InnovationRx: Millions Would Lose Health Insurance Under Republican Budget Bill

InnovationEditors' PickInnovationRx: Millions Would Lose Health Insurance Under Republican Budget BillByAmy Feldman, Forbes Staff andAlex Knapp, Forbes Staff

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Mehmet Oz, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, joined by Sen

John Barrasso, R-Wyo. , the GOP whip, and Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S

The Associated Press The Republican domestic policy bill, which ed the Senate this week and could be voted on in the House as early as today, will have a drastic impact on Americans’ health and that of the country’s healthcare system if it goes into effect

The scale of the posed cuts to Medicaid is unprecedented in the gram’s 50-year history

They largely come from two key visions: tight work requirements for those who receive health coverage and new restrictions on a strategy used by some states to finance Medicaid

The cuts could have a devastating impact both on those left without insurance and the hospitals that serve them

The posed cuts to Medicaid could be particularly rough for those who are nearing retirement and can’t find work, particularly blue-collar workers who are no longer physically able to perform their former jobs

As AARP executive vice president and chief advocacy and engagement officer Nancy LeaMond wrote in a letter to Senate leaders on Sunday: “This creates a steep coverage cliff for those in their 50s and early 60s – particularly for those nearing retirement or working part-time – who may be left with no affordable coverage option at all. ” These cuts would also ripple out through hospitals and other healthcare viders

Particularly in rural areas, hospitals and healthcare viders rely on Medicaid patients to stay financially in the black

The posed changes to Medicaid will result in significant coverage losses, reduce access to care for rural patients, and threaten the viability of rural facilities,” the group’s CEO Alan Morgan said in a statement. “It’s very that Medicaid cuts will result in rural hospital closures resulting in loss of access to care for those living in rural America. ” This Startup Built A Hospital In India To Test Its AI SoftwarePi Health founders Geoff Kim (left) and Bobby ReddyMaria Ponce As longtime cancer doctors with regulatory experience, Pi Health cofounders Geoff Kim and Bobby Reddy knew that completing clinical trials took far too long

There was the painfully slow cess of signing up patients and after that a grueling slog through vast swamps of data to prepare voluminous regulatory filings–something that few hospitals and clinics can handle

The pair knew their startup’s best chance of success meant doing an end run around all that

So they did something audacious and unprecedented: they built their own cancer hospital in India

Clinical trials are an enormous bottleneck in drug development, and Kim and Reddy thought the AI-enabled software they’d been building at Pi Health could help do them faster and cheaper by expanding the pool of potentially eligible patients

But the majority of clinical trials today are done in top-notch academic medical centers, and first they needed to ve that their AI-enabled software could help overseas hospitals and smaller community cancer centers handle the documentation required to get through regulatory apval

So they found a site in Hyderabad, a major nology and pharmaceutical center in southern India, and built a 30-bed, state-of-the-art cancer hospital

It’s participated in eight so far, including one that helped lead to a drug for head, neck and lung cancer being apved in India just seven months after the first Indian patient was enrolled in the study

That’s less than half the time such a cess would typically take and a major validation point for the software, one that Kim and Reddy believe will help them attract more customers. “We are trying to do everything in our power to make this a much more efficient cess,” Kim, the company’s CEO, told Forbes. “There are all these new and exciting ways to attack cancer

If we can do [the clinical trials] faster and cheaper and get therapies out to patients, we want to do it now because there are people waiting right now. ” Read more here

BIO AND PHARMA Newark-Calif. -based bio tagonist Therapeutics, which develops peptide-based drugs, announced its new obesity treatment candidate, called PN-477, on Monday

The new drug would target GLP-1 receptors, current obesity drugs, and two other receptors that could both limit potential gastrointestinal issues and induce the body to burn more calories at rest

The mechanism of action is similar to Lilly’s triple-agonist Retatrutide, which is currently in clinical trials, but tagonist CEO Dinesh Patel told Forbes that his company is working on an oral version

Plus: How the kings of CBD at Charlotte’s Web hope to treat autism, PTSD and depression with pharmaceuticals derived from cannabis and psilocybin

PUBLIC HEALTH AND HOSPITALS Last week, the CDC’s new Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices met for the first time since HHS Secretary Robert F

Purged the previous 17 members of the panel, replacing them with seven handpicked members, some of whom have spread misinformation vaccines

The vaccine committee voted 5-2 to recommend Merck’s new phylactic antibody for infants with RSV

But it also voted 5-1 against recommending the preservative thimerosal, despite there being no evidence of it causing harm

Questions from the panel, especially during presentations on COVID-19, raise questions future votes

Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, told Forbes in a interview that some of the questions and statements made during the meeting indicated “some of the committee members didn't understand how these studies were done” to demonstrate the safety and effectiveness of vaccines. "I think the ACIP just took a giant step backward,” he said. “And I think for the most part the medical and scientific community is going to do their best to ignore them because I think at this point they can only do harm. ” Plus: The Supreme Court upheld the Affordable Care Act’s preventive care mandate, which includes routine immunizations and cancer screenings

WHAT WE’RE READING Generic cancer drugs failed quality tests, putting cancer patients in more than 100 countries at risk of ineffective treatments and potentially fatal side effects, according to an investigation by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism

Re on what wildfire smoke does to the human body is in its infancy – but the signs are pretty bad

Disposable e-cigarettes that may look travel shampoo bottles and smell bubble gum are vastly more toxic than older e-cigarettes, according to a recent study from the University of California, Davis

After Texas banned abortion, more women nearly bled to death during miscarriage

The Publica data analysis of hospital discharge data from Texas, the largest state to ban abortion, adds to growing evidence that abortion bans have made first-trimester miscarriage far more dangerous

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