Congress
Medicare under pressure to pay for Alzheimer’s drugs
With Alzheimer’s drugs looking more promising by the day, House Republicans increased pressure for broader Medicare coverage of the treatments at a House hearing Wednesday, my colleague John Wilkerson reports.
Medicare only pays for accelerated approval Alzheimer’s drugs when taken by patients in clinical trials. The policy was put in place in reaction to concerns that Aduhelm, approved in 2021, doesn’t work and is dangerous, but it applies to all drugs in the same class. Since then, two more Alzheimer’s drugs have shown better results than Aduhelm, so now there is pressure on Medicare officials to change the policy – they’ve given no indication that they will do any such thing.
“The 6.7 million people living with Alzheimer’s don’t have time for [Medicare] to come to its senses,” House Ways and Means health subcommittee Chair Vern Buchanan (R-Fla.) said.
Republicans also called out CMS for taking two years to replace a Trump-era rule that would have granted four years of Medicare coverage to FDA-designated breakthrough devices. The agency was supposed to release a somewhat pared-down version, with the same goal of encouraging device innovation, in April. “It’s been more than two years and the Biden administration has not proposed a replacement rule for this,” said Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio). “If you didn’t like it and you canceled it, fine. But tell us why.”
administration
White House split screen on unspent Covid funds
Here’s an interesting side-by-side for you as debt ceiling negotiations drag on. For context, Republicans have called for the government to rescind billions in unspent Covid-19 relief funds.
President Biden said Tuesday that idea is “on the table” in debt ceiling and government spending conversations. “The answer is I’d take a hard look at it because … we don’t need it all but the question is what obligations were made, commitments made, the money not disbursed, etc.”
In contrast, White House Covid-19 Response Coordinator Ashish Jha had this to say when he was asked the same day by reporters about the possibility unspent relief funds could be clawed back: “Obviously we remain committed to making sure that Americans remain protected against Covid, and that requires resources. And so we will continue to need resources to do the things that are important.”
SBRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images
