Weekend update

David Ermer–Congress, Generative AI, Government Contracting, Medicare, U.S. Healthcare–

From Washington, DC

  • Congress will return to Capitol Hill for Committee business and floor voting on September 2.
  • JAMA considers Medicare Part D benefit designs following the Inflation Reduction Act.
    • “Question How did prescription drug coverage in Medicare Part D plans change after the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA)?
    • “Findings In this cross-sectional study of enrollees in Medicare Part D stand-alone and Medicare Advantage plans, from 2019 to 2025 mean deductibles and the proportion of patients with coinsurance for preferred brand-name drugs increased. For stand-alone plans, these increases were observed before and after the IRA changes took effect in 2025, but for Medicare Advantage plans, the changes were abrupt in 2025.
    • “Meaning The IRA limited annual out-of-pocket costs to $2000 for Medicare Part D beneficiaries, but concurrent design changes by Part D insurers, particularly among Medicare Advantage plans, may lead to higher cost sharing for some beneficiaries who do not reach this limit in 2025.

From the public health and medical research front,

  • Medscape informs us,
    • “Among hospitalized children and teens, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) mostly affects younger, otherwise healthy infants, while the lesser-known human metapneumovirus (HMPV) tends to affect older children, many of whom have preexisting health conditions, according to a study published in Pediatrics.
    • “Researchers and other experts said the findings will hopefully promote the development of HMPV vaccines and affordable rapid diagnostic tests for the virus in outpatient settings.
    • “HPMV is not on people’s radar,” said John V. Williams, MD, chair of the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health in Madison, Wisconsin. “It was the largest prospective apples-to-apples comparison [on RSV and HMPV]; it has tremendous importance in that sense.”
  • The University of Minnesota’s CIDRAP tells us,
    • A study of more than 4 million children in South Korea found no association between antibiotic exposure during pregnancy or early infancy and increased incidence of autoimmune diseases, researchers reported yesterday in PLOS Medicine.
    • The study, conducted by researchers with Sungkyunkwan University in South Korea, is the latest to examine whether early exposure to antibiotics is associated with increased risk of childhood-onset diseases and neurodevelopmental conditions. Antibiotics are the most commonly prescribed medication in young children and are frequently overused, and animal research suggests antibiotic exposure at an early age may increase the risk of these conditions by disrupting the gut microbiome while it’s still developing.
    • To date, studies exploring potential links between early antibiotic exposure and development of autoimmune diseases have produced conflicting results. But the authors of the new study say previous research has been limited by potential confounding variables, such as infection and genetic factors.
  • Healio lets us know,
    • “The prevalence of certain gut-brain interaction disorders increased significantly during the COVID-19 pandemic, with the largest increase observed in irritable bowel syndrome, according to cross-sectional study results.
    • “Earlier studies focused on people who actually had COVID-19 and found a much higher risk of IBS after infection. Our study is different; we looked at the whole adult population, not just those infected, and still found a big jump in IBS rates,” Christopher V. Almario, MD, MSHPM, associate professor of medicine and co-director of Cedars-Sinai Center for Outcomes Research and Education, told Healio. “This suggests it’s not just the virus itself, but also broader effects of the pandemic — stress, isolation, dietary changes — that additionally likely played a role.”
  • and
    • “Three speakers outlined how AI is likely to have a major impact on the future of preventive cardiology.
    • “At the American Society for Preventive Cardiology Congress on CVD Prevention, the speakers discussed the importance of preventive cardiologists being involved in shaping the direction of AI in medical care, ways in which use of AI can promote health equity and how AI programs can be used for early detection of CV conditions.” * * *
    • :A priority for the future is to develop, validate and deploy AI-based screening for CVD, Pierre Elias, MD, assistant professor of cardiology and biomedical informatics at Columbia University and medical director for artificial intelligence at New York-Presbyterian Hospital, said during a presentation. 
    • “We have mammograms, we have colonoscopies; we have no equivalent for most forms of cardiovascular disease,” he said. “Every doctor in this room has had a patient that makes them think, why am I meeting them so late in the disease course? The way that we diagnose most forms of cardiovascular disease is either too expensive or too invasive to do on a population level.”

From the U.S. healthcare business front,

  • The New York Times explains why “President Trump’s planned pharmaceutical tariffs threaten to hit many of the most common and well-known drugs that Americans take.”
  • Fierce BioTech reports,
    • “Tempus AI has acquired the digital pathology developer Paige, including its FDA-cleared, artificial intelligence-powered programs for spotting the signs of cancer.
    • “The deal totals $81.25 million, which includes Tempus paying out Paige’s remaining commitment to Microsoft Azure for its cloud-computing services. The transaction will also be “paid predominantly” in Tempus stock, according to the company.
    • “Tempus set its eyes on the former Fierce Medtech Fierce 15 winner in part for its massive, anonymized dataset, which encompasses nearly 7 million digitized pathology slides and clinical data licensed from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.” 
  • HR Dive shares an attorney’s opinion pointing out “three DEI approaches employers must reconsider to avoid federal ire. The principles set forth in a recent DOJ memo are likely to be applied by the EEOC to all employers under Title VII, attorney Jonathan Segal writes.”