First Edition: December 22, 2014

Kaiser Health News: Medicare To Offer Help To Some Seniors When Advantage Plans Drop Doctors
Starting next year, the government will offer some seniors enrolled in private Medicare Advantage insurance an opportunity to leave those plans if they lose their doctors or other health care providers. Last year, thousands of seniors in at least 10 states were left stranded or assigned new doctors when insurers discontinued contracts with the physicians. (Jaffe, 12/22)

The New York Times: Military Hospital Care Is Questioned; Next, Reprisals
At any hospital, patient safety and quality of care depend on the willingness of medical workers to identify problems. The goal is for medical workers to be free to speak bluntly to — and about — higher-ups without being ignored or, worse, punished. In interviews and email exchanges, many doctors, nurses and other medical workers said military hospitals fall short of that objective. (LaFraniere, 12/20)

Politico: Why Single Payer Died In Vermont
Advocates of a “Medicare for all” approach were largely sidelined during the national Obamacare debate. The health law left a private insurance system in place and didn’t even include a weaker “public option” government plan to run alongside more traditional commercial ones. So single-payer advocates looked instead to make a breakthrough in the states. Bills have been introduced from Hawaii to New York; former Medicare chief Don Berwick made it a key plank of his unsuccessful primary race for Massachusetts governor. Vermont under Shumlin became the most visible trailblazer. Until Wednesday, when the governor admitted what critics had said all along: He couldn’t pay for it. (Wheaton, 12/20)

The New York Times: AbbVie Deal Heralds Changed Landscape For Hepatitis Drugs
In a sign that price competition may take hold for hepatitis C drugs, the nation’s largest manager of prescriptions will require all patients to use AbbVie’s newly approved treatment rather than two widely used medicines from its rival Gilead Sciences. (Pollack, 12/22)

The Wall Street Journal: New Hepatitis C Drug Gets Helping Hand
Express Scripts, which has been critical of the cost of Gilead’s treatments, said on Monday it had negotiated to receive a discount from AbbVie on the $83,319 wholesale price of the multidrug Viekira Pak, a standard 12-week course of treatment that was approved by U.S. regulators on Friday. In exchange, Express Scripts will no longer pay for Gilead’s drugs for patients with a type of hepatitis C known as genotype 1, representing about two-thirds of the people with the viral liver disease. (Walker, 12/22)

The Wall Street Journal: FDA Approves AbbVie’s Hepatitis Treatment
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved AbbVie’s Viekira Pak, an all-oral cocktail of several drugs that cured more than 90% of people with the most common subtype of hepatitis C in the U.S., genotype 1, in clinical trials. The regimen consists of several pills taken daily for about 12 weeks for most patients, eliminating the need for an older injected drug, interferon, which many patients find difficult to tolerate. (Loftus, 12/19)

The New York Times: Hepatitis C Treatment Wins Approval, But Price Relief May Be Limited
Insurers and state Medicaid programs have been eagerly awaiting the approval of the AbbVie regimen, which is called Viekira Pak, hoping that competition will drive down prices. But price competition might be limited. (Pollack, 12/19)

The Associated Press: FDA Approves AbbVie Combo Hepatitis C Treatment
About 3.2 million Americans are infected with hepatitis C, which generally doesn't cause noticeable symptoms until the liver is damaged. Without proper treatment, up to 30 percent of those people will eventually develop cirrhosis, an advanced liver disease in which excessive alcohol, fat and other substances kill off liver cells, causing scarring of the liver tissue. The virus can cause liver failure and liver cancer, resulting in the need for a liver transplant.(Johnson, 1219)

The Wall Street Journal: Top Medicaid Official To Step Down
Mann, director of the agency’s Medicaid unit, had served for five years as the top federal official for the program, which covers low-income Americans and is run jointly by the federal government and the states. For the last 2 and a half years, she had been responsible for coaxing states to extend coverage to almost all low-income residents following a June 2012 decision by the Supreme Court. That ruling effectively gave states a choice over whether to participate in the health law’s Medicaid expansion. (Radnofsky, 12/19)

The Hill: Head Of Medicaid To Exit
The head of the country’s biggest public insurance program and a champion of healthcare access for the poor will step down next month after five years. Cindy Mann, the deputy administrator at the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS), has earned praise nationwide as a fierce advocate for healthcare access and a key leader in the rollout of ObamaCare. ... Vikki Wachino, who previously served as the program’s deputy director, will temporarily take over the post. (Ferris, 12/19)

The New York Times' Upshot: H.M.O.s Offer Lower Prices In Health Care Marketplaces
Many people will see their premiums increase significantly for 2015 if they haven’t yet taken the advice of my colleague, Margot Sanger-Katz, to shop around. But a new analysis from the McKinsey Center for U.S. Health System Reform suggests insurers had some luck in holding down prices if they offered plans that limited a consumer’s choice of doctors and hospitals. Plans featuring health maintenance organizations or restricted networks of providers typically had the lowest year-over-year premium increases, according to McKinsey, which sifted through information on the 223,000 plans offered in the marketplaces at the county level over the last two years. (Abelson, 12/19)

The Associated Press: Obama Renews Tax Breaks, Creates ABLE Accounts
President Barack Obama signed legislation Friday that temporarily extends dozens of costly tax breaks for millions of businesses and homeowners, commuters, teachers and others. The measure also allows people with disabilities to open tax-free savings accounts. (Superville, 12/19)

The Washington Post: D.C. Judge Resorts To Matchmaking In Effort To End 30 Years Of 911 Calls
The District’s most frequent 911 caller, Martha Rigsby, was due in court to again discuss her habit of excessively dialing the city’s emergency line. She arrived straight from Sibley Memorial Hospital, dressed in a red winter coat and borrowed baggy pants, with a social worker in tow. Also there was her close friend Demetric Pearson, who sat with Rigsby in the hallway until her case was called. The hearing was supposed to be a routine check to see whether Rigsby had reduced her 911 calls. But it quickly became an exercise in judicial matchmaking. (Brittain, 12/20)