Health Headlines for Thursday, September 13
While Republicans tried to end Obamacare, uninsured rate unchanged in Trump’s first year
USA Today
Despite Republican resistance to the Affordable Care Act, the percentage of Americans without health insurance in President Donald Trump’s first year in office remained the same as during the last year of the Obama administration, according to a closely watched report from the Census Bureau released Wednesday.
Trump Eyeing ‘Disruptive’ Changes to Drug Pricing, Health Secretary Says
Bloomberg
The Trump administration is looking to make “disruptive” changes to U.S. drug pricing to bring down costs for patients, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said.
Doctors hate Medicare’s proposed billing changes
Axios
Physicians have inundated the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services with comments in a bid to kill a major change to how they would get paid for routine patient visits.
A Setback For Massachusetts In States’ Drive To Contain Medicaid Drug Spending
NPR
States serve as “laboratories of democracy,” as U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis famously said. And states are also labs for health policy, launching all kinds of experiments lately to temper spending on pharmaceuticals.
Many Americans continue to misuse prescription drugs, but patterns of abuse are ‘changing’
STAT News
Although more than half of Americans misuse prescription drugs, the percentage that did so has held steady for four consecutive years, according to a new analysis.
Calling teen vaping ‘epidemic,’ officials weigh flavor ban
ABC News
U.S. health officials are sounding the alarm about teenage use of e-cigarettes, calling the problem an “epidemic” and ordering manufacturers to reverse the trend or risk having their flavored vaping products pulled from the market.