Congress to Tricare: Listen up

Led by Georgia’s own Buddy Carter, 49 members of Congress have signed a letter inviting Defense Health Agency Director Ronald Place to a listening session regarding the the Tricare/Express Scripts contract.

They expressed their “grave concerns about the impact our service members, military retirees, children, and many others are facing” with the current contract that, as written, will force many independent pharmacies to leave the network.

DHA’s decision has come at the expense of small businesses, independent community pharmacies, specialty pharmacies, long-term care pharmacies, and most importantly the beneficiaries they serve.

So they invited Gen. Place to a December 7 listening session ‘with impacted stakeholders, members of Congress, and staff’. Will DHA attend? What will come out of it? Stay tuned. In the meantime, click here to read the letter (PDF).

How high can we go?

The FDA has approved Australian drugmaker CSL’s gene therapy for hemophilia B. And CSL has set the price at three (point 5) … million … dollars.

CSL CEO Paul Perreault in an undated photo

This makes it the world’s most expensive treatment (thankfully it’s a one-time thing), edging out a previous gene therapy^*.

Hemophilia B affects about 1 in 40,000 people, so [does math] that’s about 9,200 Americans, or 32.4 billion-with-a-B dollars.

^* As well as a bottle of Mother Teresa’s tears and a cartridge of magenta printer ink.

In unrelated news…

The pharmaceutical industry’s reputation is diving like the Russian military’s. It’s not quite yet at it’s pre-pandemic low (when 32% of Americans viewed it positively), but it’s way off its high in February 2020 (62%) — and it’s dropped 10% since this time last year.

Who’s gonna pay for all this?

All of us, of course — that’s how insurance works. But imagine if there was only one body shop in town, and car insurers had to pay whatever it felt like charging, no negotiating. How high would your premiums be?

High healthcare costs don’t just affect Medicare. Private insurers have a little more negotiating power, but they’re still on the hook — and that means employers’ premiums go up, and, like other things, that’s gonna roll downhill.

What’s the endgame? With a divided Congress, who knows?

Whatever doesn’t kill you

Mild to moderate stress — like Cousin Rodney’s plus-1 becoming a plus-6 (as opposed to, say, expecting the Spanish Inquisition^*) — might actually be good for your brain.

That’s what UGA researchers found based on interviews, cognitive tests, and MRI imaging of more than 1,000 people.

“Our findings show that low to moderate levels of perceived stress were associated with elevated working memory neural activation, resulting in better mental performance.”

What can help even more? Support from family and friends. Other than Rodney, anyway.

^* Nobody ever does.

Do you want a Covid spike? Because this is how you get a Covid spike

Have a big football game.

Researchers at University College London and Texas A&M University found counties where NFL stadiums held games with at least 20,000 fans had rates of Covid spikes 2.23 times greater than stadiums with fewer fans or no fans.

This either jibes or dovetails with an earlier MIT study that found that stadiums that required masking and distancing (i.e., limiting attendance) “had no impact on local Covid-19 infections.”

Important note: This doesn’t (necessarily) apply to games this season, when most people are vaccinated, recovered, or dead.

Captain Obvious takes a back seat to Lieutenant Logical

Harvard Medical School study: “Organ Donations, Transplants Increase on Days of Largest Motorcycle Rallies” (to be published in the November 28 JAMA Internal Medicine).

The Long Read: B12 Exhaustion edition

If someone is complaining about being tired all the time, why not suggest a B12 test? A nutritionist explains how B12 deficiency is often overlooked, but it has serious consequences — starting with tiredness.

One primary symptom of B12 deficiency is fatigue — a level of tiredness or exhaustion so deep that it affects daily life activities.

Other symptoms are neurological and may include tingling in the extremities, confusion, memory loss, depression and difficulty maintaining balance. Some of these can be permanent if the vitamin deficiency is not addressed.