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A U.S. appeals court revived a lawsuit on Friday by healthcare and drug industry groups challenging the first-ever U.S. law requiring pharmaceutical companies to negotiate drug prices with the government's Medicare health insurance program that covers 66 million people. The decision from the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals did not address the merits of the case, which was brought by the nation's largest drug industry lobbying group, Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America and others. Instead, the court found only that a Texas judge was wrong to dismiss the case in February on the grounds that he did not have jurisdiction to hear it. (Pierson, 9/20)

The Federal Trade Commission said on Friday that it had taken legal action against the three largest pharmacy benefit managers, accusing the drug middlemen of inflating insulin prices and steering patients toward higher-cost insulin products to increase their profits. The legal action targets CVS Health’s Caremark, Cigna’s Express Scripts and UnitedHealth’s Optum Rx and subsidiaries they’ve created to handle drug negotiations, agency officials said. The three collectively control 80 percent of prescriptions in the United States. (Abelson and Robbins, 9/20)

The GLP-1 drug Wegovy tops the list of medications expected to be included in the next round of Medicare price negotiations, according to a paper in the Journal of Managed Care & Specialty Pharmacy. Last month, Medicare officials unveiled prices for the first 10 drugs chosen for negotiation. Now, all eyes are on which Part D drugs will be chosen for the next round of 15 drugs. (Wilkerson, 9/23)

Less than a week after NBC News detailed how the hospital system Atrium Health of North Carolina aggressively pursued former patients’ medical debts, placing liens on their homes to collect on hospital bills, the nonprofit company announced it would cancel those obligations and forgive the unpaid debts associated with them. Some 11,500 liens on people's homes in North Carolina and five other states will be released, Atrium’s parent company, Advocate Health, said with some dating back 20 years or more. (Morgenson, 9/20)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: How North Carolina Made Its Hospitals Do Something About Medical Debt

North Carolina officials had been quietly laboring for months on an ambitious plan to tackle the state’s mammoth medical debt problem when Gov. Roy Cooper stepped before cameras in July to announce the initiative. But as Cooper stood by the stairs of the executive mansion and called for “freeing people from medical debt,” the future of his administration’s work hung in the balance. (Levey and Alexander, 9/23)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: Across North Carolina, Medical Debt Exacts A Heavy Toll

On March 30, 2019, a swerving car upended Tom Burke’s life. Severely injured after the crash, Burke was airlifted from the Fort Liberty U.S. Army base in North Carolina to UNC Medical Center, in Chapel Hill, where doctors performed surgeries to rebuild his leg. Medicaid covered most of the cost, but Burke was still left with more than $10,000 in bills. He was confined to a wheelchair for two years after the accident, unable to work his car sales job. As a result, he said, he couldn’t pay the outstanding hospital bill and his account was turned over to a collection agency. (Alexander and Levey, 9/23)