- In the big spending bill passed by Congress, a number of health agencies and initiatives — including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health and efforts to combat opioid addiction – received additional funding.
- With the passage of the federal spending bill now over, it seems highly unlikely that there will be another effort to stabilize the Affordable Care Act’s insurance marketplaces this year. One possible reason is that health care does not appear — at this point — to be much of a motivating issue for voters as they think about the midterm elections. While they did get activated by the threat of a repeal of the ACA in 2017, dealing with trying to fix the marketplaces is much more complicated and unlikely to galvanize voters in the same way.
- The House has now passed a bill letting terminally ill patients appeal to drugmakers to get experimental medicines. But the House version of this “right-to-try” legislation is different than the Senate version that passed last year, and it’s not yet clear which bill will go forward. Patient groups and government drug officials past and present have complained the bill could do more harm than good. A new study in the New England Journal of Medicine helps explain that financial problems patients face after a hospitalization are based on more than just their health insurance status.
