On May 23, Drs. Chris Phillips and Rebecca Shepherd, chairs of the ACR’s Committee on Rheumatologic Care and Insurance Subcommittee, respectively, and members of the ACR’s advocacy staff team met with officials from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services to discuss concerns on underwater biosimilars and restrictions on billing G2211.
Methotrexate—an affordable, established drug for rheumatoid arthritis—may also be helpful for patients suffering from osteoarthritis (OA) of the hand, a recent study reports.1 Treatment of hand OA and inflammation with 20 mg of methotrexate for six months had a moderate, but potentially clinically meaningful, effect on reducing pain and stiffness in patients with symptomatic hand…
“When pharmacy benefit managers [PBMs] came into being 30 years ago, they were seen as an important component of the prescription distribution system [because] they could guide benefits and money between the patient, pharmacy and the manufacturer,” says Angus Worthing, MD, president of the Alliance for Transparent & Affordable Prescriptions (ATAP). Health insurance companies hire…
Government Affairs Committee member Donald Miller, PharmD, reflects on the effects of rheumatology advocacy work over time, noting that progress is often easier to see from the distance.
“I think we learn from medicine everywhere that it is, at its heart, a human endeavor, requiring good science but also a limitless curiosity and interest in your fellow human being, and that the physician-patient relationship is key; all else follows from it.”1 These profound words from Abraham Verghese, MD, MACP, Linda R. Meier…
June is always a bittersweet month, at least in academic medicine. We get to look forward to a new fresh set of faces coming into our training programs, but we also have to say goodbye to those once-fresh faces that have progressed through their medical education journeys. These transitions are never easy, neither for the…
In recent months, the U.S. Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission have started to take action to rein in antitrust behavior, including banning noncompete agreements in the for-profit sector and establishing a taskforce on healthcare monopolies.
Effective July 5, discrimination based on race, color, national origin, sex, age and disability by healthcare programs receiving federal assistance is once again prohibited. The application of Section 1557 to all HHS health programs and activities and state and federally facilitated exchanges, which had been weakened by the Trump administration, has been reinstated.
Antiphospholipid syndrome (APS) is an acquired thromboinflammatory disease that can have severe, sometimes catastrophic, effects on patients and their families. Our modern understanding of APS began to emerge in the early 1980s. At that point, it was defined as a condition characterized by thrombotic episodes and/or pregnancy complications in the presence of antiphospholipid antibodies (aPL).1…
The FDA has approved tocilizumab-aazg (Tyenne), the first tocilizumab biosimilar, for treating rheumatic diseases, as well as the new drug application for CB-101, a chimeric antigen receptor T cell therapy, for treating lupus nephritis and extra-renal lupus.