Welcome back! Apologies for missing last week. Here’s a recap of what you missed last week in the healthcare world: Providers scored a big win when a federal judge scrapped CMS’ Site-Neutral payment policy. The judge ruled that HHS doesn’t have the appropriate level of authority to enforce payment policy on hospitals. This ruling was reminiscent of the mandatory television drug ad price disclosure ruling that was also shot down in court earlier this year on a similar principle. Nancy Pelosi released her plan to bring down drug prices (paywall – WSJ) – namely, the costliest 25 or ..read more

23andMe is moving quickly into the field of drug development, and its first push is a predictable and seemingly natural step for the company – clinical trial recruitment. 23andMe partners with TrialSpark. Based on all of the information us common folk paid to hand right on over to the DNA testing company, 23andMe is partnering with TrialSpark, a more tech-savvy version of a contract research organization, to recommend customers for clinical trials based on those customers’ DNA, demographic or other characteristics. These DNA testing firms are now sitting on a ton of probably ..read more

Healthcare Policy Fall Preview: The Congress Strikes Back Here’s a preview of Congress’ fall healthcare policy agenda: Lowering prescription drug prices – potentially allowing Medicare to directly negotiate drug prices with pharmaceutical companies. Pelosi’s Plan, which includes the above direct negotiation tactic, might actually have bipartisan support Finding a solution to surprise medical bills But as of now, it looks like Congress is facing major pushback from industry leaders on surprise billing – from an extremely well-funded dark money group. We might have to wai ..read more

The PBM industry is seeing plenty of transformation this year. A few stories this week highlighted how this industry is evolving to a more patient-centered model, including more pricing transparency and heightened consumer focus: CVS Deal gets approved. After a tumultuous 9 month run, a federal judge finally managed to approve the CVS-Aetna deal this week, paving the way for CVS to officially acquire Aetna (even though they’ve been operating as one entity for…almost a year). The approval comes at a time when CVS, traditionally a PBM player, is trying to transform its business model a ..read more

Battle for the Healthcare Cloud 1. Electronic Health Record Battle Royale. The battle is heating up between Big Tech titans as they compete for health data storage contracts (paywall – WSJ) with big-time health systems. As one of the final frontiers for Amazon, Google, and others, these Cloud contracts could get a foot in the door to work with healthcare folks that could result in long, lucrative relationships that expand beyond just the Cloud. Recent Cloud deals announced included Google and the Mayo Clinic, Microsoft and Providence St. Joe’s, and plenty of others. Generally, th ..read more

Battle Royale in the Cloud. The battle for the healthcare cloud is heating up between Big Tech titans as they compete for health data storage contracts (paywall – WSJ) with big-time health systems. As one of the final frontiers for Amazon, Google, and others, these Cloud contracts could get a foot in the door to work with healthcare folks that could result in long, lucrative relationships that expand beyond just the Cloud. Recent Cloud deals announced included Google and the Mayo Clinic, Microsoft and Providence St. Joe’s, and plenty of others. Generally, the agreements reall ..read more

1. Vaping Related Illnesses are Spiking The Vaping Epidemic. The CDC is reporting hundreds of vaping-related illnesses across 29 separate states, which is a huge spike in what most might think is a ‘safer’ practice in vaping. Apparently, most of the incidents are happening because of third party, foreign substances (like THC) somehow making their way into the vapes. The exponentially increasing number of reports shows us just how far behind vaping regulations are when it comes to preventing these sorts of things. Forget about the shady marketing tactics. Now, real health scares are c ..read more

Welcome to the Q2 2019 installment of the Healthy Muse’s quarterly healthcare news update, where every single healthcare story known to man is summarized in one gigantic post. Of course, the stories below were covered first in-depth on our newsletter over the course of the quarter. If you’re interested in following healthcare news in a weekly 5-minute easy read, then feel free to sign up! 4.1.2019 Healthcare Stories 1. New York Suburb Bans Unvaccinated Children from the Public That seems drastic. This week, Rockland County, a suburb of New York, declared a state of eme ..read more

Trump wants to buy Greenland and we live in a simulation 1. Johnson & Johnson Opioid Ruling That’s painful. (get it?…I’ll see myself out) This afternoon, a judge released the verdict (paywall – WSJ) of the first of many trials determining whether Johnson & Johnson specifically contributed to the Oklahoma opioid crisis. The state of Oklahoma asked for as much as $17 billion in fines from J&J, claiming it would cost that much to recover from the damage done. While the judge found J&J liable, the fine was set at $572 million, which is about 3% of w ..read more

Want cheaper surgery? Go on vacation. An all-inclusive resor- er…wait – hospital? Save this wild story down for later. To reduce costs on healthcare, some employers – like Ashley Furniture – have been flying down patients along with physicians to Cancun, Mexico in order to perform surgeries and other procedures. As KHN reports, one patient flew from Mississippi to meet an orthopedist from Milwaukee to perform a knee replacement surgery, and the patient was paid for it – that’s how much less it was to have the procedure done in an upscale hospital in Mexico rather than in Am ..read more