Latest from Michael McCaughan
The US Medicare Payment Advisory Commission worries that Medicare prescription drug market trends may cause the stand-alone plan portion of the program to “wither away,” which could take the traditional fee-for-service side of Medicare with it.
The first 100 days of the Trump Administration were notable for an extraordinary decline in the number of public meetings hosted by the US Food and Drug Administration. But the schedule changed quickly.
President Trump’s new Executive Order on drug pricing reprises several policy themes from his first administration, including giving the FDA many tasks intended to increase competition in the marketplace.
US FDA Commissioner Martin Makary’s call for placebo-controlled trials to confirm the efficacy of COVID-19 boosters is drawing a lot of criticism, but former Commissioner Robert Califf also supported the idea.
HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. regularly decries the “conflicts of interest” he believes abound in advisory committees, but his concerns, as well as a recent “policy directive” eliminating industry representatives, seem driven by a misunderstanding of the panels’ jobs.
US FDA Commissioner Martin Makary’s disavowal of a proposed reorganization plan may be an important turning point in the Trump Administration. The move does not improve the situation, but may mean the administration stops actively making things worse.