Dear John,

ICYMI, Health Affairs released an ahead-of-print article by Rory Smith and colleagues at Brown University.

The article, part of the upcoming December 2023 issue on Global Lessons from COVID-19, explores global efforts to counter misinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In the November issue of Health Affairs, Caroline Horrow and Aaron Kesselheim at Brigham and Women’s Hospital offer a taxonomy of possible payment mechanisms to address affordability of gene therapy treatments.

They describe a series of payment models that take three main approaches:

• Amortization, which mitigates initial budget impact by spreading payments over time
• Risk Spreading, which makes budgets more predictable by pooling costs with other payers or capping costs based on expected volume
• Performance-Based Payment, which addresses clinical uncertainty by typing prices to patients

Also, take a moment to look back at a number of Forefront articles featuring author Aaron Kesselheim:

• Three Key Ways To Strengthen Proposed Pharmacy Benefit Manager Regulations
• What Do High Drug Prices Buy Us?
• Why ‘Government Patent Use’ To Lower Drug Costs Won’t Stifle Innovation

How Are Opioid Settlement Funds Being Spent So Far?

Roxanne Saucier et al.

Proposed 2025 Payment Rule: Marketplace Standards And Insurance Reforms

Sabrina Corlette and Jason Levitis

Proposed 2025 Payment Rule: Risk Adjustment

Matthew Fiedler

With today's featured journal article focusing on pharmaceuticals and medical technology, get the full story by exploring our extensive archive of podcasts we've released on this topics.

Take a look below at a few highlighted episodes:

• A Health Podyssey: Sean Dickson on Therapeutics' Impact on Pharmaceutical Prices & Drug Spending (August 2023)
• Health Affairs This Week: The Controversy Around Pharmacy Benefit Managers (March 2023)
• A Health Podyssey: Jennifer Kao on Drug Repurposing (March 2023)

For the month of November, we are recognizing National Family Caregivers Month.

Throughout this month, we will be highlighting papers from over the years that illuminate this role through a health policy lens.

In the September 2021 issue of Health Affairs, HwaJung Choi and coauthors explore family care availability and what implications that could have for informal and formal care for adults with dementia in the US.

She also spoke on our podcast A Health Podyssey discussing the article.