Science Corporation

Preliminary clinical trial data show that a retina implant restored vision for people whose central visual field has holes or blurry spots, Science Corporation reported this week. Trial participants could read text and recognize playing cards when using the implant, even though they were legally blind.  The results, which have not been published in a peer-reviewed publication, are promising for millions of people who suffer from age-related macular degeneration, a leading cause of vision loss. 

Called the Prima System, the implant relies on a camera mounted on glasses and a pocketable computer. The camera gathers infrared light and beams it to the implant that stimulates the retina. 

Science Corporation enrolled 38 people in the study, six of whom dropped out prior to testing. As STAT’s Timmy Broderick reports, after twelve months of use, the participants could read, on average, nearly five more lines, or 23 letters down an eye chart. That’s equivalent to a person’s eyesight improving from 20/320 to 20/200, which is the threshold for blindness in the United States. 

Behind insurers’ utilization woes You’re hearing it all the time now: Some patients, especially seniors, are using more health care than expected, and that’s giving insurers an enormous headache — including in the form of their stock prices. Between the lines: Higher utilization, as it’s officially called, is obviously a business problem. But depending on how long it lasts — or whether it just becomes a new normal — high utilization could easily translate into an all-of-us problem through even higher health care spending. State of play: The Wall Street Journal published a good piece last weekend detailing the confluence of factors behind these higher costs for insurers.Some are pandemic-related. One ongoing narrative is that seniors are making up for care that they put off during the pandemic, and low-income Medicaid enrollees are seeking more treatment for things like mental health conditions that may have worsened.And as states have pruned their Medicaid rosters in the post-pandemic era, many of those who lost coverage were higher earners and healthier, leaving Medicaid insurers with a costlier group of enrollees.What’s tricky about government programs is that insurers can’t just renegotiate higher payment rates the way they do in commercial insurance — which is exactly what they’re expected to do in the face of rising medical costs in the employer market. Here’s the kicker to the WSJ piece: “But what seems to have unnerved investors is how, after consecutive quarters of disappointing results, insurers still don’t seem to have a full understanding of what is going on or when it will improve.”And that points to a larger question: How temporary is this higher health care usage? Where it stands: As of the beginning of this year, most health services’ spending exceeded pre-pandemic levels and health costs were increasing at a faster rate than they had in recent years, according to a Peterson-KFF health tracker.In 2024, growth in the overall use of health care services has been higher than the growth in prices, according to Altarum’s most recent health sector insights.A recent Trilliant Health analysis concludes that “healthcare utilization patterns suggest that Americans’ health status is on a downward trajectory.”And one huge wildcard when it comes to costs is whether — or really, when — insurers will be on the hook for covering more patients’ GLP-1 costs, especially as the drugs get approved for more non-obesity uses. The intrigue: Oscar Health’s Bertolini, who used to be the CEO of Aetna, offered an alternate explanation for insurers’ MA problems.”I think what you’re hearing from the big health plans on Medicare is an excuse. The way you compete in Medicare Advantage is you … have more zero-premium plans with richer benefits to keep the members,” he told me.As the market has made it more difficult to offer no-premium plans, “what you got is mispricing by the industry to try and keep zero-premium plans when they knew they weren’t going to get as much in risk adjustment,” he added. “So they mispriced.” Spicy!