We're About To Hear Something New in the IRA Lawsuits: The Voice of a Judge

First off: a correction. Yesterday, I said that “AstraZeneca is out of the IRA-lawsuit game.” It’s Astellas that dropped its IRA litigation.

AZ is still very much suing the government, and its case is, IMHO, the most interesting attack on the law.

I regret the error.

Today is a slow new day. I’m not tempting the fates in saying that. I’m well aware that the rest of the month -- and, let’s be honest, the rest of the year -- is likely to be a wild ride.

But one news item that is catching my eye is the fact that the new judge in the Chamber of Commerce IRA lawsuit has decided to schedule an oral argument over the Chamber’s motion for a preliminary injunction for next Friday.

That means we’ll hear from both the Chamber’s lawyers and the government’s legal eagles but, more interesting, we’ll also hear from a judge. In this case, it’s the new guy overseeing the case, Michael Newman.

And yeah, I’ll be listening in.

For all of the ink spilled on these lawsuits, we’ve heard very little about the judges that will be overseeing them.

I realize that I’m not an assignment editor for anyone, but I would think that this would be an interesting rock for an enterprising reporter to turn over. Some bits here are fairly evident -- we know who nominated each of the jurists (Newman is a Trump appointment) -- but I don’t think I’ve seen any deep looks into judicial history or philosophy.

So if someone wants to start filling in those gaps, I suspect there is a market for that reporting.

• I’m not sure that the congressional debate over insulin is as critical as its made out to be -- the problem isn’t that we don’t have enough programs, it’s that people don’t know about them -- but it might not matter, as it seems that efforts to legislate a nationwide cap on patient out-of-pockets are floundering somewhat.

• Moody’s said that Amgen and J&J are the two companies most likely to feel the effects of the first round of price controls, though the overall impact will be “modest,” which feels like a safe take for the ratings agency.

• On the one hand, this STAT First Opinion on how the IRA will drive down prices for patients offers a deeper explanation of what’s going on, and that’s a good thing. But it probably doesn’t go deep enough, ignoring the ways in which the law might have a negligible -- or negative -- impact on access and affordability.

• My erstwhile colleague Gary Karr used to roll his eyes every time a “seven-figure” ad campaign launched, because it’s pretty clear that “seven figures” means $1 million, and probably not a penny more, and a million bucks just isn’t what it used to be. Anyways: I thought of Gary when I saw that Patients for Affordable Drugs is launching a “six-figure” effort. (That story -- and this one from Fierce -- also notes the next salvo from PhRMA in its anti-PBM ad campaign, which is pretty well-executed …)

• What’s Amazon up to in health care? STAT talks to a bunch of Amazon’s top health execs to get an interesting picture of where the retail giant is and where it’s going.

• AIDS United, a group made up of largely federally qualified health centers, wants to keep the 340B status quo. And while Axios positioned that as a stance that is in opposition to what biopharma and allies want, I’m not sure that anyone really objects to the way that 340B works for FQHCs.

• Novo Nordisk could generate $33 billion in obesity-med sales, according to analysts.