An advisory panel of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) voted to recommend Opill be sold over the counter (OTC) without a prescription. Opill is a hormonal contraceptive pill first approved in 1970. Advisory committees are panels of outside medical experts who advise the FDA on matters related to the specific area they were appointed to. There are numerous advisory panels. In the latest vote, one panel advises on over-the-counter medications. Another panel advises on reproductive health. The combined panel was composed of 17 experts in a 2-day hearing.
Category: Drug Prices & Regulations
The High Cost of Poor Mental Health
There is a growing mental health crisis today. Numerous people report being depressed or anxious due to Covid and its aftermath. As the Texas mall shooting illustrates there is a lot of untreated mental illness in the United States. Indeed visits to the emergency rooms (ER) for mental health problems are on the rise. A mental health issue such as a panic attack can mimic other problems. I met a cab driver who said he went to the ER for a heart attack but it turned out to be a panic attack. Purportedly, hundreds of thousands of Medicaid patients seek treatment in emergency rooms for mental health.
Friday Links
- What a hospital in the home is like at Mayo. Note: this is only possible because of Covid relaxation of normal Medicare and Medicaid rules.
- A proposal for value-based drug pricing. I am skeptical
- AI is learning how to read your mind. MRI scans reveal unexpressed thoughts.
- Private industry developed a nonaddictive painkiller. The FDA is why it isn’t widely available. (WSJ)
Friday Links
- Health Savings Accounts after 30 years: 27.5 million individuals own one, with holdings of $105.7 billion.
- Three Medicaid reforms Biden doesn’t like: Trump era work requirements, the Tennessee block grant and the Texas waiver.
- What white bagging, brown bagging and clear bagging have to do with specialty drugs.
- A Crenshaw/Schrier House bill would give Medicaid enrollees access to direct primary care doctors.
- Insurers are using “copay accumulators” to prevent copay assistance (say, from a nonprofit to help patients with drugs costs) for counting toward the fulfillment of a deductible.
- The Biden administration is misusing the “march in rights” created under the Bayh-Dole Act to threaten to impose price controls on drugs that originally had government research funding. (WSJ)