Northern Virginia Health Policy Forum
Where healthcare organizations in Northern Virginia network and collaborate
Diagnostic tests continue to rapidly evolve, allowing healthcare professionals to deliver personalized, precise, and expeditious results to their patients. Nevertheless, government agencies responsible for regulating and reimbursing these cutting-edge technologies often appear to lag behind. What measures can be implemented to ensure accessible and affordable access to novel diagnostic tools while simultaneously sustaining incentives for the companies investing in their development?
Anna Scrimenti, Associate Director of Public Policy and Advocacy for the Association for Molecular Pathology (AMP), and Zach Rothstein, Executive Director for AdvaMedDx, joined the Northern Virginia Health Policy Forum on Tuesday, October 24, to discuss informed options for a path forward that will benefit the entire healthcare community.
With Congress back in session and election year issues coming into focus, health policy is dominating much of the conversation in Washington. Healthcare costs remain a source of financial pain throughout the country, and the Biden Administration has revealed its list of the first ten drugs subject to price negotiations under the Inflation Reduction Act. Lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic are changing the way doctors care for their patients. Medical devices promise innovative new treatments, and the seemingly intractable scourge of substance abuse continues to ravage the well-being of thousands of Americans. Who will emerge as victors among the competing stakeholders in today’s healthcare debates?
Michelle Stein, Health Care Editor, Reporter, and Assistant Publisher at Inside Health Policy; Rachana Pradhan, Correspondent for Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) Health News; and Shannon Firth, Washington Correspondent of MedPage Today joined the Northern Virginia Health Policy Forum on Tuesday, September 19, to share their insights on what is ahead in healthcare for providers and patients.
The massive bipartisan SUPPORT Act, originally passed in 2018 to provide addiction and recovery programs nationwide, is due to expire September 30.
There is bipartisan agreement in both the House and Senate on the need to reauthorize the bill, providing new momentum to stem the overdose crisis that now kills more than 100,000 Americans each year.
Major questions now focus on what the renewed bill will cover, what it might offer to support non-opioid pain relief and what the implications will be for public health services in both urban and rural areas.
On August 22, Megan Meacham, Director of Rural Strategic Initiatives at the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), and Andrew Cosgrove, Senior Director, Policy and Research at the Biotechnology Innovation Organization (BIO), joined NVHPF in conversation about the reauthorized legislation and the future of the war on drugs.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is facing a critical deadline in its effort to implement the Medicare Drug Price Negotiation Program, created by the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (IRA). Under the Program, CMS will negotiate directly with drug manufacturers to lower the price of certain high expenditure single-source brand-name Medicare Part B and Part D drugs.
The first ten drugs selected for negotiation were announced on August 29, and the price set by CMS for these drugs will go into effect in 2026. CMS is in the process of making pivotal decisions to implement this landmark change in Medicare drug pricing. The Agency has solicited public comment on its process for the first year of the Program, including how it will collect and use data for negotiation.
On May 24, 2023, as the selection of the first ten drugs was still pending, John O’Brien, President and Chief Executive Officer of the National Pharmaceutical Council (NPC), Jason Spangler, Chief Executive Officer of the Innovation and Value Initiative (IVI), and and Monét Stanford, Pharm.D., Director of Policy, Association for Accessible Medicines, joined the Northern Virginia Health Policy Forum on to share their insights on the decisions before CMS regarding this critical process, the impact those decisions may have, and their outlook on the next steps for CMS.
On February 15, the Northern Virginia Health Policy Forum hosted three veteran Washington-based reporters in a discussion of the healthcare headlines we can expect to see in 2023.
Our panelists were:
Julie Appleby, senior correspondent for Kaiser Health News, who reports on the implementation of healthcare law, healthcare treatments and costs, trends in health insurance, and policy affecting hospitals and other medical providers.
Maya Goldman, who covers health policy issues as a reporter for Axios. Goldman focuses on health policy issues in Congress and the federal agencies, including Medicare payment, telehealth, and price transparency.
John Wilkerson, Washington correspondent for STAT, who writes about the politics of healthcare. In his more than 20 years of covering healthcare payment and regulation, Wilkerson has extensively covered policies that impact prescription drug prices.
NVHPF regularly convenes leaders in health policy and healthcare administration for discussions of current health policy issues. We are proud to be a forum for the exchange of ideas and to offer health policy professionals the opportunity to learn from each other and from experts in the field.