Purse strings are pretty tight all around lately, and thanks in part to new Alzheimer’s drugs, so are Medicare’s.

While Alzheimer’s drugs developed in recent years represent historic strides in treating the debilitating disease, they also come with hefty price tags. And experts worry this could strain Medicare’s wallet, potentially raising premiums and pulling financial resources away from other more effective treatments.

In early July, the FDA approved Kisunla, pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly’s Alzheimer’s treatment. Kisunla is the second FDA-approved drug—after Biogen and Eisai’s Leqembi received approval in July 2023—shown to slow cognitive decline in mild dementia by targeting a protein called amyloid, according to the FDA.

Leqembi costs $26,500 per year, and in April, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) published a document estimating that Medicare would spend up to $3.5 billion on the drug in 2025.

Keep reading here.—MA

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Second-quarter earnings are out for some major health systems across the US, and many have performed much better than expected.

Tenet Healthcare, HCA Healthcare, Universal Health Services, and Community Health Systems all reported Q2 earnings last week, and all but one saw strong revenue growth, largely due to an increase in hospital admissions across many facilities.

The results led to stock jumps, too: Tenet Healthcare saw a two-decade high at $145.34 per share on July 24.

Healthcare Brew broke down how the health systems—which, all combined, operate more than 340 hospitals—performed.

Keep reading here.—CM

A pharmacy group joined providers in filing a class-action lawsuit on July 19 over February’s cyberattack against Change Healthcare. The plaintiffs claim some providers are still waiting on delayed payments for healthcare services.

The National Community Pharmacists Association (NCPA), which represents more than 19,000 pharmacies nationwide, claimed alongside 30+ providers that UnitedHealth Group and its subsidiaries Optum and Change Healthcare could have done more to prevent the cyberattack, such as using multi-factor authentication on the server that hackers infiltrated.

The suit also criticized the insurance giant’s decision to take the system offline without a backup plan—a decision that cost UnitedHealth Group up to $2.5 billion in 2024, Modern Healthcare reported.

Keep reading here.—CC

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