At the DNC: Rally for abortion rights and drug price negotiations

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Hello and happy Tuesday! Our intrepid First Opinion editor Torie Bosch is back and has some big ideas for the column in the coming months. Be sure to stay in touch with her and keep sending her news, tips and opinions to [email protected].

DNC kicks off with rally for reproductive rights

The Democratic National Convention is currently underway in Chicago. President Biden was the first to preside over the event on Monday night, delivering a speech in which he declared that we “finally beat the pharmaceutical industry” with the Medicare drug price negotiation. Vice President Harris will speak on Thursday, while her running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, will take the stage on Wednesday night.

The first hours of prime-time speeches set the tone, with Democrats sharply criticizing Republican attacks on abortion rights across the country. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Harris would “restore abortion rights nationwide,” joining several lawmakers who have thrown their weight behind the vice president's record. Amanda Zurawski of Texas, a previous Biden guest at the State of the Union, and Kaitlyn Joshua described how restrictions following the overturning of Roe v. Wade put their health and pregnancies at risk. A third woman, Hadley Duvall, recounted her experience of miscarriage after becoming pregnant following sexual abuse by her stepfather. Biden said in his speech that former President Trump would “do everything he can to ban abortion nationwide,” even though Trump himself has said he wants to leave the issue to the states.

Biden also boasted of the lowest number of uninsured in history, with the U.S. hitting a record low in 2023, although the rate began to rise again earlier this year. He reiterated his drug pricing policies and said Harris and Walz would continue to challenge the industry by expanding cost-sharing coverage for drugs beyond Medicare – a policy that, ironically, the pharmaceutical industry likes a lot.

ALS activists Brian Wallach and Sandra Abrevaya also spoke. They argued that Harris “knows the power of science” because her mother was a breast cancer researcher, and were pleased about the research funding that Biden has enshrined in law. My colleague Lev Facher tells more about their story.

While Republicans didn't spend too much time on the topic of health care reform at their convention last month, Democrats have set the stage to tout Biden's achievements on health care — like the negotiated drug prices announced last week — and what an incoming Harris administration would take on, from cheaper drugs to less medical debt. Check out what else you can expect this week.

The Democrats’ cautious health policy

The Democrats' program is six times longer than the Republicans', but in terms of health policy, it contains much of what we have all seen before.

Aside from getting states to cooperate on medical debt cancellation, Democrats are mostly pushing for marginal changes to already passed laws like drug pricing reform and the Affordable Care Act, and are trying to restore abortion protections in Roe v. Wade.

Their biggest problem is that many of these ideas would require support from Congress, an institution that failed to implement the legislation the first time around (or courts complicated matters). And unless Democrats win a landslide victory in Congress, they will struggle to implement much of this agenda at all, even if they can keep the White House.

The ACA architect became an investment banker and fought against the merger review

Peter Orszag was instrumental in drafting the Affordable Care Act. Now he's demanding that federal antitrust regulators loosen their tight controls on health care transactions that he says the law encouraged — and that make his investment bank a lot of money, writes STAT's Bob Herman.

Lazard's CEO has complained several times this year that the Biden administration's antitrust regulators are increasingly thwarting or delaying deals that have ballooned since the law was enacted in 2010. Many of those deals are “vertical integration” mergers that Orszag and the companies argue would accelerate the development of lower-cost, higher-quality health care services.

Others are more skeptical, arguing that we have not seen this in practice – and indeed after a number of high-profile vertical deals, higher Prices. More from Bob on the next chapter of Orzsag and the antitrust dispute.

Three drugs account for half of the savings from Medicare negotiations

According to a report by the Brookings Institution's Center on Health Policy, Enbrel, Stelara and Eliquis account for more than half of the savings on the top 10 drugs covered by Medicare price negotiations.

The Biden administration announced last week that the government would have saved $6 billion if the Medicare negotiations had taken place in 2023. The Brookings investigation reached a similar conclusion, but found that the actual savings are smaller. For example, drugs selected for negotiations are excluded from the 10 to 20 percent discounts they would otherwise receive under Medicare Part D. The $6 billion figure does not take into account those lost discounts.

But both the government and Brookings estimates take into account discounts that insurers had already negotiated, says John Wilkerson. Both found that Medicare had negotiated prices that were 22% below what insurers had negotiated — insurers can, in at least some cases, negotiate prices down from the prices negotiated with Medicare.

The largest price concessions were achieved on drugs that were not already heavily discounted before the Medicare negotiations.

What we read

Study reveals dangerous ‘hidden’ psychological stress among cancer patients, STAT

Harris stops pushing for Medicare for all. Progressives say that's OK, Politico

Rick Doblin, Unleashed, criticizes FDA for rejecting Lykos drug and advocates for MDMA therapy worldwide, STAT

How the world sleepwalked into the global Mpox emergency, Bloomberg