Last year, the first of Donald Trump’s second term as President, there were 2214 measles cases, according to U.S. Measles Tracker managed by Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. This year, there have already been 1923 cases. It was against this backdrop that HHS Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr and Louisiana Republican Senator and physician Bill Cassidy debated public health and the merits of vaccines at the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee Senate Committee hearing, which Cassidy chairs.
MedCity News Editor-in-Chief Arundhati Parmar and Samir Batra, Managing Partner of Health Innovation Pitch, co-hosts of the Debunked Podcast, discussed the showdown and its implications.
Arundhati also highlighted a recent interview with Ed Park, co-founder and CEO of Devoted Health, who made a splash at the Medicarians conference in Las Vegas on a panel she moderated when he advocated for CMS paying less to Medicare Advantage plans.
“Every year since the inception, we have been encouraging CMS to pay plans less. The only thing that is not good is if you basically go up 10% in one year and 0% in another year. That’s not good. But they should index the cost of Medicare to less than inflation and guarantee that it’s actually less than traditional Medicare.”
Another topic of interest was a recent article by Dr. Ezekiel Emmanuel published by The Bulwark: What Would You Give Up to Make American Healthcare Better? Samir shared his thoughts on the topic from drug prices to PBMs.
