Managed Care Cast

discusses why the program is needed, the goals of the program, and some of the reasons why children and adolescents are struggling.

We also discuss 988, an upgrade to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline number coming July 16, 2022. The number will connect individuals with trained counselors, and, if needed, send specially trained responders with the aim of reducing armed law enforcement interventions.

If you or someone you know is in crisis, help is available by calling the the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline toll-free number, which is 988 beginning on July 16, 2022—or call the existing number, 1-800-273-TALK (8255)—to reach your local certified crisis center.

Today we’re highlighting a discussion with a panel of experts in interstitial lung disease moderated by Ryan Haumschild, PharmD, director of Pharmacy Services at Emory Healthcare and Winship Cancer Institute.

The topics of conversation for today’s podcast include treatment goals in patients with ILD and a review of treatment paradigms and standard of care therapies.

On this episode of Managed Care Cast, we speak with Georges C. Benjamin, MD, executive director of the American Public Health Association, on the core takeaways of his keynote session at AHIP 2022 on public health policy and other solutions to promote equitable health and well-being.

In January of this year, entrepreneur and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban launched a direct-to-consumer pharmacy called the Cost Plus Drug Company, promising savings by eliminating middlemen and charging cost plus 15% and a pharmacy fee. What if Medicare could do the same? On this episode of Managed Care Cast, we speak with a researcher who coauthored a study out this week that looked at the savings to Medicare Part D if the same model had been employed for some of the most used generic drugs.

Hussain S. Lalani, MD, MPH, an internist and one of the coauthors, discussed the findings of the paper, published Monday in the Annals of Internal Medicine. The analysis compared the price paid by Medicare Part D plans in 2020 with the price of 89 generic drugs sold by the pharmacy in 2022.

The researchers, from Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, used the price paid by Medicare Part D plans in 2020 and looked at the price of 89 generic drugs sold by the pharmacy in 2022.

After adjusting for changes in drug costs between 2020 and 2022, the researchers found that Medicare paid more on 77 of the 89 generic drugs: $8.1 billion compared with $4.5 billion. Medicare would have saved as much as $3.6 billion over 1 year.

On the After Hours section of Medical World News, we like to show you what scientists, researchers, health care providers, and others are doing in their spare time to relax and recharge. On this episode of Managed Care Cast, we’re highlighting a hobby from a biosimilar expert who says he can make whisky more accessible and affordable through—you guessed it—his own biosimilar whisky.

Sarfaraz K. Niazi, PhD, is an adjunct professor of biopharmaceutical sciences at the University of Illinois and the University of Houston, and a member of the advisory board of The Center for Biosimilars®', a sister site to AJMC.com, the website of The American Journal of Managed Care.

On a recent episode of After Hours, he spoke with Matthew Gavidia, an assistant editor at AJMC.com, about his unusual whiskey-making hobby, the history of the traditional process, and how he distills his own biosimilar version.

The pandemic highlighted deep partisan divisions in the United States over public health measures. Disputes over masking and beliefs about science and vaccines that prevent severe illness and death from infection with SARS-CoV2, the virus that causes COVID-19, affected nearly every area of life. That rancor impacted death rates in counties that voted Republican in the 2020 presidential election, according to a new study out Monday in the journal Health Affairs.

In counties where 70% or more of eligible voters chose the Republican party, there were nearly 73 additional deaths from COVID-19 per 100,000 people compared with Democratic counties (where less than 30% voted Republican).

On today’s episode of Managed Care Cast, we speak with the lead author of the study, Neil J. Sehgal, PhD, MPH, assistant professor of health policy and management in the University of Maryland (UMD) School of Public Health. He discusses the findings of the paper, coauthored with other scholars from UMD, as well as the University of California, Irvine Program in Public Health.

The analysis, which included the majority of US counties, controlled for other characteristics likely to influence COVID-19 transmission and death such as age, race/ethnicity, vaccine uptake, unemployment status, burden of chronic disease, and health care access.

Income inequality is a hot topic in politics today, and while the rising role of social determinants of health is being recognized in care delivery and research, a new study published in Social Science & Medicine aimed to determine to what extent income gaps are associated with Americans’ declining health.

On this episode of Managed Care Cast, we speak with Hui Zheng, PhD, an associate professor in the Department of Sociology at Ohio State University and co-author of “Rising Childhood Income Inequality and Declining Americans’ Health.”

The American Journal of Managed Care® sat down with Zheng to learn more about how income inequality has shifted throughout the 20th and 21st centuries and the potential implications of this shift, along with some solutions to the problem.

Cholangiocarcinoma—or biliary duct cancer—affects about 8000 US patients a year. On this episode of Managed Care Cast, we bring you an excerpt of an interview with Jesper B. Andersen, PhD, associate professor and group leader at the University of Copenhagen and the Biotech Research and Innovation center at the Department of Health.

There have been 3 FDA drug approvals for drugs that treat cholangiocarcinoma, but only for patients that have certain mutations or rearrangements, signifying an unmet need, noted Andersen. And due to the limited number of patients, clinical trials are challenging.

Dr Anderson spoke recently with Brielle Benyon, senior editor of CURE®, a publication by MJH Life Sciences.

You can watch this interview and many others with by Visiting Medicalworldnews.com, where you can get expert insights you won’t find anywhere else.

On this episode of Managed Care Cast, we speak with Tham Le, PhD, MPH, and Linda Wastila, PhD, MSPH, lead and senior authors, respectively, of “Patterns of Opioid Use in Commercially Insured Patients With Cancer,” which was published in the May issue of The American Journal of Managed Care®. They took up their investigation after finding that most previous similar studies of opioid use focused on problems with opioid use among general populations and that patients with cancer are an often overlooked population where opioid use is concerned. They sought a greater understanding of which patients with cancer are at risk for undertreatment and who is at risk for a substance use disorder. Overall, they believe that policies concerning opioid misuse need strengthening while continuing to address the genuine pain needs of patients with cancer and that they need to balance the benefits of opioid prescribing with the risks.

Drug overdose deaths are skyrocketing, with more than 100,000 people dying in 2021, according to the CDC. Obtaining treatment for substance use disorders (SUDs) has never been easy, and this month in Health Affairs, a recent paper examined trends in the use of treatment services to see what, if anything, changed from 2010 to 2019.

Despite an increase in insurance coverage over much of that time period and other policy changes, the results were disappointing, according to one of the authors interviewed about the findings on today’s Managed Care Cast.

Brendan Saloner, PhD, is an associate professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health who specializes in health policy, particularly policies that affect vulnerable populations, including those with drug problems and behavioral or mental health issues.