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Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Bill Cassidy (R-La.) want Congress to take a deeper look at how Biogen’s controversial and pricey new Alzheimer’s drug, Aduhelm, will affect the Medicare program, they wrote in a letter Wednesday. The bipartisan duo is pressing the Senate Finance Committee to take on “the vexing new questions and challenges that approval raises for the Medicare program and other health programs” the panel oversees, they wrote. (Florko, 6/23)

The Food and Drug Administration has been without a permanent commissioner for six months. The agency is facing a barrage of criticisms over its approval of an as-yet-unproven Alzheimer’s drug. And now critics are calling for the ouster of the acting commissioner. But speaking to that acting FDA Commissioner, longtime agency vet Janet Woodcock, you’d think everything is peachy. (Florko, 6/24)

The state’s second-biggest health insurer is threatening to limit or not cover Biogen’s new Alzheimer’s drug, accusing the Cambridge biotech of putting “excessive corporate profits” ahead of patients by charging $56,000 a year for the controversial treatment. Michael Sherman, chief medical officer for Point32Health, the insurance company formed by the recent merger of Tufts Health Plan and Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, said Biogen should cut the cost of the drug called Aduhelm by a factor of roughly 10, to $5,400, given the medicine’s questionable benefits and potential risks. (Saltzman, 6/23)

For families and physicians grappling with the historic approval this month of the controversial Alzheimer’s drug Aduhelm, there’s no shortage of unanswered questions. But a critical one has largely been overlooked: Once patients start taking the medication, how will they know when it’s time to stop? (Molteni, 6/24)