Employers seek to soften health cost blow

The FDA has approved several new therapies this week, including a new two-component Pompe therapy, an extended-release drug for major depression without sexual side effects, and an eye drop for drug-induced dilation. Additionally, the agency has set review dates for several products, including odronextamab for blood cancers, sotatercept for pulmonary arterial hypertension, and Dupixent in young children with eosinophilic esophagitis.

Managed Healthcare Executive's Managing Editor Peter Wehrwein, and Editor Briana Contreras, had a discussion in July with Mostafa Kamal, president and CEO of Prime Therapeutics, an organization in which Kamal acquired this position that same month.

Jeremy Berk, senior vice president of Risk Adjustment Solutions for PopHealthCare and Emcara Health, shares how plans must conduct a detailed analysis of how changes to risk adjustment models impact your plan in order to set an effective go-forward strategy.

Briana Contreras, an editor of Managed Healthcare Executive, had the pleasure of catching up with MHE Editorial Advisory Board Member, Ateev Mehrotra, MD, MPH, who is a professor of healthcare policy at Harvard Medical School and an Associate Professor of Medicine and Hospitalist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.

Roctavian for hemophilia A and Hemgenix for hemophilia B could spare some patients from treatment that involves intravenous infusions of clotting factors several times a week. But a hemophilia expert cautions that the high-priced gene therapies aren’t a cure and that the reprieve won’t last a lifetime.

Study links inflammatory bowel disease diagnosis to increased gout risk, with Crohns disease and ulcerative colitis linked to 68% and 38% increases in likelihood of developing gout, respectively, relative to counterparts without IBD.