Monday Roundup

The Wall Street Journal reports tonight that the Democratic House leadership and the White House are cautiously optimistic about achieving a compromise COVID-19 relief bill this week. The negotiations continue tomorrow.

The FEHBlog listened to the oral argument this afternoon over the Whitman-Walker Clinic’s motion for a preliminary injunction to stay the upcoming effective date of the newly revised HHS rule implementing the ACA’s individual non-discrimination clause, Section 1557. The Court focused the parties’ attention on the Constitutionally required standing of the Clinic and its co-plaintiffs to bring the case and the justiciability of the issue. The Court allowed the government defendants to submit a brief responding to the new case law support that the plaintiffs raised at the oral argument. That brief is due on August 10 a week before the rule takes effect on August 18. Associational standing is a complicated issue.

The President today signed a wide ranging executive order on improving rural health and telehealth access. Speaking of executive orders, Health Payer Intelligence reports that America’s Health Insurance Plan’s recently criticized the President’s recent executive order against pharmacy rebating practices because “Nothing in the proposed rule would require Big Pharma to lower their prices,” the payer organization stated, referring to the rebate rule. “Instead, it undermines competitive negotiations – a misguided approach that makes the problem of out-of-control drug prices worse.” That is indeed the rub.

On the COVID-19 front,

  • Fierce Biotech reports that “Eli Lilly has started a phase 3 trial to evaluate whether its antibody LY-CoV555 stops the residents of nursing homes from developing COVID-19. Lilly has created customized mobile research units to run the clinical trial at nursing homes as the long-term care facilities lack experience running studies.”
  • The FEHBlog’s dogs requested that after all of his compliments to the monkey community last week he should point out that a German study has found that specially trained dogs may be able smell the COVID-19 virus in saliva or other human bodily discharges.

In other healthcare news —

  • Healthcare Finance reports that the second House appropriations minibus appropriations bill passed last Friday includes a provision that would permit the government to fund work on the develop and promulgation of the HIPAA patient identifier rule.
  • Forbes reports that

Health insurer Humana said [last Wednesday July 29] it is investing $100 million in the in-home primary care company, Heal, to bring in-person physician “house calls and one-touch medicine” to seniors in its Medicare Advantage plans. Heal is a fast-growing startup company that offers primary care house calls on-demand and has delivered more than 200,000 home visits in the company’s first five years in eight U.S. markets. Heal’s services also include telemedicine, telepsychology and related digital monitoring services, which Humana says will be key for its elderly health plan subscribers.

  • Health Payer Intelligence informs us today that in reaction to CMS’s decision to open Medicare Advantage to Medicare beneficiaries under age 65 suffering from end stage renal (kidney) disease “Humana will be partnering with a chronic kidney disease management and awareness organization to provide home healthcare and care coordination to Medicare Advantage members. * * * The payer is partnering with REACH Kidney Care, a nonprofit affiliate of Dialysis Clinic, Inc., in order to provide better kidney care services in Alabama, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee.”