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      2026 Prices for Drugs That Are Subject to Negotiations

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      The prices were made possible by the Inflation Reduction Act, which granted the health secretary the authority to negotiate on behalf of Medicare.The Biden administration on Thursday announced the results of negotiations between Medicare and pharmaceutical companies over the prices of 10 costly or common medications. The new prices, which will take effect in 2026, are the maximum Medicare Part D plans and patients will pay for a one-month supply.1. Eliquis, for preventing strokes and blood clots, from Bristol Myers Squibb and Pfizer, $2312. Jardiance, for diabetes and heart failure, from Boehringer Ingelheim and Eli Lilly, $1973. Xarelto, for preventing strokes and blood clots, from Johnson & Johnson, $1974. Januvia, for diabetes, from Merck, $1135. Farxiga, for diabetes, heart failure and chronic kidney disease, from AstraZeneca $1786. Entresto, for heart failure, from Novartis, $2957. Enbrel, for autoimmune conditions, from Amgen, $2,3558. Imbruvica, for blood cancers, from AbbVie and Johnson & Johnson, $9,3199. Stelara, for autoimmune conditions, from Johnson & Johnson, $4,69510. Fiasp and NovoLog insulin products, for diabetes, from Novo Nordisk, $119 More

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      Antisemitism on Campuses, Ivy and Beyond

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      More from our inbox:A Middleman’s Role in Drug PrescriptionsObjection, Your HonorTrump vs. the Environment Alex Welsh for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Should American Jews Abandon Elite Universities?,” by Bret Stephens (column, June 26):Mr. Stephens has issued a sobering and well-documented indictment of antisemitism on elite campuses. The question asked by the headline is timely and troubling for many Jewish high school students and their families.As noted by Mr. Stephens, confused administrators and revisionist curriculums contributed to this crisis. But the insensitivity and hypocrisy of supposedly idealistic and enlightened college students may be the most striking and unkind cut of all.“Safe spaces” and rules against “microaggressions” have become commonplace on campuses. Yet when Jewish students made it known that calling for deadly attacks on Jews (“Globalize the intifada!”) is offensive and intimidating, they were ignored.Chants in favor of colonization or racism would never — and should never — be met with such indifference. It hurts.Perhaps the headline of Mr. Stephens’s column should be rephrased: “Have Elite Universities Abandoned American Jews?”Alan M. SchwartzTeaneck, N.J.To the Editor:While the Ivies have claimed the antisemitism spotlight this year, Jew-hatred is flourishing on many other campuses, including mine, the University of California, Davis.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Your Hologram Doctor Will See You Now

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      A Texas hospital is experimenting with hologram technology for doctors to see patients. Some health care experts wonder if it’s beneficial.A patient walks into a hospital room, sits down and starts talking to a doctor. Only in this case, the doctor is a hologram.It might sound like science fiction, but it is the reality for some patients at Crescent Regional Hospital in Lancaster, Texas.In May, the hospital group began offering patients the ability to see their doctor remotely as a hologram through a partnership with Holoconnects, a digital technology firm based in the Netherlands.Each Holobox — the company’s name for its 440-pound, 7-foot-tall device that displays on a screen a highly realistic, 3-D live video of a person — costs $42,000, with an additional annual service fee of $1,900.The high-quality image gives the patient the feeling that a doctor is sitting inside the box, when in reality the doctor is miles away looking into cameras and displays showing the patient.The system allows the patient and doctor to have a telehealth visit in real time that feels more like an in-person conversation. For now, the service is used mostly for pre- and postoperative visits.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Women Are Paying for Birth Control When They Shouldn’t Have To

