E-Witch

Several national organizations have established the Coalition for PBM Reform, which seeks to alter the way pharmacy benefit managers operate to better serve patients, pharmacies and businesses.

The group stems from a common concern among patient advocates, doctors, pharmacies and small business groups that spread pricing, patient steering, and other PBM practices restrict access to drugs and increase costs, said Douglas Hoey, CEO of the National Community Pharmacists Association, one of the participating groups.

“We want others to understand the oversized influence that PBMs have and why they have such an influence in how prescription drugs are paid for and which ones are covered,” Hoey said.

Other coalition members include the Community Oncology Alliance, the Coalition of State Rheumatology Organizations, the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, The Food Industry Association and the National Federation of Independent Business.

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Transparency and accountability

The U.S. launched a campaign to offer boosters of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine to millions of Americans on Friday even as federal health officials stressed the real problem remains getting first shots to the unvaccinated.

“We will not boost our way out of this pandemic,” warned Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — even though she took the rare step of overruling the advice of her own expert panel to make more people eligible for the booster.

The vast majority of COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations are among the unvaccinated, Walensky noted. And all three COVID-19 vaccines in the U.S. offer strong protection against severe illness, hospitalization and death despite the extra-contagious delta variant that caused cases to soar. But immunity against milder infection appears to wane months after initial vaccination.

People anxious for another Pfizer dose lost no time rolling up their sleeves after Walensky

For some healthcare providers, meeting next week’s deadline for reporting on their federal COVID-19 grant spending is shaping up to be a mad scramble.

Accountants helping providers get ready for the Sept. 30 deadline to report on the first tranche of Provider Relief Fund spending say even those who’ve been prepared for weeks have legitimate questions about how to move forward. Congress approved $178 billion to help providers weather the unprecedented crisis, but many in the healthcare industry say the Health and Human Services Department’s guidance on how to account for that money has been confusing and unclear.

For the most part, those that are “entirely unprepared” tend to be smaller and don’t view themselves as big enough to have to report to the government, said Anna Stevens, partner-in-charge for healthcare at the accounting firm Weaver. Providers that spent more than $10,000 in grant money must report that to HHS,