Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden is considering substituting domestic reference pricing for House Democrats’ international reference pricing scheme in his bill to let Medicare negotiate drug prices, and the Oregon Democrat is considering including a drug appraisal entity that would help government negotiators by assessing what drugs are worth, according to lobbyists who support government negotiation.
How is the US doing in its battle to end the HIV epidemic? It’s heading in the right direction but at a slower-than-desired pace, according to a major report issued by the CDC at the end of May. Its conclusion could be summed up in one line: “Hopeful signs of progress in HIV prevention, but gains remain uneven.”
The American Journal of Managed Care held a panel discussion on how to improve access to and uptake for PrEP, hosted by Dr. Neil Minkoff and featuring HIV+Hep’s Carl Schmid, Dr. Ian Frank, Ryan Bitton, and Jeffrey Crowley. They examined the health, social, and economic impacts of taking PrEP, why not enough people are using it, and what is needed to increase uptake.
Looking beyond 40 years, [Carl] Schmid says immediate goals are to get more people who have HIV in treatment so they can achieve viral suppression, and to increase the number of people who are at risk for HIV to use PrEP. “Therefore we could decrease the number of new diagnoses,” he explains.
The United Nations convened a high-level meeting this week to review progress made in the past 5 years since global leaders adopted strategies to eliminate HIV/AIDS as a public health threat by 2030. Healio spoke with Carl Schmid, MBA, executive director of the HIV + Hepatitis Policy Institute and co-chair of the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS, about the meeting and the future of the fight against HIV/AIDS.