Day: March 4, 2020

Post Presidential Run, Swalwel Zeroes in on Health Care

Ms. Cat

— Read on www.politico.com/newsletters/morning-ehealth/2020/02/28/growing-group-of-lawmakers-want-telehealth-in-coronavirus-response-785731

POST PRESIDENTIAL RUN, SWALWELL ZEROES IN ON HEALTH CARE — At this week’s Personalized Medicine Caucus inaugural briefing, co-chair Rep. Tom Emmer told staffers that individualized treatment could dramatically increase survival rates for serious illnesses, but that “unsurprisingly, Congress is struggling to keep up.” He urged his colleagues to come up with regulations that foster new treatments, but also make them accessible to “more than just a lucky few.”

… Emmer’s co-chair, Rep. Eric Swalwell, said he wished precision medicine were a larger part of the national conversation on health care costs, especially on the heels of this week’s Democratic debate. Swalwell re-introduced a bill in September that would evaluate whether Medicaid coverage for genetic and genomic testing improved clinical outcomes and cut costs; it would also direct HHS and the National Academy of Medicine to examine other ways the federal government could reduce barriers to genetic and genomic testing.

“The cost has come down so much to analyze [gennomic and genetic] tests,” Swalwell told us earlier this week. “As they reach a point where they’re quite affordable, I think the federal government could reimburse for them particularly for kids in poverty, or seniors, on the diagnostic end … giving people more information so they’re not on a diagnostic odyssey.”

“So first, get it a stamp of approval and then consider once we’re at that point whether the federal government is going to be reimbursing, or increasing federal research dollars,” he said.

Clients Lobbying on H.R.5062: Advancing Access to Precision Medicine Act

Justices spar over fate of consumer agency

Ms. Cat

The Supreme Court appeared divided along ideological lines over the question of whether the structure of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, an agency seen as a progressive achievement in the wake of the financial crisis, is unconstitutional.
— Read on thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/485700-justices-spar-over-fate-of-consumer-agency