Month: November 2016

Efforts to strengthen the country’s tattered mental health system, and help millions of Americans suffering from mental illness, are getting a big boost this week, thanks to a massive health care package moving through Congress.

Key provisions from a mental health bill approved last summer by the House of Representatives have been folded into the $6.3 billion 21st Century Cures Act, which aims to speed up drug development and increase medical research. The act also would provide $1 billion in the next two years for prevention and treatment of opioid addiction.

Substantially more health plans on the federal insurance marketplaces require consumers next year to pay a hefty portion of the cost of the most expensive drugs, changes that analysts say are intended to deter persistently ill patients from choosing their policies.

The class of medicines known as specialty drugs often treat chronic illnesses such as multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, HIV, hemophilia, some cancers and hepatitis C. Individual doses can be priced at more than $600. Many newer medicines cost $5,000 to $10,000 a month. That means patients with even a small cost-sharing requirement have to come up with thousands of dollars. For many patients there are no cheaper and equally effective alternatives.

The Pfizer logo is seen at their world headquarters in New York April 28, 2014.

REUTERS/Andrew Kelly/File photo – RTX2MJU3

President-elect Donald Trump’s selection of Rep. Tom Price to head the Department of Health and Human Services signals that the new administration is all-in on both efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act and restructure Medicare and Medicaid.

Price, a Georgia Republican who currently chairs the House Budget Committee, was among the first to suggest that not just the ACA but also Medicare are on the near-term agenda for newly empowered Republicans.

At first, Vincent Karst, 55, was recovering well from his open-heart surgery in March 2015.

He resumed the activities he enjoyed, such as visiting car shows and eating out. But some months later, his condition mysteriously deteriorated. By fall he was so short of breath, nauseated and overwhelmed by fatigue that he needed to be rehospitalized in York, Pa.

There, doctors diagnosed a new problem: a serious mycobacterial infection that was acquired during his surgery, according to his subsequent lawsuit. Aggressive treatment with antibiotics left him with partial hearing and vision loss.