The federal government’s annual projections of health spending for the next decade suggest that it will go up faster than in recent years. One of the main reasons is the aging of the huge baby boom generation. And drug prices are expected to continue to rise rapidly, although drugs are still a relatively small portion of overall drug spending.
Meanwhile, the Food and Drug Administration wants to crack down on potentially dangerous dietary supplements. The agency has relatively little authority over what are technically food products, thanks to a 1994 law passed by Congress at the behest of the supplement industry. But FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said he will do as much as he can to ensure the safety of the supplement supply.
And three judges at the Court of Federal Claims have ruled that insurance companies are owed reimbursement for discounts they extended to lower-income purchasers of Affordable Care Act individual policies in 2017 and 2018. That is despite the fact that those insurers were largely made whole by adjustments made by states after President Donald Trump canceled the insurer payouts in 2017.
This week’s panelists are Julie Rovner of Kaiser Health News, Alice Ollstein of Politico, Anna Edney of Bloomberg News and Kimberly Leonard of The Washington Examiner.