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NEW YORK (AP) — Rose Wang looks at her staff of 70 employees and wonders if she'll have to lay off some of them to comply with the health care law.
The owner of Binary Group Inc., an information technology firm based in Alexandria, Va., is one of many small business owners who will be required to provide health insurance for her staffers under a provision of the law that goes into effect on Jan. 1, 2014. Wang already provides insurance, but she has struggled with premiums that have soared as much as 60 percent annually, so she requires employees to contribute to their coverage. She's worried because she doesn't know how much she'll have to pay under the Affordable Care Act.
Wang's worry is a gut-wrenching dilemma that many small business owners are concerned that they may face. Now that President Barack Obama has won re-election, the health care overhaul, which presidential candidate Mitt Romney promised to dismantle, is marching forward. Companies must decide before the start of 2014 what they'll do to comply with the law. Right now, no one knows how much the insurance will cost, and owners aren't sure if they'd be better off not buying it and paying a government a penalty of $2,000 per worker. Some owners are even threatening to defy the law. The big challenge for most small businesses is that they just don't have enough information to make concrete plans.
If Wang can't afford the insurance, she says that some of her staffers may have to go.
"I would have to say, 'look, guys, you're family to me in many respects, but this family also depends on having the kind of cash flow available to keep the lights on and keep employing most of you,'" Wang says. "It would have to come down to that."
Read the full piece here.
Alas -- there's no accounting for taste.
From the pages of Medical Marketing & Media:
European regulators to publish clinical trials data
The head of the European Medicines Agency has said it's a matter of how, not if, the body will mandate publication of clinical trials data – and that has pharmas on both sides of the Atlantic sweating the potential implications for global competitiveness.
EMA executive director Guido Rasi said last week “The European Medicines Agency is committed to proactive publication of clinical trial data, once the marketing authorization process has ended. We are not here to decide if we publish clinical trial data, but how.”
His remarks came at the start of a daylong workshop in London on data transparency around clinical trials. The agency has convened several advisory groups, including some representation from industry, to grapple with thorny issues including patient confidentiality, data formats, rules of engagement, good analysis practice and legal aspects. They will start work in early 2013 and are expected to deliver their recommendations by the end of April, with mandatory publication of trials data taking effect on January 1, 2014.
“The implications are rather significant relative to the continued protection of intellectual property rights,” said Peter Pitts of the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest, “and continued incentives—or disincentives—to invest in innovation.”
The full article can be found here.
Gulf News
Experts stress need for innovation in healthcare
Regulation will ensure adequate supplies of medicinal stocks, says ministry
By Carolina D’Souza, Staff Reporter
November 28, 2012
Dubai: The UAE is intensifying its efforts to increase availability of medical technologies and drugs. This key message was delivered by the UAE Ministry of Health (MoH) during the opening of a two-day conference on Wednesday.
The Ministry believes that the UAE is one of the leading countries in the region to provide innovative medicine.
The conference titled ‘Competitiveness Forum: Health Care and Access to Innovative Medicines in the UAE’ brought together senior officials from the MoH, healthcare authorities, Ministry of Economy and GCC regulatory bodies as well as representatives from the private pharmaceutical sector.
Speaking to Gulf News, professor Peter Pitts, president of the Centre for Medicine in the Public Interest (CMPI), said, “The UAE has smartly figured out that by partnering with the pharmaceutical industry, it can bring innovation to the country and make it a hub of innovation.”
He said that the UAE is recognised for its speed in marketing new medicines and providing patients with the newest medical technologies. Stressing on the need for innovation in medicine, he explained that incremental innovation is more common — than one-time innovation — through which companies enhance a product or a technology.
Extending lives
“Stakeholders, governments and regulators should support innovation in healthcare — it extends peoples’ lives,” said Pitts.
Dr Amin Hussain Al Amiri, assistant undersecretary for Medical Practices and Licensing at the MoH, said that innovative medicines are key drivers for growth in the healthcare sector. “The UAE is one of the leading countries, providing its residents with all kinds of medicine, including life-saving drugs. Through regulations, we will ensure that new medicines are introduced and adequate stocks are maintained for all healthcare needs.”
Dr Ola Al Ahdab, pharmaceutical consultant for registration and drug control at the MoH, told Gulf News that access to timely and advanced medicine is a top priority for the UAE government.
