Weekend update

Congress remains in session on Capitol Hill this coming week. Here's a link to the Week in Congress's one pager on last week's actions there. The Week in Congress indicates that Congress is planning on holding a lame duck session following the mid-term elections in early November.

The Washington Post reports that the Senate will vote on its bill that responds to the opioid crisis this coming week. According to Senate Health Education Labor and Pensions ("HELP") Chairman Lamar Alexander (R TN)

• "The proposed bill includes the STOP Act to help stop illegal drugs at the border, including stopping the shipment of synthetic opioids. It allows the FDA to require prescription opioids to be packaged in set amounts like a 3 or 7 day supply of blister packs, and spurs the development of a new non-addictive painkiller. The House has already passed its version of the act, and there is a bipartisan urgency to work with our House colleagues to get the legislation to the President’s desk.”

The Senate HELP Committee has scheduled its third hearing on reducing health care costs for a week from Tuesday (September 18) at 10 am. This hearing will examine how transparency can lower spending and empower patients. In this regard, Health Affairs offers an article on elderly patient use of information portals provided by their doctors and facilities.

Despite widespread availability of patient portals and incentives for providers to offer portals to patients, recent results from the University of Michigan’s National Poll on Healthy Aging suggest that only about half of adults ages 50–80 use them. Among older adults who reported using patient portals, most had used a portal to view tests results (84 percent). Fewer had used a portal to request a prescription refill (43 percent), schedule an appointment (37 percent), or get advice from a provider (26 percent).

The FEHBlog is aware of the interest in the new non-profit health benefits company owned by Amazon, etc. The FEHBlog is more interested in this hospital systems lead effort to launch a non-profit generic drug company. Read the latest from Fierce Healthcare here and the new company Civica Rx (based in Salt Lake City, Utah) here.

Finally, the New York Times Upshot held discussion with officials who run public health departments, academics and leaders of funding organizations about what they think we should be doing in public health, and a few themes emerged.

• Divert a lot more dollars toward public health initiatives
• Do more to address health care disparities among races and economic classes.
• Improve public attitudes toward public health initiatives by trumpeting their successes.