Rather than the in-your-face, blame-and-shame show that was expected, the Sept. 30 drug pricing hearing before the U.S. House Oversight Committee was more a reminder of the policy differences between Democrats and Republicans on how best to make prescription drugs more affordable.
The governor’s signature brought California a step closer to realizing state officials’ dream of having their own generic and biosimilar drug label. In signing the California Affordable Drug Manufacturing Act into law Sept. 28, Gov. Gavin Newsom touted the legislation as a way to break down market barriers to affordable prescription drug prices. “Our bill will help inject competition back into the generic drug marketplace – taking pricing power away from big pharmaceutical companies and returning it to consumers,” he said.
The U.S. pathway for legally importing certain prescription drugs from Canada to take advantage of lower prices is closer to opening for business with the FDA issuing a final rule and guidance on making it happen.
The U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) recently proposed some changes to national coverage policies for left ventricular assist devices (LVADs) and artificial hearts, the latter of which would no longer be covered under a national coverage determination. The proposal to allow Medicare administrative contractors (MAC) to make coverage decisions for artificial hearts on a case-by-case basis clanged across both industry and medical societies, which cited data collection problems and inequalities in access as reasons the existing coverage policy should remain in place.
The U.S. FDA’s Accreditation Scheme for Conformity Assessment (ASCA) program is intended to foster med-tech regulatory harmonization, but stakeholders saw a number of issues with the September 2019 ASCA draft guidance.
The U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has posted a proposed rule for coverage of FDA-designated breakthrough devices, a programmatic objective that has been front and center for the agency for several years. However, Tamara Syrek Jensen, director of the Coverage and Analysis Group (CAG) at CMS, said the proposal to redefine the term “reasonable and necessary” may be the more critical piece of the proposed rule because it would give the agency unprecedented flexibility in covering a broad swath of medical technologies.
Before authorizing or licensing any COVID-19 vaccine, the U.S. FDA will hold a public advisory committee meeting on that vaccine, FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn said at a Sept. 23 hearing before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.
Pear Therapeutics Inc. has seen its efforts in the prescription digital therapeutics (PDT) space come to fruition with two new deals reported this week. The Hartford Financial Services Group Inc. now covers two of the company's therapeutics – Reset, for substance use disorder, and Reset-O, for opioid use disorder – for its employees and their beneficiaries. Preferredone will also cover the two PDTs for all its members.
The U.S. FDA has posted another draft version of the intended use rule, this time with a fix for the so-called knowledge problem. This latest draft would eliminate mere knowledge of off-label use as a trigger for amendments to the product label, a provision the agency said in a Sept. 22 statement will “provide greater certainty and predictability for regulated parties.”
The digital medicine company Physiq Inc. has received a contract from the NIH to develop an artificial intelligence (AI)-based index that can provide an early warning that a patient with COVID-19 is in decline and needs medical treatment. The index, called the COVID-19 Decompensation Index (CDI) Digital Biomarker, will run on Physiq’s existing Accelerateiq computing platform, analyzing physiological data from FDA-cleared wearable devices to create a personalized baseline for patients who have tested positive for COVID-19.
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