Weekend Update

From Washington, DC,
- The House of Representatives and the Senate remain in session this week on Capitol Hill for Committee business and floor voting. Roll Call shares insights into these important activities.
- On April 3, 2025, at 10 am, ET, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee will hold a confirmation hearing for Scott Kupor, the President’s nominee for the position of OPM Director. The FEHBlog looks forward to Mr. Kupor’s confirmation.
- Fierce Healthcare reports,
- “Over three dozen healthcare associations and organizations penned a letter this week calling on House and Senate leaders for action on a bill bolstering foreign-born physician recruitment to underserved regions.
- “The letters—which include the American Medical Association, the American Hospital Association and the Association of American Medical Colleges as signatories—speak to the Conrad 30 Waiver Program and its role in alleviating the nation’s worsening clinical workforce shortage.
- “It allows foreign students who come to the U.S. for medical training immediately begin practicing in the U.S. by foregoing visa requirements that would force them to return to their home country for at least two years. In exchange, program participants are required to work full-time for at least three years in a medically underserved community.” * * *
- “A pair of bills introduced in the House and Senate late last month and referred to their respective judiciary committees would reauthorize and “make necessary updates to strengthen the program,” the groups said.”
- CMS is holding a virtual town hall meeting on April 30, 2025, from 10 am to 3 pm ET “for clinicians and researchers as well as other interested parties, such as patient advocacy organizations, patients, and caregivers, to share input relevant to the clinical considerations related to drugs selected for the second cycle of negotiations [under the Inflation Reduction Act].”
From the judicial front,
- Govexec reports,
- “President Trump can once again fire a key appointee who hears appeals of firings and suspensions of federal employees, putting the board on which she sits at risk of losing its functionality as the administration is pushing out large swaths of the federal workforce.
- “Cathy Harris, a Democrat nominated to the Merit Systems Protection Board by President Biden, was fired by Trump last month but quickly won reinstatement from a district judge. On Friday, a panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in a 2-1 decision paused the lower court’s decision and said Trump could fire Harris.
- “The decision also applied to Gwynne Wilcox, a member of the National Labor Relations Board who Trump had fired, and a district court also reinstated.
- “If Harris is removed, MSPB would be left without a quorum. From 2017 to 2022, the board also lacked a quorum, which created a 3,500-case backlog that was only just recently eliminated. Due to an interim final rule established that same year, MSPB can conduct some actions without a quorum, though it cannot issue final decisions appealed to its central board.
- “Zac Kurz, an MSPB spokesman, confirmed Friday evening that that the central board no longer has a quorum. While regional administrative judges can still issue initial rulings, the central board can no longer hear appeals of those rulings.”
From the public health and medical research front,
- The New York Times reports,
- “As many as one in five people — an estimated 64 million in the United States — have elevated levels of a tiny particle in their blood. It can greatly increase the risk of heart attacks and strokes.
- “But few know about it, and almost no doctors test for it, because there was not much to be done. Diet does not help. Neither does exercise. There have been no drugs.
- “But in the near future, that may change.
- “On Sunday [today], cardiologists announced that an experimental drug made by Eli Lilly, lepodisiran, could lower levels of the particle, Lp(a), by 94 percent with a single injection. The effects lasted for six months and there were no significant side effects.
- “But it is not yet confirmed that reducing Lp(a) levels also reduces the risk of heart attacks and strokes. That awaits large clinical trials that are now underway.
- “The Lilly research was presented Sunday at the annual meeting of the American College of Cardiology and simultaneously published in the New England Journal of Medicine. At least four other companies are also testing innovative drugs that block the body’s production of Lp(a), a mix of lipids and a protein.
- “Dr. David Maron, a preventive cardiologist at Stanford not involved in the Lilly research, said the evidence of profound and long-lasting reduction in lipoprotein levels with lepodisiran was “thrilling.”
- “Dr. Martha Gulati, a preventive cardiologist at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center also not involved in the trial, said the study was “really elegant.”
- and
- “Many people use a smartwatch to monitor their cardiovascular health, often by counting the number of steps they take over the course of their day or recording their average daily heart rate. Now, researchers are proposing an enhanced metric, which combines the two using basic math: Divide your average daily heart rate by your daily average number of steps.
- “The resulting ratio — the daily heart rate per step, or DHRPS — provides insight into how efficiently the heart is working, according to a study conducted by researchers at the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University and published today in the Journal of the American Heart Association.
