I’m still soliciting thoughts on your must-listen health care podcasts.
In my erstwhile hometown of Lincoln, Nebraska, there’s a gorgeous pedestrian bridge that connects the arena to the baseball stadium and hockey rink.** On each of the pillars of the bridge is a quote from a famous Nebraskan, with wisdom from Warren Buffet, Willa Cather, and the like.
One of the more incongruous*** inscriptions on the bridge comes from Malcolm X: “I’m for truth, no matter who tells it. I’m for justice, no matter who it is for or against.”
The “I’m for” structure was pinging around my head all weekend as I read through all of the coverage of the NIH move to massively roll back indirect funding for its grantees, a move that would effectively cripple huge swaths of the academic research enterprise.
(If you’re not tracking, STAT has owned this story. Here’s their original piece from Friday, plus a good op-ed, plus a breakdown of who will be affected.)
While I usually use this space to defend corporate innovation, it seems like a good time to borrow Malcolm X’s language and go on the record: “I’m for innovation, no matter who generates it.” As such, it’s easy to label this as a disaster.
The good news (or, at least, the not-bad news) is that there’s some legitimate question about the legality of the move. The House Democrats laid out the history here, The short version is that fears that we’d face this exact moment prompted a bipartisan swell of support for, and passage of, legislative language to explicitly bar this kind of funding move.
So, like so much else, this one will be in the hands of the lawyers for the time being. But even if that’s a success, this portends a legislative fight. Getting lawmakers on the record right now is not an empty exercise.
The other what-can-I-do effort you should be aware of is a statement from some of the leaders of No Patient Left Behind decrying the move. They’re asking for signatures, and you can check it all out here.
** Lincoln is really good at sports-related infrastructure. Go Big Red.
*** It’s incongruous because Malcolm X, who was born in Omaha but whose family left the state a year later, is not generally thought of as a Nebraskan.
Congrats to the Eagles on a dominating Super Bowl performance. I’m the kind of contrarian who likes to root for defenses, so I got my money’s worth.
Did advertisers, who plunked down $8 million for 30-second spots, get their money’s worth? It’s always hard to tell, but there were four health ads that I noticed that are worth talking about.
Hims ran a dense opus on obesity as a way of pushing their compounded GLP-1s. I suspect that the spot hit the audience they were going for, but it also may have sowed the seeds of a backlash. Spending $8 mil on a commercial that ducks FDA rules while essentially exploiting a loophole in drug regulation has already set some gears in motion. (FWIW: the New York Times ranked it as the worst of the 64 commercials it reviewed. “Confusing, unsettling and unconvincing.”)
Ditto with NYU Langone, which spent a ton of money for 30 goofy seconds of doctors playing football. Like Hims, I don’t think this is going to lead the outcome to Langone wants: it’s a 340B hospital already under fire for low rates of charity care spending. That’s $8 million that won’t be going back to the community, and this shines a spotlight on questions about how the system is using its resources.
My other quibble with the NYU Langone piece is that if you’re a health company spending that kind of dough, there ought to be some sort of effort to improve the public health. So kudos to Novartis, whose breast cancer spot had a clear call to action.
Pfizer went for “inspirational,” with a heart-swelling piece about a childhood cancer survivor. But what caught my eye was Pfizer’s effort to drive views to PfizerForAll.com, its direct-to-consumer telehealth+distribution channel.
Insurers are pushing the Trump administration to change the rules for Medicare next year, most notably by rolling back the mandate to cover obesity treatments, per Modern Healthcare.
I failed to mention last week that ICER published its evidence report on the cost-effectiveness of Vertex’s Journavx. Given that ICER initially thought the medicine was cost-saving at a substantially higher price, its affirmation of the fairness of the price shouldn’t be a surprise.
BMS CEO Chris Boerner fielded a question about the new administration on last week’s earnings call. The whole bit is worth a review, but here’s how he framed up the company’s wish list on IRA: “I would highlight addressing the pill penalty and addressing the spillover impact as two of the most important areas that we’ll be focused on.”
340B Report has some veeeeery interesting commentary on 340B from Sen. Bill Cassidy, who will be running the Senate HELP Committee for the foreseeable future: “The growth of the 340B program over the last 10 years has been quite remarkable. So the intent of our legislation will be to preserve where it is being done correctly—and, again, I would use [health centers] as exhibit No. 1—but to focus down on other places. … It seems to be unconscionable that people would be misusing this program.”
Cost Curve is produced by Reid Strategic, a consultancy that helps companies and organizations in life sciences communicate more clearly and more loudly about issues of value, access, and pricing. We offer a range of services, from strategic planning to tactical execution, designed to shatter the complexity that hampers constructive conversations.
To learn more about how Reid Strategic can help you, email Brian Reid at brian@reidstrategic.com.
