Curious which one? 🫣

Accelerated approval makes sense in concept, but is failing in practice.

It results in many drugs - especially cancer drugs - reaping huge profits for manufacturers despite proof of benefit for patients.

Here’s how to fix it
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New @icer-review.bsky.social whitepaper on FDA Accelerated Approval.

This pathway is good in theory, and a failure in practice. Here's how to fix it!

icer.org/news-insight... @yalecrrit.bsky.social @jsross119.bsky.social

Story in @nature.com about this exact problem: www.nature.com/articles/d41...

The Price of Remission: This Cancer Drug Saves Lives — but Costs a Fortune. I Wanted to Know Why. When I was diagnosed with cancer, I set out to understand why a single pill of Revlimid cost the same as a new iPhone. I’ve covered high drug prices as a reporter for years. What I discovered shocked ...

Revlimid has its origin in a pill that cost patients $7.50 each.

Decades later, the cancer drug costs more than $18,000 for a month’s supply — even though it still only costs about 25 cents to manufacture.

(Published May 2025)

My patient would rather take a peptide than a statin. That reveals an uncomfortable truth in medicine “The volume of evidence behind a therapy has become inversely correlated with public trust in it,” writes Vikas Patel.

“My patient is refusing a drug studied in 170,000 people because of side effects that a 124,000-person analysis just confirmed do not exist — while injecting a compound studied in 14 humans, from unregulated sources, based on the recommendation of someone who profits from selling it.”

EPIC Act Would Be A Multi-Billion Dollar Pharma Windfall At The Expense of Seniors - Public Citizen Key takeaways: Big Pharma is pushing to undermine Medicare drug price negotiation and let corporations price gouge for longer periods,…

New report on the impacts of a PhRMA push to delay the time before a drug's price could be negotiated in Medicare:

www.citizen.org/article/epic...

Google's AI confusing the CDMRP with the NIH, and giving flatly wrong information on grant applications.

(the CDMRP does not allow resubmissions)

Use of Low-Value Cancer Care in Practices Acquired by Private Equity Firms - PubMed Private equity (PE) acquisition of medical practices has been associated with increased prices and use of lucrative treatments. Using Medicare data 2015 to 2021, we compared the prevalence of low-value cancer treatments between PE-owned and non-PE-owned practices. The five low-value treatments were: …

Our latest, out today in JCNI:

Is private equity ownership associated with increased use of low-value but lucrative cancer care services?

Surprisingly, our answer seems to be “no”

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41912420/

States Pay Deloitte, Others Millions To Comply With Trump Law To Cut Medicaid Rolls - KFF Health News The One Big Beautiful Bill Act will add red tape and restrictions for those seeking Medicaid and SNAP benefits. And the costs to update computer systems that determine eligibility for those programs w...

In case you’re wondering who is getting rich from GOP decision to purge millions from Medicaid: kffhealthnews.org/news/article...

Impressive ROI on bribes from robot manufacturers to get doctors to use robot-assisted surgery!
New study in @jamanetworkopen.com

Gilead refuses to sell groundbreaking HIV prevention drug to MSF Blocking humanitarian organizations from accessing a medical breakthrough puts vulnerable people across the world in danger.

Today, MSF is going public with something we've been fighting behind closed doors for months: Gilead will not sell us their new HIV drug, lenacapavir.

The sticking point isn't even price, they just refuse to sell.

Open letter linked + explainer 🧵1/

www.doctorswithoutborders.org/latest/gilea...

"doctors just give you pills, I only take dozens of wellness pills instead"

Pet peeve: un-self-aware academic junket culture. We spend $2000 to attend conferences where 75% of speakers rail against American inequality, while we splurge on $75 dinners, stay in $300/night hotel rooms, and take a $50 uber ride to avoid a 3-stop subway ride that would cost $2.50.

From finding the PI in Pubmed, it looks like this is just a haplo transplant with a new conditioning regimen? Important work and good news, but I think could be described as incremental progress.

Yes, to write the intro and discussion for sure.
Not sure about the analyses themselves, but there were some oddities there that at least raise the possibility

Remarkable retraction notice.