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      Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont has called on a government watchdog to investigate. Here’s what you need to know.Last week, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, chair of the Senate health committee, called on a government watchdog to investigate why insurance companies are still charging women for birth control — a move that thrust access to contraceptives back into the spotlight.In a letter to the Government Accountability Office, the senator noted that insurance companies were charging Americans for contraceptives that, under federal law, should be free — and that they were also denying appeals from consumers who were seeking to have their contraceptives covered. Some experts estimate that those practices could affect access to birth control for millions of women.Since 2012, the Affordable Care Act has mandated that private insurance plans cover the “full range” of contraceptives for women approved by the Food and Drug Administration, including female sterilizations, emergency contraceptives and any new products cleared by the F.D.A. The mandate also covers services associated with contraceptives, like counseling, insertions or removals and follow-up care.That means that consumers shouldn’t have any associated co-payments with in-network providers, even if they haven’t met their deductibles. Some plans might cover only generic versions of certain contraceptives, but patients are still entitled to coverage of a specific product that their providers deem medically necessary. Medicaid plans have a similar provision; the only exception to the mandate are plans sponsored by employers or colleges that have religious or moral objections.Yet many insurers are still charging for contraceptives — some in the form of co-payments, others by denying coverage altogether.A Quarter of Women Are Paying Unnecessarily for Contraceptives In his letter, Senator Sanders cited a recent survey by KFF, a nonprofit health policy research organization, that found that roughly 25 percent of women with private insurance plans said they had paid at least some part of the cost of their birth control; 16 percent reported that their insurance plans had offered partial coverage, and 6 percent noted that their plans did not cover contraceptives at all. Additionally, a 2022 congressional investigation, which analyzed 68 health plans, found that the process to apply for exceptions and have contraceptives covered was “burdensome” for consumers and that insurance companies denied, on average, at least 40 percent of exception requests.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Some States Say They Can’t Afford Ozempic and Other Weight Loss Drugs

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      Public employees in West Virginia who took the drugs lost weight and were healthier, and some are despondent that the state is canceling a program to help pay for them.Joanna Bailey, a family physician and obesity specialist, doesn’t want to tell her patients that they can’t take Wegovy, but she has gotten used to it.Around a quarter of the people she sees in her small clinic in Wyoming County would benefit from the weight-loss medications known as GLP-1s, which also include Ozempic, Zepbound and Mounjaro, she says. The drugs have helped some of them lose 15 to 20 percent of their weight. But most people in the area she serves don’t have insurance that covers the cost, and virtually no one can afford sticker prices of $1,000 to $1,400 a month.“Even my richest patients can’t afford it,” Dr. Bailey said. She then mentioned something that many doctors in West Virginia — among the poorest states in the country, with the highest prevalence of obesity, at 41 percent — say: “We’ve separated between the haves and the have-nots.”Such disparities sharpened in March when West Virginia’s Public Employees Insurance Agency, which pays most of the cost of prescription drugs for more than 75,000 teachers, municipal workers and other public employees and their families, canceled a pilot program to cover weight-loss drugs.Some private insurers help pay for medications to treat obesity, but most Medicaid programs do so only to manage diabetes, and Medicare covers Wegovy and Zepbound only when they are prescribed for heart problems.Over the past year, states have been trying, amid rising demand, to determine how far to extend coverage for public employees. Connecticut is on track to spend more than $35 million this year through a limited weight-loss coverage initiative. In January, North Carolina announced that it would stop paying for weight-loss medications after forking out $100 million for them in 2023 — 10 percent of its spending on prescription drugs.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      How to Care for Yourself as a Caregiver

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      Forget yoga or weekend escapes. There are more realistic tools to put in place, experts say.Once a quarter, Bich Le, 52, travels from her home outside of Minneapolis to St. Augustine, Fla., where she moves into her father’s guest room for three weeks.The health care executive is one of five siblings who take turns caring for their widowed 90-year-old father, who has lung cancer and requires constant assistance. While she’s in Florida this month, she will miss her daughter’s final high school prom; she missed it last year, too, due to her caregiving duties.The drugs Ms. Le’s father takes to manage pain can “negatively impact how he treats people,” she said. When he becomes volatile, Ms. Le said, she mostly tries to ignore it and “not add to the stress of the situation.” She tells herself to “just care for him and just let it go.” But sometimes, when she’s exhausted, his temper grates.“What runs through my brain is: ‘A simple thank you would really go a long way,’” she said. “‘You have me, or you have a nursing home.’”Caregiving can be fraught for the estimated 53 million Americans who assist family members and friends. And factors like financial strain and isolation can add to psychological distress. In a 2017 survey of 1,081 caregivers conducted by AARP, 51 percent of respondents reported feeling worried or stressed. But there was a surprising upside: The majority — 91 percent — also reported feeling pleased that they were able to help.How can caregivers hold on to that feeling amid the stress, fatigue and resentment that also come with the role? There are strategies for feeling “less burdened or stressed by the daily problems” they encounter, said William Haley, a professor of aging studies at the University of South Florida.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Walmart Is Shutting Health Centers After Plan to Expand