- “The study found that people whose hearts work less efficiently, by this metric, were more prone to various diseases, including Type II diabetes, hypertension, heart failure, stroke, coronary atherosclerosis and myocardial infarction.
- “It’s a measure of inefficiency,” said Zhanlin Chen, a third-year medical student at the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University and lead author of the new study; his coauthors included several Feinberg faculty physicians. “It looks at how badly your heart is doing,” he added. “You’re just going to have to do a tiny bit of math.”
- NPR Shots tells us,
- “As a measles outbreak in West Texas and New Mexico continues to grow, and other states report outbreaks of their own, some pediatricians across the U.S. say they are seeing a new trend among concerned parents: vaccine enthusiasm.
- “Our call center was inundated with calls about the MMR [measles, mumps, rubella] vaccine,” says Dr. Shannon Fox-Levine, a pediatrician in Broward County, Fla. She says parents are asking if their child is up to date on their vaccinations. Or “should they get another vaccine? Should they get an extra one? Can they get it early?” * * *
- “Interest in vaccinations has ramped up ahead of the spring break travel season, says Dr. Susan Sirota, a primary care pediatrician in the Chicago area.
- “We have many patients calling us because they are traveling to either Texas or places near Texas, or states where they suspect that vaccination rates are lower than we have in Illinois,” Sirota says. “Many families are requesting early MMR [vaccines].”
- MedPage Today lets us know, “Transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR) continued to hold its own against surgery for younger patients at low surgical risk, with the Evolut Low Risk trial now halfway to its goal of 10-year follow-up.”
- Per Medscape,
- “GSK said on Tuesday that it is studying a group of more than a million older adults in the UK to examine whether its best-selling shingles vaccine lowers the risk of dementia.
- “The British drugmaker is using the health data of some 1.4 million people, aged 65 to 66, some of whom received its Shingrix shot and some who did not.
- “GSK’s chief scientific officer Tony Wood said the data, from the state-run National Health Service’s (NHS) large database, is a unique set of information because due to a tweak in the UK’s shingles immunization program there is effectively a naturally randomized trial already taking place.”
- and
- “High-dose oral cholecalciferol (vitamin D3) supplementation significantly reduced disease activity in patients with clinically isolated syndrome (CIS) suggestive of multiple sclerosis (MS) in the randomized, controlled D-Lay MS trial.
- “Combined with data from previous studies on vitamin D as an add-on therapy, the results of the D-Lay MS trial, which show a stronger effect of vitamin D in patients with vitamin D deficiency compared to others, strongly suggest that patients with vitamin D deficiency should be supplemented, regardless of whether they are already under disease-modifying therapy,” Eric Thouvenot, MD, PhD, University Hospital of Nimes, Neurology Department, Nîmes, France, told Medscape Medical News.
- “The study was published online on March 10 in JAMA.”
From the U.S. healthcare business front,
- Modern Healthcare reports,
- “Health Care Service Corp. was limited to selling Blue Cross and Blue Shield policies, including Medicare Advantage plans, in Illinois, Montana, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas before the deal.
- “After the Cigna acquisition, Health Care Service Corp. has a much bigger footprint and can offer Medicare Advantage in 25 more states and the District of Columbia, Part D nationally, and Medigap in 48 states and the District of Columbia. The insurer now counts 830,000 Medicare Advantage members, about four times as many as prior to the Cigna purchase.” * * *
- “Moving up a weight class means facing dominant for-profit Medicare Advantage carriers such as UnitedHealth Group subsidiary UnitedHealthcare, Humana and CVS Health subsidiary Aetna head on. Those three insurers collectively cover 57% of Medicare Advantage enrollees, according to an analysis of Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services data the investment bank Stephens published in February.”
- Beckers Payer Issues adds,
- “Moody’s has downgraded Health Care Service Corporation’s insurance financial strength rating to A3 from A2 following the company’s acquisition of Cigna’s Medicare business on March 19.
- “Moody’s cited likely challenges with the integration of the MA business into the company’s primarily commercial insurance operations, along with ongoing headwinds within the MA industry more broadly.
- “Another concern is the limited experience the company has with making and integrating major acquisitions in the recent past,” analysts wrote. “The company expects to invest an estimated $1 billion over the next two years into updating systems and for working capital to ensure its success, but this may prove to be insufficient.”
- Kauffman Hall explains how health systems can create a sustainable approach to corporate shared services.