Chair of the conference organising committee Dr. Yaqoub Haddad added, through this conference, the pharmaceutical companies and stakeholders will be able to identify strengths and weaknesses in the healthcare sectors to continue to provide access to innovative medicine.
At Barnes-Jewish Hospital, Dr. Lynch said physicians from all over the Midwest referred their sickest heart patients to his facility for transplants and other major interventions. But those patients can skew his hospital’s readmissions numbers, he said: “The weaker your heart, the more advanced your emphysema, the more likely you are to be readmitted to the hospital.”
Dr. Lynch said Barnes-Jewish set up follow-up appointments for patients who didn’t have their own doctors. But about half of the patients never showed up, he said, even after the hospital made reminder phone calls and arranged for free rides. Sending nurses to see patients at home did not significantly reduce readmission rates either, he said.
“Many of us have been working on this for other reasons than a penalty for many years, and we’ve found it’s very hard to move,” Dr. Lynch said. He said the penalties were unfair to hospitals with the double burden of caring for very sick and very poor patients.
“For us, it’s not a readmissions penalty,” he said. “It’s a mission penalty.”
Read the full New York Times piece here.
The first step towards solving a problem is to identify that a problem exists.
The breakthrough therapy provision in FDASIA is aimed at shortening the development time for drugs intended to treat serious or life-threatening conditions and for which preliminary clinical evidence suggests a substantial improvement over existing therapies. But the devil is in the developmental details.
But the promise of speeding innovative medicines to market could be blunted unless issues related to manufacturing, companion diagnostics and international harmonization are adequately addressed.
That was the message from a multi-stakeholder panel discussion at the November 14th Conference on Clinical Cancer Research, co-sponsored by the Friends of Cancer Research and the Engelberg Center for Health Care Reform at Brookings.
Panelists and FDA representatives agreed that if a drug is ushered through the development process, hold-ups will arise from other areas. As a result, discussions surrounding chemistry, manufacturing and control issues for new drugs and biologics will need to take place much earlier in the clinical development process than currently happens to avoid a situation where a breakthrough therapy is approved but the manufacturing processes are not in place to support commercial marketing.
Discovery is one thing. Development and commercialization are another. Nobody said it was going to be easy.
Breakthrough treatments that require companion diagnostics also could be potentially problematic, as the development, validation and approval of the diagnostic may not be able to keep pace with the drug’s abbreviated clinical development program.
Under FDASIA, sponsors must request that their product be designated as a breakthrough therapy, and FDA must respond within 60 days. For drugs receiving the designation, the agency must work in a variety of ways to expedite the products’ development and review, including providing timely advice to the sponsor to ensure the development program is as efficient as possible and involving senior managers and experienced review staff in a collaborative cross-disciplinary review.
Under the law, FDA must issue draft guidance by January 2014 on the process and criteria for making designations and actions the agency will take to expedite development and review.
What about international harmonization? During the development of the FDASIA legislation, Woodcock cited the need for FDA and EMA to “be on the same page” about abbreviated development programs for breakthrough therapies. And, according to a conference issues brief, absent an equivalent development pathway in the EU, “drugs that receive breakthrough designation in the U.S. may still be required to go through the traditional drug development pathway for EMA approval. These differing requirements may make the breakthrough pathway an unattractive option for drug sponsors.’
Richard Pazdur raised the question as to what happens when subsequent studies of a breakthrough-designated product fail to confirm the encouraging efficacy signal seen early in development. Bob Temple suggested the agency’s guidance on breakthrough designations would account for such a scenario. “The concept clearly includes the possibility that it looked really good at first and then now it doesn’t and so it’s designation could go away,” he said. “I’m sure there will be a provision for that.”
That's one thing we can most certainly be sure of. Caveat emptor.
“PR” does not stand for “Post Regulatory” – nor should it.
Via an untitled letter concerning a pitch letter, the FDA sent out an important holiday reminder that press materials are, indeed, regulated speech.
The target of the October 31st letter was Cornerstone Therapeutics. Their press release for its Curosurf (indicated for rescue treatment of premature infants experiencing Respiratory Distress Syndrome) was, according to the FDA, false and misleading due to omission of risk info and presentation of unsubstantiated superiority claims. A pretty standard objection, and an obvious mistake that should have been avoided by the Cornerstone communications staff.
Communications departments and PR agencies beware – play by the rules or suffer the consequences.
