Overview:
Rough Cuts is my quick, unvarnished, short and pointed news and commentary sourced from posts I receive every week.
Rough Cuts is my quick, unvarnished, short and pointed news and commentary sourced from posts I receive every week.
DC Reset
New Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) rule proposes to scale back the Affordable Care Act by ending the monthly special enrollment period (SEP), making changes to the Open Enrollment Period (OEP) and to eligibility for Marketplace coverage and the advance premium tax credits. Net effect, harder to sign up for insurance, slower enrollment, less coverage, more ER visits.
The next CMS director, Dr. Mehmet Oz testified before the Senate Finance committee on March 14, 2025. During the hearing, Dr. Oz acknowledged the importance of Medicaid but didn’t commit to current levels of funding instead discussing technology and artificial intelligence (AI) in health care. He did say he wanted to “upcode” Medicare Advantage. New software for nursing homes, seniors and the disabled. I remember when Oz founded TCT. He was one of the first to pull off remote live surgery broadcast to a thousand surgeons in a convention hall. Talk about a hire wire act. Oz at CMS will be interesting.
The new director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) advanced as did FDA nominees but the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) nominee was withdrawn by the White House. On March 13, the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee voted to advance the nominations of Dr. Jay Bhattacharya to be Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and of Dr. Martin Makary to be Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration.
Ortho Pharma News
More Opioid Deaths in Men Than Women, Why? – A Neuron rat study found evidence that the reason there is more opioid addiction and overdose deaths in men than women may be due to hormones. Giving male rats estrogen changed their fentanyl intake to mirror that of female rats in pain—namely a steady-state usage instead of the typical male rate of escalation.
Seriously Flawed Epidural Steroid Injection Study published in respected journal. A BMJ (British Medical Journal) study found evidence that epidural steroid injections and radiofrequency treatments for chronic noncancer spine pain don’t work. The study compared this common procedure to a sham procedure. No surprise, this is a CONTROVERSIAL study. Former presidents and current officials of the American Academy of Pain Medicine (AAPM) have loudly taken issue saying that the study had “significant methodological concerns” and that the conclusions were “erroneous” and “overbroad.”
Specifically, the AAPM doctors wrote that the study:
- Excluded “robust, contemporary, and relevant studies.”
- “Differing and evolving interventional techniques were inaccurately grouped together.”
- “There are statistical errors in data analysis.”
The NIH Catastrophe
MIT faculty held a private meeting last week to figure out what to do in the face of hundreds of millions of dollars of research cuts. The University of Massachusetts Chan Medical school RESCINDED offers to dozens of biomedical Ph.D. students last week “to ensure that our current students progress is not disrupted.”
Johns Hopkins is eliminating more than 2,200 staff positions including 247 in the U.S. following termination of more than $800 m million in funding for its school of public health.
Columbia University said that 400 NIH grants were terminated which directly affects Alzheimer’s and cancer research. Specifically, it KILLED a landmark 30-year diabetes prevention study. Columbia’s total NIH funding loss is around $250 million.
Baylor is cutting back. Emory University System, one of the greatest research universities on the planet with two major research institutes, three hospital systems, and ties to the CDC is making “potentially radical adjustments.”
Canada is actively recruiting disenchanted American researchers. A university in France launched a program called A Safe Place for Science announcing funding to hire 15 new researchers.
But, here’s the reality. NIH funded $48 billion of research last year. Outside of industry, that’s the largest single source of funding for life sciences in the world. The cuts, the freezes, the uncertainty is a catastrophe for healthcare. We all stand on the shoulders of these scientists.
