON — Senate health committee leaders Bernie Sanders and Bill Cassidy on Tuesday announced an agreement…
STAT+: Powerful Senate duo drops a bipartisan PBM reform plan
WASHINGTON — The chair and ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee on Thursday unveiled…
STAT+: FDA’s Califf talks cell and gene therapies, abortion pill, Alzheimer’s drugs
WASHINGTON — Senators grilled FDA Commissioner Rob Califf Wednesday on everything from the agency’s stance…
STAT+: Senate still hasn’t made hard decisions on lowering insulin costs
WASHINGTON — Senate Democrats are trying to cap insulin costs for every American, but they…
STAT+: Congress is launching a tobacco harm reduction caucus. Its biggest supporter so far? Philip Morris
WASHINGTON — There’s a new caucus brewing on Capitol Hill focused on the potential health…
STAT+: Medicare advisers endorse reforms to lower drug spending
In the latest move to address prescription drug pricing, the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission unanimously…
STAT+: Senate hashing out policy details on generics, PBMs, insulin
WASHINGTON — Senators are slightly delaying their latest legislative push on health care, but as they…
STAT+: Sanders plans to haul insulin executives to testify in Senate
WASHINGTON — Sen. Bernie Sanders plans to call the chief executives of the country’s largest…
STAT+: Drug middlemen switch tactics, but the outcome is the same: high prices
WASHINGTON — Prescription drug middlemen are shifting away from rebates that have been blamed in…
STAT+: Is there $21 billion left for Covid response, or $5 billion? The White House is using fuzzy math
WASHINGTON — How much money does the federal government still have set aside for the…
Republicans press Becerra on gender-affirming care, reproductive rights
WASHINGTON — Republicans hammered the health secretary in hearings Tuesday, previewing a line of health-…
Opinion: Rolling back SNAP benefits puts millions of children at risk of hunger and long-term health consequences
At our pediatric clinic, we recently saw a child whose mother lost her job during…
STAT+: Could a fight over cost-effectiveness upend Medicare drug price negotiation before it’s begun?
WASHINGTON — As Medicare drug price negotiation looms, congressional Republicans are scrambling to push through…
STAT+: Bernie Sanders’ accidentally great drug pricing idea
When Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel was called before a Senate committee last week to defend…
STAT+: Key senators blast Medicare Advantage insurers for ‘exorbitant salaries,’ ‘massive payouts’ to execs
WASHINGTON — Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) slammed seven different Medicare Advantage…
STAT+: Senators interrogate health secretary Becerra on Alzheimer’s drug coverage
WASHINGTON — The future of Alzheimer’s treatments and coverage hung heavily over lawmakers’ Wednesday hearing…
Stéphane Bancel, Bernie Sanders spar over what Moderna owes the federal government
WASHINGTON — Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel and Senate health committee Chair Bernie Sanders shook hands…
Opinion: The much-maligned ‘quality-adjusted life year’ is a vital tool for health care policy
Health policy circles have erupted in debate over a wonky administrative tool: the quality-adjusted life…
STAT+: 8 burning questions Bernie Sanders and other senators should ask Moderna’s Stéphane Bancel
WASHINGTON — Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel has some explaining to do. Bancel will appear alone…
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STAT+: Senator calls for probe of conflict of interest on federal panel overseeing dietary guidelines
A U.S. lawmaker wants the federal government to probe potential conflicts of interest held by…
STAT+: Hospitals are not crumbling, Medicare experts tell Congress
Hospitals’ financial situations are not nearly as dire as industry groups are making them out…
STAT+: Moderna CEO made $398 million in 2022, but still pledges to give most to charity
Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel is starting to reap gargantuan gains from the stock he first…
STAT+: Sanofi becomes the third leading insulin maker to lower list prices, cutting Lantus price by 78%
Following the lead of its rivals, Sanofi will cut the price of its most widely…
STAT+: The big-money Medicare policy that has hospitals worried this Congress
WASHINGTON — There are few things that get lawmakers in Washington salivating more than a wonky…
STAT+: Medicare explains how it will choose drugs for negotiation
WASHINGTON — Medicare laid out Thursday in the greatest detail yet how it will choose…
STAT+: Biden administration to fine manufacturers of 27 medicines for price hikes
WASHINGTON — The Biden administration will fine drugmakers who hiked prices faster than the rate…
STAT+: Democratic lawmakers press pharmacy chains on abortion pill access
More than a dozen Democratic lawmakers are urging some of the nation’s largest drugstore chains…
Opinion: NRC: be straight about when clinicians need to report errors that lead to radiation exposure
A recent action by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) should have protected patients who…
STAT+: Medicare will take R&D costs, effectiveness into account when it negotiates drug prices. But studies show that doesn’t affect prices
By law, Medicare will have to take a medication’s efficacy and its research and development…
STAT+: Biden makes big demands for cancer research and new ARPA-H agency
President Biden is banking on longtime bipartisan interest in eliminating cancer deaths to secure some…
Biden administration requests $20 billion cash infusion to bolster public health
WASHINGTON — The Biden administration is calling for a big boost for public health funding…
STAT+: Biden makes drug pricing a central part of his deficit reduction plans
WASHINGTON – President Biden made lowering drug prices a key part of his budget with…