The Problem of Fake and Useless Drugs
Global health authorities are making only fitful progress toward eliminating fake or substandard drugs that cause widespread suffering and death in the developing world. Delegates from 76 member countries of the World Health Organization met this week in Buenos Aires to lay the groundwork for more forceful action.
No one knows precisely how much fraudulent or substandard medicine is sold around the world, but the fragmentary data are alarming. In poor countries, half of the medicines used to treat some deadly diseases have been found to be fakes that had little or no active ingredient; worse yet, some contained toxic substances.
One estimate by experts is that at least 100,000 people die every year from substandard and fake medicines for cancer, heart disease, infectious diseases and other ailments. Fake malaria drugs pose a real risk of hampering the international effort to curb the disease. In wealthy nations, substandard or fraudulent drugs have caused thousands of adverse reactions and some deaths.
The United States, despite having a strong regulatory agency, is hardly immune to this problem. In recent years, fake doses of Avastin sold to physician groups for cancer treatment lacked the active ingredient; a weight-loss medicine contained undeclared ingredients that posed a health risk; and compounding pharmacies have produced contaminated drugs that caused meningitis and deaths.
An analysis by health experts published in the British Medical Journal last week lamented the lack of progress in addressing this scourge. The group called for a global treaty backed by governments, drug companies and nongovernmental groups to ensure a safe drug supply.
Crackdowns by international police and national regulatory agencies have made progress in shutting down dangerous online pharmacies. But, in poor countries, the greater problem is keeping bad products out of the supply chain that serves pharmacies and health care provider groups. In Kenya, even Doctors Without Borders, a smart operation, was duped into buying fake antiretroviral drugs to combat AIDS, which it gave to thousands of patients before the fraud was discovered.
There is an urgent need for a more vigorous international effort. That might include stronger surveillance and research to determine the extent of the problem, clearer definitions for bad drugs (substandard, counterfeit, falsely labeled, falsified or fraudulent drugs, for example) and new international laws to make it a crime to traffic in such medicines.HHS has issues a proposed rule that would increase the number of drugs eligible for reimbursement by insurers under the Affordable Care Act's essential health benefits requirements. In a previous bulletin, HHS said it planned to require that essential health benefits cover only one drug in each therapeutic class included in benchmark plans put forward by each state. The new rule essentially changes the language from 'only one' to 'at least one' drug, requiring that insurers cover at least one drug per therapeutic area or the same number of drugs in each category and class as specified in the state benchmark plan, whichever is greater.
BioCentury reports that the proposed rule also states that a plan "must have procedures in place that allow an enrollee to request clinically appropriate drugs not covered by the health plan." Comments on the proposed rule are due Dec. 26. Previous comments on HHS' bulletin said a one-drug requirement would have provided insufficient access to medications for some conditions. Medicare Part D requires that drug plans provide access to "all or substantially all" medications in six therapeutic classes.
HHS also released a proposed rule that prohibits health insurance companies from discriminating because of a preexisting or chronic condition, as well as a proposed rule on implementing and expanding employment-based wellness programs.
When it comes to jurisdiction over compounding pharmacies, Senator Lamar Alexander (R, TN), wants someone “on the flag pole” responsible for ensuring that non-traditional compounders meet set federal standards.
Alexander proposed allowing FDA to designate state boards of pharmacy as the primary regulator, if they are willing and able. If the state regulators proved unable or made mistakes, FDA would have the ability to take over regulation.
FDA Commissioner Hamburg gave that idea a positive nod, saying it was one model that could be explored, but she still wants federal regulations to assure consistency.
“I think it should be made explicit,” she said. “I think for non-traditional compounding there should be federal standards that apply to certain types of practices that go to issues of quality and safety.”
FDA said those facilities should be required to submit to inspections, report adverse events and register with the agency.
On the House side, Tom Harkin (D, IA), suggested that compounding facilities shipping across state lines should come under FDA scrutiny. Other ideas included using a volume threshold and prescription records.
If the FDA gets more responsibility – which is looking increasingly likely -- they will also need more funding. Otherwise this is all just C-SPAN rhetoric.
Did somebody say “sequestration?”
Center for Medicine in the Public Interest is a nonprofit, non-partisan organization promoting innovative solutions that advance medical progress, reduce health disparities, extend life and make health care more affordable, preventive and patient-centered. CMPI also provides the public, policymakers and the media a reliable source of independent scientific analysis on issues ranging from personalized medicine, food and drug safety, health care reform and comparative effectiveness.