Update: This paper has now been retracted.

cc @stevejoffe.bsky.social

I Wrote Research Funding Announcements for NIH for 22 Years. This Year They’ve Published 14 How NIH went from 756 funding announcements to 14 in two years — and what it means for every disease that depends on federal research

This is an incredible documentation of the systematic, intentional collapse of American health science, by Elizabeth Ginexi.

open.substack.com/pub/elizabet...

Pharmaceutical Manufacturer Kickback Resolutions and Associated Financial Penalties This cross-sectional study investigates the size of financial penalties levied by the US government against pharmaceutical companies accused of violating the Anti-Kickback Statute.

"This cross-sectional study found that pharmaceutical manufacturers penalized for kickbacks paid only 2.2% of US revenue accrued from selling implicated drugs during years of alleged violations."

Great work by Tobias Liu @jsross119.bsky.social @reshmagar.bsky.social
jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

Hospital Adoption and Pricing for Oncology Biosimilars This observational study evaluates evidence for implicit gainsharing and its potential effects by analyzing trends in hospital pricing and adoption of physician-administered oncology biosimilars for p...

...pertaining to this new study by Dr. James Robinson & co:

jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

Biosimilar Competition in Oncology—Beyond Insurer Pressure The high price of drugs continues to be the focus of policy discussions, with attention often drawn to the importance of promoting price competition through the use of generic and biosimilar versions ...

New @jama.com commentary by @rachelsachs.bsky.social @dusetzinas.bsky.social &myself on biosimilar drug competition and price declines.

jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

Industry Payments and Prescribing Patterns of Pulmonary Hypertension Therapies in the United States - PubMed This study analyzed the US Open Payments and Medicare Part D databases from 2014 to 2022 to assess associations between industry-physician payments and PAH therapy prescribing. Among 5502 pulmonologist-, cardiologist- and pediatrician-prescribers of PAH therapies, drug-specific industry payments wer …

"Among...prescribers of PAH therapies, drug‐specific industry payments were associated with dose‐response increases in Medicare spending."

New study to add to the list - industry payments affect physician prescribing
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41804477/

No one should care about Vinay Prasad’s opinions on anything ever again.

There’s no reason at all to invite him on podcasts or invite him to write an article.

He spread COVID disinformation, enabled MAHA, and turned the FDA in a soap opera.

That’s all that matters.

Graph of award probability of R35 and R01 from NIH factbook as a function of review rank percentile. As is apparent, 2025 is a significant departure, with lower award probabilities at all scores <40 and significant departures from norm, where even being in the top 10% is no longer a nearly certain indicator of success. Data source: https://report.nih.gov/nihdatabook/report/302

The data is in: the NIH goalposts have shifted.

What were once almost certain fundable scores have become coin flips and what used to be likely grants have become aspirational, leading to fewer awards.

Another manifestation of how HHS policies have led to fewer awards and less science.

I’m right next to you, P100 for a crowded supermarket 😉

Changes in U.S. medical school conflict of interest policies from 2014 to 2023 - PubMed Medical school COI policies remain less stringent than consensus recommendations; thus, renewed attention to policies and implementation is needed to ensure bias-free medical education.

"Faculty at every school accepted industry payments, including 20 (16.7%) deans and 52 (19.3%) of clerkship directors."

Update on COI at US medical schools, out in @plosone.org from Shamik Bhat, @timandersonmd.bsky.social &co
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41790718/

New A.C.A. Plans Could Increase Family Deductibles to $31,000

“Nobody wants that product,” said Amitabh Chandra, a Harvard health economist who has studied high-deductible plans.

Gift link www.nytimes.com/2026/02/26/h...

Prasad overruled FDA staff to reject Moderna's flu vaccine application The rejection is the latest instance of Vinay Prasad overruling career FDA scientists to place vaccines under harsher scrutiny.

The flu and pneumonia kill over 45,000 people a year. Moderna developed a new mRNA flu vaccine for people 50 and older--who are most at risk. Prasad, unilaterally, against the recommendation of experts within the agency, denied Moderna's appplication. www.statnews.com/2026/02/11/m...

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Since we need all the good news we can get these days!

CMS reverses plan to end physical data requests and transition all researchers to the VRDC platform:
resdac.org/cms-news/res...
cc @basucally.bsky.social @aschwartz.bsky.social @academyhealth.bsky.social @wschpero.bsky.social