Is the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act with its Medicare drug price negotiation provision the new legislative sacred cow that cannot be tweaked? Debate over whether the orphan drug carveout included in the negotiation provision should be extended to drugs with more than one rare disease indication was the major discord in an otherwise bipartisan discussion the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health had in a hearing held Feb. 29 in observation of Rare Disease Day.
More than a year and a half after the U.S. FTC launched its investigation into how pharmacy benefit manager (PBM) practices and consolidation impact patients’ ability to access and afford their prescription drugs, the six biggest PBMs in the country have yet to fully comply with the agency’s June 2022 order to provide data and documents pertaining to certain business practices.
In recent years, the U.S. Congress has come to rely unduly on continuing budget resolutions to fund government operations, and fiscal year 2024 is no exception. The current continuing resolution (CR) for the FDA budget is set to expire March 1, but there is concern that Congress will resort yet again to a CR to cover the balance of fiscal 2024, a predicament which suggests that the FDA’s appropriations may be flat relative to fiscal year 2023.
As chronic drug shortages continue in the U.S., yet another congressional investigation into the problem has been launched. But instead of a wholistic search for the root causes, this one, launched by the Democratic members of the House Oversight Committee, focuses on three drug companies – Pfizer Inc., Sandoz Inc. U.S. and Teva Pharmaceuticals USA Inc.
Unless there’s a last-minute meeting of the minds, it looks like any extension of the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) five-year intellectual property waiver for COVID-19 vaccines will be shelved, at least for now.
Citing national security and intellectual property (IP) concerns, a bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers is calling on three federal departments to investigate China’s Wuxi Apptec’s ties, and that of its subsidiary, Wuxi Biologics, to the Chinese Communist Party and the country’s People’s Liberation Army.
Citing national security and intellectual property (IP) concerns, a bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers is calling on three federal departments to investigate China’s Wuxi Apptec’s ties, and that of its subsidiary, Wuxi Biologics, to the Chinese Communist Party and the country’s People’s Liberation Army.
Many health care facilities in the U.S. have deployed artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms that are tailored for the patient population seen in those clinical settings, a practice that avoids FDA regulation by removing the question of commercial distribution.
When the House Energy and Commerce’s Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations held its last hearing on the U.S. FDA’s foreign drug inspection program in December 2019, there were “reasons for cautious optimism,” subcommittee Chair Morgan Griffith (R-Va.) said in opening a Feb. 6 hearing on the issue. But in the wake of the pandemic, the optimism is gone.
Legislation passed in the U.S. Congress in 2013 called upon the federal government to dispense with the Federal Helium Reserve by September 2021, a deadline that some stakeholders are grateful to see has passed without action.
