Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Perspectives: Should Medicare And Medicaid Pay For Weight Loss Drugs?; FDA Approved Ineffectual Drug
Medicare and Medicaid are facing a familiar quandary: how to provide coverage for new weight loss drugs with price tags that could effectively bankrupt the federal government鈥檚 health care budget while simultaneously ensuring continuous coverage for all other health care services used by millions of Americans. (Melissa Barber, Joseph S. Ross, and Reshma Ramachandran, 7/23)
The Food and Drug Administration鈥檚 mandate regarding prescription drugs is clear: to ensure that drugs approved in the United States are sufficiently safe for patients and effective against the conditions they are intended to treat. While the FDA appropriately employs a flexible approach when evaluating promising drugs for life-threatening diseases, it must not neglect its core obligation to ensure that approved drugs improve or extend patients鈥 lives. (Liam Bendicksen, Edward Cliff, and Aaron S. Kesselheim, 7/22)
In the midst of an 鈥渙ut of control鈥 epidemic of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) in the United States, a newly recommended tool for preventing these infections has emerged. Sadly, this novel prevention strategy is not yet available to everyone who might benefit from it due to the insufficiently participatory and inclusive nature of the research used to study it. (Oni Blackstock and Whitney C. Irie, 7/22)
