SOTU Recap; Plus, Biden’s New Covid Plan

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While the struggle in Ukraine dominated the start of President Joe Biden’s State Of The Union tackle yesterday, he coated a variety of healthcare matters, together with the pandemic, nursing houses, transgender children, most cancers and veteran’s well being. Prime of the checklist was the excessive price of pharmaceuticals and, specifically, insulin, the life-saving drug for diabetics. Insulin prices round $10 a vial to fabricate however drug firms cost 30 instances that, the president mentioned, and proposed capping the price of insulin at $35 a month. “Drug firms will nonetheless do very nicely,” mentioned Biden. “And whereas we’re at it let Medicare negotiate decrease costs for pharmaceuticals, just like the [Veterans Health Administration] already does.”

As to be anticipated, this didn’t sit nicely with the pharmaceutical trade. “Permitting the federal government to set the worth of medicines isn’t the reply,” Stephen Ubl, president of the commerce group PhRMA, mentioned in a press release. “We all know that story will finish with much less entry to medicines and fewer future innovation, and we all know there’s a greater manner.” 

Biden additionally took goal at “Wall Avenue companies” which have purchased nursing houses the place high quality has gone down and prices have gone up. “That ends on my watch,” the president mentioned. “Medicare goes to set greater requirements for nursing houses and ensure your family members get the care they deserve and count on.”

With the Supreme Courtroom poised to subject a ruling on a Mississippi abortion legislation that would have sweeping implications for Roe v. Wade, Biden affirmed his dedication to protect “a girl’s proper to decide on.” And as Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to research medical remedies supplied to transgender youngsters as “youngster abuse,” Biden requested Congress to move the Equality Act. 

Younger Sufferers Shelter In Basements As Ukraine’s Hospitals Face Important Shortages

For susceptible youngster most cancers sufferers in Ukraine’s capital metropolis, the one possibility is to go underground. As Russian shelling continues and a navy convoy approaches Kyiv, sufferers on the Okhmatdyt Nationwide Kids’s Specialised Hospital have gathered on makeshift beds within the basement. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has created a dire want for extra medical personnel and likewise threatens important provides like oxygen. Ukraine’s Well being Minister Viktor Liashko referred to as on medical doctors in Russia to sentence the actions of the nation’s navy. “That is terrorism, as a result of your navy is shelling peaceable neighborhoods of our cities, capturing at ambulances, destroying our hospitals with bombs, refusing to deliver medicines and meals to hospitals,” he mentioned in a press release. Learn extra right here.

Offers Of The Week

Distant Affected person Collaboration: Microsoft will be collaborating with New Jerssey-based IT companies firm Cognizant on a brand new digital well being product geared toward distant affected person monitoring. The answer goals to make use of {hardware} like wearables and glucose displays for affected person insights and to help in telehealth appointments. The answer will use parts of Microsoft’s Cloud For Healthcare platform, and Cognizant says the product is first in a collection of digital well being options it plans to develop. 

One other Flagship: As we speak, enterprise agency Flagship Pioneering announced the launch of one other healthcare firm: Vesalius Therapeutics, which is popping out of stealth with a $75 million dedication from the agency for platform and pipeline improvement. Vesalius’ platform makes use of AI to cluster sufferers affected by widespread ailments into disparate teams based mostly on their particular signs and comorbidities to offer extra significant therapy. 

9 Figures For Testing: San Jose-based diagnostics firm Visby Medical announced this week that it raised a collection E spherical of $100 million. The spherical was led by Ping An Voyager Companions, joined by Healthcare of Ontario Pension Plan. The corporate says the funding spherical will allow it to scale manufacturing capability for its diagnostics assessments, that are presently geared toward flu, Covid and STIs. 

AI For Psychological Well being: Kintsugi, which is utilizing machine studying to determine indicators of melancholy and nervousness from biomarkers in sufferers’ voices, has raised a $28 million Collection A spherical led by Perception Companions. 

Digital Therapeutics: DarioHealth, which has developed digital therapeutics to deal with continual circumstances, entered right into a $30 million strategic agreement with Sanofi to assist commercialize its platform. 

Noteworthy

Well being insurer Cigna publicizes a brand new $450 million fund to put money into new know-how startups. 

A federal legislation handed in 2020 requires employers to exhibit the well being plans they provide staff are top quality and value efficient. Few are able to comply. 

The ACLU has sued to dam a brand new rule in Texas directing investigations into mother and father whose youngsters have acquired gender-affirming medical therapy.

Coronavirus Updates

The Biden Administration unveiled its new Covid-19 preparedness plan right this moment. The plan focuses closely on prevention, each by way of future Covid surges in addition to new pandemics. The proposal prioritizes remedies, testing and booster photographs for these significantly susceptible to Covid, such because the aged and immunocompromised. It additionally directs psychological well being funding to healthcare staff who’ve been working via the pandemic. The Administration additionally appears to spice up surveillance efforts to shortly detect new Covid variants and develop up to date vaccine boosters. 

The plan drew reward from public well being specialists from each side of the aisle on social media, together with former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb, who called it “complete, ahead wanting, nicely crafted.” Eric Topol, founder and director of Scripps Analysis Translational Institute, said “it’s the excellent plan we’ve wanted for a while.” Céline Gounder, senior fellow at Kaiser Household Basis, was extra circumspect, praising the focus on indoor air flow and air filtration, however noting that plenty of the plan hinges on laws.  She additionally shared articles important of the Administration’s extra individualist strategy to combatting the pandemic, tweeting “Public well being has an uphill battle to battle in international locations just like the US, the place individualism trump[s] collective good.”

Danger Of Covid Hospitalization 5 Occasions Greater With Single Johnson & Johnson Shot Than Pfizer

Johnson & Johnson’s Covid-19 vaccine was far much less efficient at preserving folks out of hospital than the Pfizer-BioNTech shot, in keeping with a peer reviewed examine printed in JAMA Community Open Wednesday, bolstering the case for these vaccinated with a J&J shot to obtain a second booster dose with an mRNA vaccine like Moderna and Pfizer. Learn extra right here.

Different Coronavirus Information

Earlier this month, scientists in Brazil started manufacturing the nation’s first domestically-produced Covid-19 vaccine doses. 

Simply two years in the past, federal officers declared that the pricing and affordability of Covid-19 vaccines needs to be left to the market, however issues have shifted considerably since then.

A latest examine means that when the coronavirus binds to cells, that course of alone can disrupt mobile perform. 

Throughout Forbes

Biden And Allies Are Coming For Russian Billionaires’ Yachts: Forbes Tracked Down 32. Right here’s The place To Discover Them

Whereas Battle In Ukraine Rages Beneath, Astronauts Cooperate Above

Fracking Billionaire Harold Hamm Plans To Reverse Course And Pump Thousands and thousands Of Tons Of Carbon Into The Earth

What Else We’re Studying

China quietly plans a pivot from ‘zero COVID’ (Science)

3 burning questions spurred by the big CRISPR patent ruling (Stat)

Tenet Healthcare is no longer spinning off Conifer, its revenue cycle subsidiary (Fierce Healthcare)