- America is experiencing its biggest prescription drug price deflation in generations.
- The good news: New CMS guidance requires Medicaid and CHIP, Medicare Advantage and exchange insurers to post certain metrics, such as a list of all services requiring prior authorization, to the plans’ public-facing websites in an easily accessible location.
- The bad news: More needs to be done.
- Two approaches to fixing Medicaid.
- Why have prescription drug prices seen the biggest drop in 60 years?
- LLMs size you up. If it thinks you are low socioeconomic status and you ask about travel options, it may filter out more expensive flights – without you asking it!
Category: John C. Goodman
Once Viewed as a Model for the World, is Cuban Health care Inching Toward Privatization?
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs and the World Health Organization reported that over 32,000 pregnant women faced limited access to diagnostics and limited amounts of the stable electricity needed to sustain neonatal units. Prenatal care faces delays because of the lack of everything from testing supplies to available facilities. And now, even once successful improvements in health indicators have fallen: a report from the Center for Economic and Policy Research measured an increase in infant mortality rates from 4.0 to 9.9 per 1,000 births between 2018 and 2025.
Source: Ananya Rupanagunta at VOX
How Government Negotiated Prices raise the Future Price of Drugs
Our analysis … looks at the first 25 medicines for which Medicare officials have already set government prices. We estimate that the price controls have, or will, reduce those drugs’ net prices by about 37%, on average, relative to a world without government price setting.
In our model, that drop in brand-name drugs’ revenue leads to a 38% decline in the number of generic or biosimilar competitors coming to market. As a result of this decreased competition, the price of those post-exclusivity generics and biosimilars would be 45% higher, on average.
Source: Tomas Philipson
Wednesday Links – 19 August 2026
- Medicare Advantage plans give enrollees an average of $2,660 per member for benefits not available from traditional Medicare.
- Study: Nearly one-third of all women ages 20 to 44 will have heart disease in 2050, up from one-fourth today.
- Study: More than half of patients with metastatic lung cancer don’t receive life-extending treatments.
- A 2012 randomized controlled trial sponsored by the federal government found that children assigned to Head Start showed transient improvements in language and literacy during preschool. But “these early effects rapidly dissipated in elementary school,” the study found, and participants performed no better academically by third grade.
- The French lilac, a garden plant that was used to treat diabetes for centuries became the blueprint for metformin.