From Washington, DC

• Govexec tells us,
  • “Lawmakers are pursuing two different paths to keep the government funded past March 14, though the Republican majority in both chambers is hoping to pass a measure to keep agencies funded at their current levels through September. 
  • “The year-long continuing resolution would allow for only a small number of changes to existing spending levels, which are currently at the same total that agencies received in fiscal 2024. Democratic appropriators are hoping to instead buy more time with a short-term stopgap bill that would allow negotiators to come to a bipartisan agreement on full-year fiscal 2025 funding measures.
  • “House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., has said he will release the text of a continuing resolution to cover the remainder of fiscal 2025 in the coming days and put it to a vote on the House floor early next week. Johnson will face a narrow margin to pass the measure, particularly as the most conservative members of his caucus rarely vote for CRs of any duration. House Democrats have indicated they will not support the measure. 
  • “President Trump is pushing for the year-long stopgap option and the White House has lobbied Republicans to support that bill. 
  • “Despite Johnson’s plans, top appropriators from both parties in the House and Senate have continued to meet and are closing in on a deal to set the top-line funding levels for regular appropriations bills, according to a source familiar with the talks. They are hoping to finalize that agreement in the coming days to demonstrate that a full-year CR is not the only viable option to avert a shutdown.”

• Medical Economics lets us know,
  • “The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC) is inching closer to a recommendation on revising how doctors get paid through the Medicare Physician Fee Schedule.
  • “On March 6, MedPAC opened its latest two-day meeting with almost 90 minutes of discussion of the best ways to balance beneficiary access and costs, physician pay, taxpayer resources, and overall costs to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
  • “While the members had suggestions about the nuances of physician pay and the language to describe it, there was general agreement on two draft recommendations to Congress:
    • Congress should replace the current law updates to the physician fee schedule with an annual update based on a portion of the growth in the Medicare Economic Index (MEI). An example could be: MEI minus 1 percentage point.
    • Congress should direct the HHS secretary to improve the accuracy of relative payment rates for clinician services by updated costs data regularly, and ensuring the methodology used to determine payment rates for different services reflects the settings in which clinicians practice medicine.
  • “Depending on commissioner feedback, MedPAC could vote on the recommendations in April to be included in its June 2025 report to Congress.”

• Per MedTech Dive,
  • “The Federal Trade Commission has challenged a private equity firm’s attempt to buy Surmodics for approximately $627 million, the regulator said Thursday.
  • “Surmodics provides outsourced hydrophilic coatings for devices. GTCR, the private equity group that is attempting to buy Surmodics, owns a majority stake in another coating company, Biocoat.
  • “The FTC said the buyout “would lead to a highly concentrated market for outsourced hydrophilic coatings and eliminate significant head-to-head competition between Biocoat and Surmodics.”

From the judicial front,

• The Hill informs us,
  • “A federal judge has effectively ended the ability of compounding pharmacies to make their own copies of Eli Lilly’s weight loss and diabetes drugs Zepbound and Mounjaro. 
  • “In a sealed decision filed late Wednesday, Judge Mark Pittman of the Northern District of Texas declined to issue an injunction to stop the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) from declaring there was no longer a shortage of the medicines’ active ingredient, tirzepatide.” * * *
  • “Eli Lilly in a statement said the decision “marks the end of the road for mass compounding of risky, unapproved knockoffs that threaten the health and safety of Americans.” 
  • “Any company that continues mass compounding tirzepatide “is breaking the law, and we will work with regulators and law enforcement to stop it,” a company spokesperson said.  
  • “A similar OFA lawsuit against the FDA for removing from the shortage list semaglutide, the active ingredient in Ozempic, is pending.”

From the public health and medical research front,

• The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced today,
  • “Seasonal influenza activity remains elevated nationally but has decreased for three consecutive weeks. COVID-19 activity is declining nationally but elevated in some areas of the country. RSV activity is declining in most areas of the country.
  • “COVID-19
    • “COVID-19 activity is declining nationally but elevated in some areas of the country. Wastewater levels are moderate, emergency department visits are at low levels, and laboratory percent positivity is stable. Emergency department visits and hospitalizations are highest in older adults and emergency department visits are also elevated in young children.
    • “There is still time to benefit from getting your recommended immunizations to reduce your risk of illness this season, especially severe illness and hospitalization.
    • “CDC expects the 2024-2025 COVID-19 vaccine to work well for currently circulating variants. There are many effective tools to prevent spreading COVID-19 or becoming seriously ill.
  • “Influenza
    • “Seasonal influenza activity remains elevated nationally but has decreased for three consecutive weeks. Data to date suggest the season has peaked, however, flu-related medical visits, hospitalizations, and deaths remain elevated, and CDC expects several more weeks of flu activity.
    • “Additional information about current influenza activity can be found at: Weekly U.S. Influenza Surveillance Report | CDC
  • “RSV
    • “RSV activity is declining in most areas of the country. Emergency department visits and hospitalizations are highest in children and hospitalizations are elevated among older adults in some areas.
  • “Vaccination
    • “Vaccination coverage with influenza and COVID-19 vaccines is low among U.S. adults and children. Vaccination coverage with RSV vaccines remains low among U.S. adults. Many children and adults lack protection from respiratory virus infections provided by vaccines.”

