HEALTH/BENEFITSWIRES Drug Prices Drop For 1st Time Since 1973
Prescription Drug Prices Dipped Slightly In 2019 It cost a bit less to fill that prescription in
• Drug prices dropped 1% from 2017 to 2018. • The last price drop was in 1973, with a 0.2% drop.
2018, as drug prices dipped by about SOURCE: Department of Health and 1% over the previous year, the Department Human Services of Health and Human Services reported. It was the first price drop in 45 years, HHS said. HHS experts said the last time retail prescription drug prices declined was in 1973, when they went down by 0.2%. The price drop was for retail pharmacy prescriptions, not medications administered in hospitals or doctor’s offices. The HHS report found that spending on prescription medicines at pharmacies accounted for 9% of the total $3.6 trillion national health care tab in 2018. HHS found that nearly nine out of 10 prescriptions dispensed were for generic drugs, which puts downward pressure on prices.
OBESITY EPIDEMIC EXPANDS
MEDICARE FOR ALL WILL COST JOBS
In the midst of the political debate on Medicare for All, one of its biggest proponents said a government-run health care system will cost jobs in the insurance sector. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., told a group of supporters at a political rally that jobs would be lost if private health insurance is eliminated. But he suggested job retraining as a way to help those who would lose their jobs in the transition to a government-run system. University of Massachusetts Amherst economist Robert Pollin told Kaiser Health News in 2019 that Medicare for All could cost 2 million jobs. Sanders’s Medicare for All plan would include what he called a Just Transition Program, “which will help everybody in the industry for a five-year period maintain their income, get the job training that they need to get another job.” DID YOU
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Americans, particularly women, continue to pack on the pounds. Nearly 40% of U.S. adults were considered obese in 2016, but almost half of U.S. adults will be considered obese by 2030, according to a report in the New England Journal of Medicine. Women, African Americans and people in low-income households are particularly vulnerable to what researchers called “severe obesity,” which is typically a body mass index of over 35, or about 100 pounds of excess weight.
Americans Are Getting Bigger Nearly 40% of all adults over the age of 20 in the U.S. — about 93.3 million people — are currently obese. SOURCE: Journal of The American Medical Association
As the scale goes up, so do the health-related risks of carrying excess weight. In 2019, the American Cancer Society found that obesity-related cancers are rising, including a third of liver cancer deaths linked to obesity.
QUOTABLE The real problem around making sure that people have access to affordable coverage is really addressing the high cost of health care. — Seema Verma, administrator for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.
Obesity rates are above 35% in all 50 states, but areas of the southeastern U.S. and Midwest are projected to be close to 60% in the next 10 years.
INSURERS, PHARMACIES LOOK AT PRIMARY CARE
They are household names for health insurance or the drugstore where you stop when you need aspirin. But CVS He a lt h, Hu m a n a, Walgreens, Walmart and UnitedHea lth Group are branching out to become primary care providers. These companies operate hundreds of clinics that directly market themselves as primary care providers or provide a majority of primary care services. They all plan to open even more clinics this year. Why the move to primary care? For insurers, primary care is viewed as a less-expensive way to lower downstream health care spending. For pharmacies, primary care is another income stream as drugstore chains face competition from Amazon and other online retailers. At the same time, fewer Americans are using primary care. Researchers have attributed that decline to millennial and Generation X patients who prefer convenience over seeing the same physician.
The minimum age to buy tobacco products in the U.S. was raised to 21. Source: Associated Press
InsuranceNewsNet Magazine » February 2020
Source: Food and Drug Administration