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      The 51 locations, next to Supercenters, proved too costly to be profitable, the retailer said.Walmart, the world’s largest retailer, said Tuesday that it was shutting down its health care centers, a network that only last year it said it planned to expand.The retailer said in a blog post that its 51 health centers across five states would close. The centers were next to Supercenter locations. The plans won’t affect the more than 4,600 pharmacies and more than 3,000 vision centers within Walmart stores.Walmart started the health-care clinic initiative in 2019 in Dallas, Ga., with centers providing primary care, labs, X-rays and electrocardiograms, counseling, and dental, optical and hearing services. Many were in smaller towns where customers might lack access to quality care, and the company had said it was focused on affordability. In 2021, Walmart started offering a virtual option when it acquired MeMD, a telehealth provider.“This is a difficult decision, and like others, the challenging reimbursement environment and escalating operating costs create a lack of profitability that make the care business unsustainable for us at this time,” the company said Tuesday.Walmart said it was still deciding when it would close each center. In addition to Georgia, centers are in Arkansas, Florida, Illinois and Texas. Workers within the centers will be paid for 90 days and will be eligible to transfer to other Walmart or Sam’s Club locations, the company said.Offering health care is more difficult than selling consumer goods like laundry detergent and car parts, said David Silverman, a retail analyst at Fitch Ratings, noting the layers of government and insurance providers involved.“The attempts to enter these spaces and some of the failures of doing so really underscore the challenges and complexities of operating in the U.S. health care space,” Mr. Silverman said.In March 2023, Walmart said it planned to double its health center locations. It said that by the end of 2024, it expected to have more than 75 Walmart Health Centers and expand to states like Missouri and Arizona.In 2021, Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase ended their high-profile joint health care venture, which sought to explore new ways to deliver health care to their employees. In March, Walgreens said it had closed 140 of its VillageMD clinics and planned to close 20 more. More

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      Maximizing Profits at the Patients’ Expense

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      More from our inbox:The Brave Trump JurorsBlack Voters ‘Want to Be Courted’ by DemocratsBetter Than Debates NATo the Editor:Re “Patients Hit With Big Bills While Insurers Reap Fees” (front page, April 7):Chris Hamby’s investigation uncovers the hard truth for patients who receive care from providers outside their insurance network. While most of us try to save out-of-pocket costs by using in-network health professionals and hospitals, it’s not always possible. And there’s no way to determine what we’ll owe until after we get that care — when it’s too late to reconsider based on the costs we’ve incurred.So, it’s more important than ever for the government to swiftly implement an essential element of the No Surprises Act: Providers should have to give patients an advance explanation of benefits so patients can estimate their financial burden before they get treatment, in or out of network.Health price transparency is improving, but it’s outrageous that even two years after the No Surprises Act passed, everyone except the patient knows the price of a procedure or doctor’s visit in advance, leaving patients unpleasantly surprised.Patricia KelmarAlexandria, Va.The writer is senior director of Health Care Campaigns for U.S. PIRG.To the Editor:This is just the latest example of the schemes deployed by insurers to maximize profits by cutting reimbursements to physicians and shifting medically necessary health care costs onto patients.Whether it’s through third-party entities like MultiPlan or using tactics such as narrowing provider networks and restrictive prior authorization policies, insurers have the perverse incentive to boost revenue over offering adequate payment for quality patient care under the guise of “controlling costs.”More and more patients are being forced to decide whether they should forgo treatment because their insurer won’t pay the bill.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More