Preview

The two most-read articles from the November 2021 issue of Health Affairs focused on pharmaceuticals.

Kelly Lenahan and coauthors examined commercial health plans’ prescription drug step therapy protocols that determine patients’ eligibility for specialty drugs. Across the ten diseases they studied, most of the commercial plans’ step therapy protocols were more stringent than the treatment guidelines adopted by national clinical organizations.

Even with direct funding, it is difficult to generate investments for the development of low-volume drugs, given low expected revenue from sales. As a consequence, policy makers have adopted “pull” incentives that provide a separate payment stream. Kevin Outterson modeled various drug development scenarios and concluded that incentives “totaling several billion dollars per drug globally are required to make antibacterial [research and development] projects economically attractive to commercial sponsors.”

In the November issue’s letters to the editor, authors responded to comments about private equity ownership of dermatology practices, drug utilization management, and drug price competition.

Revisit the table of contents to see all the content featured in the November 2021 issue.

Today on Health Affairs Blog, Shivani Shah and coauthors discuss how policy makers should think through cost sharing in the context of Medicare expansion.

Listen to our latest podcasts. On today’s episode of This Week, Health Affairs' Leslie Erdelack and Rob Lott discuss the Omicron COVID-19 variant and how the HIV/AIDS epidemic can inform the response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The centerpiece of the December Health Affairs Journal Club meeting is “Despite National Declines In Kidney Failure Incidence, Disparities Widened Between Low- And High-Poverty Counties.” In the paper, which will appear in the December 2021 issue of the journal, Kevin Nguyen and coauthors examine trends in the incidence of kidney failure by county-level poverty among US adults between 2000 and 2017. While national estimates suggest that overall rates are declining, the authors found marked disparity in incidence of kidney failure between low- and high-poverty counties.

Health Affairs Senior Editor Jessica Bylander will host Nguyen, an investigator in the Department of Health Services, Policy, and Practice at the Brown University School of Public Health, to talk in detail about the research, methods, and conclusions of the paper, including changes in policy and care delivery that will be required to close the gap for low-income areas and communities.

Date:     Thursday, December 9, 2021
Time:     1:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m. (ET)
Place:    Online details will be shared with registrants 24 hours in advance of the event.

About Health Affairs

Health Affairs is the leading peer-reviewed journal at the intersection of health, health care, and policy. Published monthly by Project HOPE, the journal is available in print and online. Late-breaking content is also found through healthaffairs.org, Health Affairs Today, and Health Affairs Sunday Update.

Project HOPE is a global health and humanitarian relief organization that places power in the hands of local health care workers to save lives across the globe. Project HOPE has published Health Affairs since 1981.

Copyright © Project HOPE: The People-to-People Health Foundation, Inc.
Health Affairs, 1220 19th Street, NW, Suite 800, Washington, DC 20036, United States

Privacy Policy

To unsubscribe from this email, click here.