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Mark Cuban recently launched his online pharmacy, Cost Plus Drugs Company, aimed at Big Pharma and its unaffordable drug prices. The goal of Cost Plus Drugs Company is to lower prescription drug costs for consumers and health plans by eliminating supply chain middlemen. Through direct negotiations with drug makers and pharmacies, the drug company can offer discounted prices for more than 100 medicines, resulting in savings for employer health plans, private insurers and government insurance plans. (Tamara Green, 1/26)

If we look on the bright side of the past two years, Covid should at least mean we’ll be ready for the next major threat from infectious disease. We know how to prepare, we have more advanced technology, we’ve strengthened public-health protocols. And governments have learned just how quickly science can move when offered the right incentives. All of these learnings are needed already — in the fight against growing antimicrobial resistance (AMR), or infections that don’t respond to drugs. (Therese Raphael, 1/27)

Every day, 17 Americans die waiting for an organ transplant. But revolutionary experiments show that there may be a new way to save the more than 100,000 people waiting for an organ in the United States: A scientific paper published last week described how a team of surgeons successfully transplanted a pig kidney into a brain-dead patient, and a man in desperate need of a heart received a new one this month, also from a pig. (Adam Larson, 1/26)

As the Omicron variant of COVID continues to sweep across the country, the mass-casualty event of the past 21 months continues to cast a shadow on the field of medicine, putting doctors at increased risk for depression and anxiety, which will affect our careers and our patients for years to come. While the determination and courage of my colleagues gives me hope, the reality is that we, and our patients, will suffer harm unless we make 2022 the year that all physicians — and especially those who are just beginning their medical careers — can get the essential mental health care services they need. (Susan Hata, 1/27)

The United States is a wealthy nation that lavishes spending on health care, supports a world-class biomedical research effort and was top-ranked for pandemic readiness. So why was it such a failure when covid-19 hit? A major reason was that our public health agencies, from local and state governments to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, were overwhelmed. The CDC director, Rochelle Walensky, has called for rebuilding public health in the United States, and it is none too soon. (1/26)

At his one-year anniversary press conference last week, President Biden announced that his administration is pivoting to targeted, more achievable policy priorities. The administration previewed this scaled-back effort earlier this month by proposing a new rule to reclaim roughly $2 billion annually from the convoluted prescription drug supply chain for seniors. The CY 2023 Medicare Advantage and Part D Proposed Rule would redirect so-called Direct and Indirect Remuneration (DIR) fees that pharmacies pay to Medicare plans to more than 50 million Medicare beneficiaries in the form of lower prices at the prescription counter. (Terry Wilcox, 1/25)

Healthcare experts have argued for years that we should move away from the dysfunctional, unsustainable fee-for-service Medicare reimbursement system and toward value-based models that incentivize better health outcomes such as reduced hospitalizations and post-acute care costs. (Dr. Clive Fields and Gary Jacobs, 1/26)