• The Washington Post reports,
  • “An unvaccinated New Mexico adult who tested positive for measles has died, the second death in a growing outbreak centered along the Texas-New Mexico border, officials said Thursday.
  • “The individual did not seek medical care before death, New Mexico health department officials said. The official cause of death is under investigation by New Mexico’s Office of the Medical Investigator. However, the state health department scientific laboratory has confirmed the presence of the measles virus in the person, the state health department said.
  • “The person was a resident of Lea County, where at least 10 cases of measles have been reported. Lea County is just over the border from Gaines County, Texas, where the outbreak is centered.
  • “Six of the Lea County cases are among adults, and four are in children. Seven of the 10 were unvaccinated, and three have unknown vaccination histories.”

• The American Hospital Association News relates,
  • “Cigarette smoking by adults has dropped to its lowest level in 60 years, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported today. Despite that, tobacco is the leading cause of preventable death in the U.S., the agency said. 
  • “From 2017-2023, an approximate 6.8 million decrease in adults who exclusively smoke cigarettes was offset by a 7.2 million increase in adults who exclusively smoke e-cigarettes. Cigarette smoking overall by U.S. adults decreased from 42.4% in 1965 to 11.6% in 2022.”

• Per Aunt Minnie,
  • “Breast and colorectal cancer screening in 2023 rebounded from declines during the COVID-19 pandemic and surpassed pre-pandemic screening estimates, according to findings published March 5 in JAMA.
  • “Yet researchers led by Jessica Star from the American Cancer Society in Atlanta, GA, also found that cervical cancer screening numbers are still below pre-pandemic estimates, and that improvements in cancer screening rates were mostly seen in individuals with higher socioeconomic status.
  • “Improving patient communication around cancer screening and providing patient navigators to assist with the structural and cost barriers to screening are two ways health systems can help with successful screening rebounds,” Star told AuntMinnie.com.”

• Medscape assesses Alzheimer’s Disease diagnosis and care.

• The National Cancer Institute lets us know,
  • “How doctors treat a form of liver cancer called intermediate-stage hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is likely to change, based on updated findings from two large clinical trials. Both trials tested a procedure called TACE in combination with immunotherapy drugs and treatments called angiogenesis inhibitors. TACE, or transarterial chemoembolization, involves using a catheter to deliver chemotherapy directly to the liver.”

• Per Healio,
  • “After rising over a 35-year period, thyroid cancer incidence in the U.S. plateaued from 2010 to 2019, according to findings published in The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology.
  • “In a retrospective analysis of data from the National Cancer Institute’s Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results (SEER) and National Center for Health Statistics databases, researchers found no changes in metastasis or mortality rates for adults diagnosed with thyroid cancer from 1975 to 2019, despite a rising incidence rate during that time. These findings reveal thyroid cancer may have been over-diagnosed in more recent years, according to Zachary Zumsteg, MD, associate professor of radiation oncology and biomedical sciences, and radiation oncology director of the head and neck oncology disease research group at Cedars-Sinai. However, Zumsteg noted the plateau of thyroid cancer incidence in the past 10 years of the study may be indicative of a change in diagnostic practices.”

• Per BioPharma Dive,
  • Johnson & Johnson is terminating some research for an experimental drug that the company previously predicted could be a multibillion-dollar product.
  • In a statement released Thursday afternoon, J&J said it will stop developing the drug, called aticaprant, as an add-on therapy for patients with major depressive disorder. Over the past few years, a series of large, late-stage clinical trials tested aticaprant in adults who have hard-to-treat MDD and moderate-to-severe cases of a defining symptom of the disorder, anhedonia, which presents as a loss of interest or an inability to experience joy.
  • “While the drug continues to look safe and well-tolerated, the program has shown “insufficient efficacy in the target patient population,” according to J&J. Aticaprant may still have potential, however, so the company plans to “explore future development opportunities” in other “areas of high unmet need.”

From the U.S. healthcare business front,

• The Wall Street Journal reports,
  • “Not much has gone right for Walgreens Boots Alliance in the past decade. 
  • “Customers bought more and more household items online at sites such as Amazon.com, instead of Walgreens’s more than 8,000 stores across the U.S. The pharmacy chain inked deals with other drug suppliers and doctors’ offices, but stood pat while rivals, including CVS and Express Scripts, merged with big health insurers, gaining control of the medical-reimbursement purse strings that were squeezing pharmacies.
  • “Walgreens cash flow sagged, its debt piled up and shares sank. And on Thursday, Walgreens was sold to private-equity firm Sycamore for $10 billion, down a staggering 91% from its $106 billion peak in 2015.
  • “The storied pharmacy chain—which became a ubiquitous seller of everything from diabetes injections to nail files as retailers consolidated across the U.S.—fell after it neglected to keep up with customer preference to buy online and failed to navigate the fierce competition and intense cost pressures of healthcare.
  • “It could shrink more after its sale. Sycamore, a New York-based firm that specializes in retail and consumer investments and, more recently, is better known for smaller deals, is expected to sell off pieces of the business or work with partners to turn it around, The Wall Street Journal reported.
  • “Globally, the transaction ranks as one of the largest leveraged buyouts in the past decade.”

• The Journal also tells us about “The Walgreens Billionaire Watching His Empire Come Apart
• From Monaco, Stefano Pessina built a retailer valued at about $100 billion. It agreed to be taken private this week for roughly $10 billion.”

• BioPharma Dive points out,
  • “Optum Rx, a pharmacy benefit manager owned by one of the country’s largest insurance companies, UnitedHealth Group, has added a new, much-anticipated pain drug to some of its commercial formularies.
  • “Sold as Journavx, the drug received U.S. approval in late January as a treatment for the short-lived “acute” pain typically felt after an operation or accident. Journavx works differently than other available medications, and its developer, the biotechnology juggernaut Vertex Pharmaceuticals, has positioned it as an important, non-opioid option for pain management.”

• Beckers Hospital Review lists 18 health systems with strong finances.