Thursday Miscellany

David Ermer–COVID-19, COVID-19 testing, OPM, Rx coverage–

The FEHBlog generally writes his posts at home in the evening, and he has been noting when it has been raining in Bethesda as it has been quite a rainy summer. This evening features blue skies (although it did rain this morning.)

On the COVID-19 front, the Department of Health and Human Services announced today

combined investments of $6.5 million in two commercial diagnostic laboratories to expand capacity to conduct up to 4 million additional SARS-CoV-2 per month. SARS-CoV-2 is the virus that causes COVID-19. The investments in Aegis Sciences Corporation and in Sonic Healthcare USA will provide critical laboratory equipment supplied by Beckman Coulter Life Sciences and Thermo Fisher Scientific and increase staffing and infrastructure to allow the U.S. to perform an additional 1 million tests each week by early October.

The American Hospital Association, the American College of Surgeons, and other major provider organizations have updated their roadmap for performing essential surgeries during the COVID-19 emergency. This may be helpful to health plan utilization review units.

A Wall Street Journal op-ed piece points out that

More than 500 clinical trials are under way world-wide in the race to find an effective treatment for Covid-19. Everybody wants it; nobody has it—yet. But one of the most promising therapies for Covid-19 patients uses “medicinal signaling cells,” or MSCs, which are found on blood vessels throughout the body.

In preliminary studies, these cells cut the death rate significantly, particularly in the sickest patients. With a powerful 1-2-3 punch, these cells eliminate the virus, calm the immune overreaction known as a cytokine storm, and repair damaged lung tissue—a combination offered by no other drug. This type of regenerative medicine could be as revolutionary as Jonas Salk’s polio vaccine.

Here’s a link to a STAT News report on newly released information on a study of convalescent plasma to treat COVID-19. Something has to pay off soon, right?

In general prescription drug news, GoodRx lists the twenty most expensive medicines in the U.S. The list identifies the manufacturer assistance program associated with each drug.

In other healthcare news —

  • Becker’s Hospital Review reports that UnitedHealthcare is resuming its COVID-19 delay effort to stop sending paper benefit checks to network providers. UHC plans to rely entirely on electronic payments. Smart move.
  • The Affordable Care Act provided government funding to create new CO-OP health plans. The FEHBlog criticized the decision as unnecessary. At on point there were 23 CO-OP plans and OPM was enlisting them for their ACA create Multi-State Program (“MSP”). ThinkAdvisor informs us that the New Mexico Co-op plan is shutting down at the end of this year which will leave three Co-ops operating in Maine and the Midwest. The MSP similarly failed because it was over-complicated and unnecessary.