Weekend update

Congress continues its work on Capitol Hill this week. Here’s a link to the Week in Congress report on last week’s efforts.  The short term continuing resolution funding the federal government expires on Friday May 5.  The House also may vote on the American Health Care Act this week.

The FEHBlog ran across a couple of articles from last week’s Health DataPalooza.  The first article from FCW.com concerns a speech by HHS Secretary Tom Price, and the other from Healthcare IT News concerns a speech by HHS Office for Civil Rights Director Roger Servino. These were their first speeches to the healthcare IT community.

The Wall Street Journal reports that large prescription drug manufacturers are ripping a page out of the Hollywood producer’s playbook by arranging for third party financing of the expensive final stage of their new drug projects — the clinical trials required for FDA approval.  “The drawback: sharing risk also involves sharing the rewards. Such collaborations involve the company in question agreeing to relinquish some of the drug’s profit to its partners.”   This innovation may add more new drugs to the pipeline but the FEHBlog doubts that it will lower the cost curve.