TGIF

David Ermer–CDC, COVID-19, Rx coverage–

OPM now has a prominent page on its website that gathers together the agency’s COVID 19 guidance. Just in time for a group of Democrat Senators to criticize that guidance as Govexec reports. In salient point the Senators state that

OPM work with health insurance providers to ensure that federal employees can affordably access the preventive care and treatment they may need as a result of COVID 19.

Here are today’s COVID 19 statistics for our country from the Centers for Disease Control

Travel-related36
Person-to-person spread18
Under Investigation110
Total cases164

Here’s a link to the CDC’s latest statistics for another coronavirus, the flu.

  • Pneumonia and influenza mortality has been low [this flu season], but 136 influenza-associated deaths in children have been reported so far this season. This number is higher for the same time period than in every season since reporting began in 2004-05, except for the 2009 pandemic.
  • CDC estimates that so far this season there have been at least 34 million flu illnesses, 350,000 hospitalizations and 20,000 deaths from flu.

Modern Healthcare discusses an interesting Humana social determinants of health program in the Medicare Advantage program. The program kicked off this month with Oschner Health in New Orleans. The FEHB Act and the Internal Revenue Code don’t allow FEHBP plans to copy this program but they can take steps to emulate it, in the FEHBlog’s view.

The Boston Globe’s StatNews provides an interesting overview of the state of the biosimilar drug market in our country. Biosimilars are the specialty drug equivalent of generic drugs. Congress opened the door to biosimilar development in the Affordable Care Act. Biosimilars are poised to create a substantial amount of drug cost savings over the next five years according to the article.