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The lame-duck Congress is making slow progress on its long to-do-before-the-end-of-the-year list. Democrats agreed to lift the covid-19 vaccine mandate for the military as part of the big defense authorization bill, but efforts to ease federal restrictions on marijuana didn’t succeed.
Meanwhile, the fight against high drug prices has spread to employers, which are trying a variety of strategies to spend less on prescription drugs while still giving workers access to needed medications.
This week’s panelists are Julie Rovner of KHN, Joanne Kenen of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Politico, Anna Edney of Bloomberg News, and Sandhya Raman of CQ Roll Call.
Among the takeaways from this week’s episode:
The race to the holiday break is on, with no agreement so far on spending as current government funding is set to expire on Dec. 16. Although another continuing resolution is expected, it would likely leave out measures such as addressing mental health, so lawmakers would need to start over next year. The annual defense authorization bill is also in the works and would end the military’s covid vaccine mandate.
In the wake of the infant formula shortage, an FDA advisory group report this week said the agency’s work on food regulation needs a major overhaul, especially when it comes to enforcement power and leadership.
In drug pricing news, Americans can expect to see the costs of covid testing, vaccines, and treatments rise as federal subsidies run out and leave the pandemic response subject to the same cost and access disparities common to the nation’s health care system. Meanwhile, entrepreneur Mark Cuban’s discount prescription drugs company is teaming up with EmsanaRx, a nonprofit pharmacy benefit manager — thereby cutting out for-profit PBMs in another attempt to cut costs for patients.
Health care providers are pushing Congress to stop a long-planned cut in Medicare payments, while a new report from KFF shows the three largest for-profit …