| AdobeYou likely already know how flawed the body mass index, or BMI, is as a metric. Yet the simple calculation is deeply entrenched in medical care, as it’s essentially the only tool regularly used to identify obesity. The BMI won’t go away anytime soon, but a report published yesterday by a global commission suggests that it could finally take a backseat to other measures in order to develop a more nuanced diagnosis for obesity. The commission, an international group of experts including people with obesity, proposed two new categories of disease: preclinical and clinical obesity. Body fat and where it is distributed around the body should be evaluated, along with tests for 18 biological markers. Read more from STAT’s Liz Cooney on the recommendations and how they might be implemented in our BMI-centric world. |
| research Even moderate drinking carries risks, per new reportWe’ve got another entry in the saga of the alcohol regulation fight today: Just 11 days after U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy called for stronger warning labels on alcoholic drinks, a new federal report found that even moderate drinking — within the bounds of U.S. nutrition guidance — could carry health risks, including injuries, liver disease and cancer. You might recall that a different report, published last month by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, actually linked moderate drinking to lower all-cause mortality, but also to an increased risk of breast cancer. Both the NASEM report and today’s — which is led by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration — are set to inform the 2025 Dietary Guidelines for Americans. The at-times contradictory results will likely add fuel to the existing debates about alcohol research. STAT’s Isabella Cueto has more. |
from AXIOS:
| New scrutiny on PE and hospitals |
| By Caitlin Owens |
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| Illustration: Lindsey Bailey/Axios |
Prospect Medical Holdings’ road to bankruptcy has eerie similarities to that of Steward Health, another multistate hospital chain formerly owned by private equity.Why it matters: The parallels — down to the way both chains sold the real estate under their hospitals to the same company and leased it back — raise questions about whether the bankruptcies were due to bad management or what critics say is private equity’s rush to enrich itself at patients’ expense.Driving the news: Prospect Medical Holdings, which operates 16 hospitals across four states, filed for bankruptcy last weekend. The company said on its website that its actions will allow it to “refocus on its core strength and return to fulfilling its mission of operating community hospitals in California.”Prospect, in a court filing, cited the pandemic, inflation, labor expenses, insurer reimbursement rates and employee pension plans as contributing factors.The big picture: The Prospect bankruptcy news comes only a few months after the resolution of Steward’s bankruptcy saga, which made headlines and drew political ire for months.Both chains were formerly owned by private equity firms, which both exited after collecting large payouts and having sold much of the health systems’ underlying real estate.In both cases, the real estate was sold to Medical Properties Trust, a real estate investment firm that then became the hospitals’ landlord, requiring them to start paying rent on properties they had long owned.”It’s very similar to what occurred with Steward,” said Mary Bugbee of the Private Equity Stakeholder Project. “There were financially extractive business practices that were used that stripped value from the hospital system and loaded it with debt, and put the system in a pretty bad place financially.”State of play: Prospect’s financial problems have already caused it to close some facilities or service lines and put others on the market, with varying degrees of success.Read more PBMs made more than $7B marking up drugs: FTCBy Maya Goldman  FTC chair Lina Khan. Photo: Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images The three biggest pharmacy benefit managers made more than $7.3 billion over five years marking up the prices of specialty generic drugs for cancer, HIV and other conditions, the Federal Trade Commission charged on Tuesday.Why it matters: It’s the second time the FTC has singled out CVS Caremark, Express Scripts and OptumRx for driving up drug costs. The report could provide fodder if President-elect Trump opts to make good on vows to crack down on pharmacy middlemen.FTC chair Lina Khan, a Biden appointee, said the findings justify continued scrutiny of practices that may inflate drug costs, squeeze independent pharmacies and deprive Americans of affordable health care.What they found: The PBMs marked up prices for specialty generic drugs by hundreds and sometimes thousands of percent over their estimated acquisition costs from 2017 and 2022, per the FTC report.Most of the highly marked-up drugs were dispensed at pharmacies affiliated with the PBMs. The three companies almost always reimbursed their affiliated pharmacies at a higher rate for the drugs than unaffiliated pharmacies.The report builds off earlier findings the FTC released in July that found that the three major PBMs garnered nearly $1.6 billion in extra revenue on just two cancer drugs in less than three years by steering business to affiliated pharmacies.More here |
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