Spiegel Stuff: The Future of Healthcare Summit Recap

The Hill hosted the Future of Healthcare Summit, presented by Amgen, BIO and Horizon Therapeutics, at Long View Gallery in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday. Policymakers, health officials and industry leaders addressed some of the biggest questions in health care.

The speakers included Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Bill Cassidy (R-La.), Reps. Greg Walden (R-Ore.) and Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.), the Food and Drug Administration's Dr. Amy Abernethy, Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, Nano Vision CEO Steve Papermaster and Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

For more info on The Hill's events, visit TheHill.com/Events

Manchin and Cassidy presented the view from Congress, with Manchin taking on his own party over “Medicare For All.” The Hill's Jessie Hellmann has more.

Manchin: 'We can't even pay for Medicare for some'

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) on Wednesday embraced the GOP's line of attack on "Medicare for All" proposals, arguing that the government can't even pay for the program it has now.

"We can't even pay for Medicare for some and to go Medicare for All, we can't take care of those who are depending on it right now," Manchin said at The Hill's Future of Healthcare Summit.

"That's an inspirational, novel idea," Manchin said of the proposal that is sponsored by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who is running for president.

Manchin's comments came ahead of the Democratic Party's first presidential debate, where Medicare for All was a talking point.

Most of Manchin's Senate colleagues who are running for president, including Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), back Medicare for All.

But Manchin, who calls himself a conservative Democrat, said the U.S. moving to a single-payer system run by the government would not align with a capitalist society.

"We're kind of conditioned to want what you want, when you want it. If you're willing to pay for it, make that sacrifice, then by God, in a capitalist society, you should be able to buy it," Manchin said, mentioning the generous health care plans unions negotiate for workers. "And we're going to take that away?"

More on Manchin's remarks from the summit here.

At the summit, Steve Papermaster, the CEO and founder of Nano Vision, discussed the importance of "data-driven cures" in the future of health care with Steve Clemons, editor-at-large of The Hill.

The increasing role of innovation in health care is also raising questions about the security of new technologies and data, issues which The Hill's Maggie Miller examined.

Pressure builds to secure health data

Momentum is growing on Capitol Hill to provide more protections for personal medical information as lawmakers work on drafting the first national data privacy law.

Recent health data breaches have put a spotlight on the issue, which is likely to grow in importance as medical professionals shift more of their work online and increasingly turn to data and analytics to treat patients.

Key congressional committees including the Senate Commerce Committee and the House Energy and Commerce Committee have been working to put together data privacy legislation since the start of the new Congress, with health data privacy likely to be in the spotlight.

A spokesperson for House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Frank Pallone Jr. (D-N.J.) told The Hill that the committee "plans on including meaningful protections and consumer control for health data not covered" by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) in upcoming "comprehensive privacy legislation."

HIPAA, signed into law in 1996, required the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to create regulations to protect the privacy and security of health information. According to HHS, prior to HIPAA there was no general set of national security standards to protect health information.

Updating the nation's laws to account for developments in new health care technologies and practices will be critical, experts say.

Steve Grobman, the senior vice president and chief technology officer at cybersecurity group McAfee, said the risks around securing health data are likely to grow with the digitization of the medical industry.

"When medical records were handwritten notes in a filing drawer in a doctor's office, it would be difficult for an adversary to get access to medical data at scale, the amount of medical data that they would actually be able to take would be limited," Grobman said. "With the digitization of data, it enables massive amounts of data to be stolen."

Lawmakers, though, have already taken some steps to address the issue, including bills to force companies to better secure health data on apps.

More on the cybersecurity challenges for health care here.

New medical breakthroughs and innovations will also impact one of the biggest debates in health care today: how to control costs. The Hill's Peter Sullivan looked at how Washington will need to grapple with that issue in the future.

Million-dollar drugs pose new challenge for Congress

A new drug approved for the first time in May offers hope to children born with a rare genetic disease who previously often did not live past early childhood.

The drug, Zolgensma, injected through the veins, provides a crucial functioning gene for people with spinal muscular atrophy who otherwise would have their muscles break down.

With a one-time treatment, the drug has the potential to treat patients for a lifetime. But there's one big problem: It costs $2.1 million.

That eye-popping price tag gives Zolgensma the distinction of being the world's most expensive drug — and there are others like it.

A wave of innovation is bringing on new breakthrough treatments for terrible diseases, but also record highs in the prices of those medicines. The challenge will only mount as more drugs are developed.

"We are entering a new phase," said Dr. Walid Gellad, director of the Center for Pharmaceutical Policy and Prescribing at the University of Pittsburgh, with a burst of "potentially curative" drugs that are "much more expensive."

The question, of course, is whether these prices are justified. To patients with a fatal disease, almost any price could seem worth it for a cure. But the health care system as a whole would strain to afford massive sums for a whole range of drugs.

"We're going to have to do something," said David Mitchell, president of Patients for Affordable Drugs. "We can't possibly pay whatever these drug companies demand."

Lawmakers are confronting these questions as they craft legislation aimed at lowering drug prices, a rare area of possible bipartisan cooperation this year.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) is floating the idea of allowing Medicaid to pay for expensive drugs over time, rather than all at once, comparing it to buying a house.

House Democrats are working on legislation to allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices, a long-held goal for the party that they hope President Trump will also endorse, given his attacks on drug companies.

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On The Hill's op-ed pages, lawmakers from both parties also weighed in on the issues raised by the summit.

Rep. David Trone (D-Md.) urged Congress to keep up the fight against opioids.

"While Congress has absolutely started to respond to this crisis, the worst possible outcome would be for Congress to assume it has ‘checked the box’ on the issue. When we don't act, we lose 192 lives a day and billions of dollars a year," the lawmaker writes.

Rep. Tom Reed (R-N.Y.) pressed for more action to lower insulin prices.

"There is no good reason for hard-working people around the country to incur mountains of debt just to afford insulin," Reed writes.

Rep. Buddy Carter (R-Ga.), the only pharmacist serving in Congress, spoke about his work on the Cancer Survivors Caucus.

"I truly believe one of the most significant impacts we can make for patients with cancer is to lower health care costs, specifically prescription drug costs," Carter writes. "To do this, we must put the free market back into our health care system and increase transparency in the drug supply chain."

Rep. Donald Norcross (D-N.J.) called for more attention to mental health parity.

"As vice-chair of the Bipartisan Addiction Task Force, one of the largest bipartisan groups in Congress, I will keep shining a light on the fact that addiction is a medical condition – not a moral or criminal issue," Norcross vows.

And Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) pushed for expanding access to health care.

"These are solutions that will expand access to care and lower costs for millions of Americans. Congress should be working together to protect the health care that millions of American depend on, and make sure families can get the care they need at a price they can afford," Baldwin wrote.