Any future FDA Commissioner will have to face eroding trust in our public health institutions. Accelerated approval accounts for a minority of approvals but encapsulates trends feeding mistrust, making a good starting point to restoring FDA’s credibility. www.healthaffairs.org/content/fore...

New from Institute for Clinical and Economic Review (ICER) and Verdant Research: We revisited our 2021 white paper on FDA's accelerated approval pathway. icer.org/news-insight...

Scoop: Vinay Prasad is out at FDA. HHS spokesperson said "he did not want to be a distraction to the great work of the FDA in the Trump administration." Story TK in Pink Sheet.

🚨 Top 5 Takeaways from our 2024 Biopharma Wrap-Up 🚨 Every 6 months, my team and I review biopharma R&D and investment decisions. Our latest report examines 2024. Much of the last year was shaped by the ongoing race to fill impending revenue gaps as older drugs face LOE. More below 👇

🩺📊 #medsky

I had a chance to join CBS News and Major Garrett to discuss my recent @newyorker.com piece on the consequences of money in medicine. Is U.S. health care entering a "gilded age"?

Vertex $VRTX touts pain drug results, but medicine does not outperform placebo in sciatica study www.statnews.com/2024/12/19/v... via @matthewherper.bsky.social

At @kff.org, we’ve been busy updating our interactive with national health spending data released yesterday. Explore trends in US health care costs from 1960-2023 and make your own charts using this tool: www.healthsystemtracker.org/health-spend...

Every drug I used when I took care of kids with cancer had serious risks. The only thing that could justify my using them was that their benefits outweighed their risks. But without proof of efficacy, there’s no way to make that calculation. Safety & efficacy are 2 sides of the same coin.

A costly symptom of our complicated drug reimbursement system: People in the same Medicare drug plan face wildly different prices for the same drug

We are hiring new fellows and faculty in PORTAL. Please reach out if interested! And spread the word.

How to write a scientific paper in four slides. Full guide here: www.surgeryredesign.com/s/WritingFor... YouTube format here: youtu.be/fgeahUrXVaY?... #meded #medsky #research

On the DHHS and CMS news, I will not allow MAHA. I may allow for MWAHA because, sarcasm. Health journalists and academics, say no to the acronym. First act of resistance. ##healthpolicy #youmustbejoking

I already have a headache sorting signal from noise and it‘s not even 2025 yet. Gonna be a while before we have a clear picture of what this means for Rx. www.axios.com/2024/11/19/r...

"We’ve had members and manufacturers say, OK we will not invest in developing a biosimilar in Medicare Part D or in the PBM space, if the PBM system does not change.” - Juliana Reed of the Biosimilars Forum #healthpolicy

A big congrats to Biden administration and CMMI on moving forward with a novel payment approach for cell and gene therapies! www.cms.gov/newsroom/pre...

Incentive for R&D is always a topic in Pharma policy, but debate usually focuses on investment and development. I fear the pressure to show novelty at the bench is being overlooked. How much money and effort is going into chasing scientific dead ends? www.statnews.com/2024/01/19/d...

For any docs out there who struggle with prior auth and would love to have your biases confirmed, I highly recommend this new study by @michaelannica.bsky.social and Nancy Keating, out yesterday in JCO: pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38086013/ 1/

NON-profit hospitals — what’s in a name? Check out my @nytimes.com oped asking nonprofit boards to come back to their mission www.nytimes.com/2023/11/30/o... @sangerkatz.bsky.social @dusetzinas.bsky.social @stevejoffe.bsky.social

In a recent Health Affairs Forefront post, National Pharmaceutical Council put forward cherry-picked examples to argue that Medicare negotiation will harm incentives to innovate. The problem: their own examples show the opposite. Here’s our response. @dusetzinas.bsky.social @bnrome.bsky.social

What professional development topics do you wish you learned about in grad school (in a PhD program, in particular)? #healthpolicy

This would be such an long-overdue win for those living with Hepatitis C. www.nytimes.com/2023/11/28/o...

Will be key to keep track of FDA's success in this effort to get needed long-term data on gene therapies. #healthpolicy pink.citeline.com/PS149041/US-...

I think this $NOVO suit may be one of the most interesting to watch in terms of the Medicare negotiation challenges. #healthpolicy