Latest Plan to Cut Medicare Drug Payments Leaves Senators Skeptical

Under fire from senators in both parties, a senior federal health official told Congress on Tuesday that the Obama administration would adjust its plan to reduce Medicare payments for many prescription drugs, but those assurances did not fully allay deep concerns.

The official, Dr. Patrick H. Conway, a deputy administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, indicated to the Senate Finance Committee that the administration would probably go ahead with its proposal in some form, and he promised that officials would try to prevent any harm to patients.

That did little to calm bipartisan fears. Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, called the administration plan “an ill-conceived experiment” and suggested that it was a form of “human subjects research” for which the government needed the consent of patients.

Read more at New York Times

Obscure group helps block patient access to crucial medications

When it comes to quality health care, the U.S. Latino population starts out at a serious demographic disadvantage. We are more likely to lack health insurance and face other serious hurdles to accessing quality care.  And the incidence of serious disease is much higher among Hispanics than the American population at large.

For instance, heart disease is the nation’s No. 1 killer, and among Hispanics, cardiovascular disease is even more pervasive because of heightened risk factors, like high blood pressure, obesity and diabetes.

Read more at Fox News Latino

Insurers struggling with drug data

In an effort to combat high drug prices, health insurance companies are trying to pay drugmakers for how well their medicines perform . But health plans are running into a problem all too familiar in digital health: They are having trouble gathering and interpreting the right data, Pro’s Darius Tahir reports this morning.

“The typical payer has claims data…but not the clinical data underlying the service they’re being billed for. The payer knows that a patient’s cholesterol was tested…but not whether his or her cholesterol levels improved since the last reading. Without that knowledge, an insurer can’t assess whether, say, the multi-thousand dollar PCSK9 inhibitor the company paid for is actually reducing “bad” cholesterol — or improving heart health.”

Read more at Politico

Study Shows Telomere Length in Humans Can be Altered by Medical Drugs

Scientists at the National Institutes of Health are reporting evidence that human telomeres can be favorably lengthened by medical drug treatment.  Telomeres are the ends of our chromosomes and function to protect them from damage. Over time, telomeres shorten, and this shortening has been linked with increased disease risk.

Read more at the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute

Aggressive Blood Pressure Treatment Lowers Heart Failure

People who get their high blood pressure down to normal levels may substantially cut their risk of heart disease -- even if they're elderly or have already had heart problems, new research suggests. The study results, from a major clinical trial called SPRINT (Systolic Blood Pressure Intervention Trial), add to evidence that aggressively treating high blood pressure in older adults can pay off.

Read more at Newsmax Health

In child heart patients, novel approach improves symptoms of hazardous lymph blockage

Pediatric researchers have devised an innovative, safe and minimally invasive procedure that helps relieve rare but potentially life-threatening airway blockages occurring in children who had surgery for congenital heart defects. Physician-researchers developed new imaging tools to treat plastic bronchitis -- in which abnormal circulation causes lymphatic fluid to dry into solid casts that clog a child's airways.

More from Science Daily

Gene therapy shows early promise against heart failure

There might be good news for millions of Americans who suffer from heart failure: A trial using gene therapy appears to have boosted patients' cardiac function.

"This type of an intervention would be the ultimate method to reconstruct damaged heart tissue so that it can be mechanically functional again," explained one expert, Dr. Justine Lachmann. She directs the Congestive Heart Failure Program at Winthrop-University Hospital in Mineola, N.Y.

More from UPI Health News

Research: Insurance key to statin use among at-risk Hispanics

Having health insurance is a key predictor of whether Hispanics at high risk for heart disease use cholesterol-lowering medications known as statins, according to new research in the Journal of the American Heart Association.

It is one of the first studies to document differences in the use of widely prescribed statins and aspirin among diverse Hispanic and Latino populations in the United States.

More from American Heart Association News

Many patients with high stroke risk don’t get needed blood thinners

Patients who have a heart rhythm disorder that can come with a high risk of stroke often don’t receive blood-thinning medications that can make this complication less likely, a U.S. study suggests.

Researchers studied almost 430,000 people with a condition known as atrial fibrillation, an irregular rapid heartbeat that can lead to stoke, heart failure and chronic fatigue.

More from Reuters Health

PCSK9 Inhibitors: Good Early Responses With Pricey Drugs, but Doctors Still Waiting on Real Data

Seductive early trial results showed massive reductions in LDL cholesterol among patients who took PCSK9 inhibitors—the new injectable cholesterol-lowering medications—including those already taking high-intensity statin therapy. Now that they are on the market, physicians are coming to terms with how to best use the costly drugs in selective patients.

Read more at tctmd