Drug pricing

Medicare hires a director of drug price negotiations

Following my reporting about the exits of two advisers to Medicare’s new drug pricing division, CMS reached out with some new details about how the new group is taking shape. 

The org chart on CMS’ website now has listings for leadership for the group and its six subdivisions. The agency said it has 70 staff on board “and continues to hire toward meeting its goal of 96 individuals,” and that the HHS staff directory is outdated. The agency said that the hires have worked for drug makers, PBMs, and insurers. 

The group’s director of the negotiations subdivision is Daniel Heider, a pharmaceutical pricing expert who came from Bristol Myers Squibb and Merck. His deputy, Corey Rosenberg, comes from CMMI. The policy subdivision’s director Elisabeth Daniel also came from CMMI, and her deputy Thomas Garrigan joined CMS from CVS Health’s policy and regulatory affairs team.

influence

Insurance group beefs up lobbying, ready to fight hospitals

A group of insurers has banded together and hired lobbyists to advocate for policies challenging hospital consolidation, my colleague Nick Florko spotted — a sign of new battle lines that look a lot like those that characterized the surprise billing fight. 

The group, called Better Solutions for Healthcare, has members including the health insurance lobbies AHIP and the BlueCross BlueShield Association, and employer groups like the American Benefits Council and the Business Group on Health. Its policy priorities include increasing price transparency, promoting hospital competition, preventing price markups, banning facility fees, and instituting site-neutral payments.

The group hired Adam Buckalew, a former Sen. Lamar Alexander staffer who worked on the HELP committee, and Kathryn Spangler, another former HELP staffer under former Sen. Mike Enzi’s tenure who was recently an executive at the American Benefits Council, to lobby on its behalf, according to new lobbying disclosures.

washington to wall street

Tommy Tuberville’s ticker tracker

Rachel Cohrs/STAT

Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) doubled down on an interesting biotech investment in July, according to new stock purchase disclosures. He bought between $3,000 and $45,000 in shares of Humacyte, a small biotech company that recently released data about how its product, which is designed to prevent amputations, performed in treating combat injuries in Ukraine.

The company is hoping to receive FDA approval and then to enter into contracts with the Department of Defense, per a public announcement by the company in March 2022. Tuberville sits on the Senate Committee on Armed Services.

The stock closed at $2.87 the day Tuberville bought it, and the price has gone up since then to $4.60 — a 60% increase. No other lawmaker has bought or sold the stock, and the company is a pretty tiny biotech. Most lawmakers who trade health care stocks trade large insurers and drug makers.  Legislators are prohibited by law from trading based on non-public information they get in the course of their work.

Tuberville spokesperson Steven Stafford said, "Senator Tuberville has long had financial advisors who actively manage his portfolio without his day-to-day involvement."