Health payers–including Medicare and Point32Health–to question Aduhelm pricing and its “reasonable and necessary” use

State’s Sec­ond-Largest Health Insur­er Slams Bio­gen For Cost­ly Alzheimer’s Drug (The Boston Globe): The state’s sec­ond-biggest health insur­er is threat­en­ing to lim­it or not cov­er Biogen’s new Alzheimer’s drug, accus­ing the Cam­bridge biotech of putting “exces­sive cor­po­rate prof­its” ahead of patients by charg­ing $56,000 a year for the con­tro­ver­sial treat­ment. Michael Sher­man, chief med­ical officer…

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To screen, or not to screen (for dementia), that is still the question

A lead­ing group of med­ical experts on Tues­day declined to endorse cog­ni­tive screen­ing for old­er adults, fuel­ing a debate that has sim­mered for years. The U.S. Pre­ven­tive Ser­vices Task Force said it could nei­ther rec­om­mend nor oppose cog­ni­tive screen­ing, cit­ing insuf­fi­cient sci­en­tif­ic evi­dence of the practice’s ben­e­fits and harms and call­ing for fur­ther stud­ies. The task…

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Study: Hearing aids may help older adults delay dementia, depression, anxiety, and falls

___ Hear­ing Aids Linked to Low­er Risk of Demen­tia, Depres­sion and Falls, Study Finds (Michi­gan Health Lab): “Old­er adults who get a hear­ing aid for a new­ly diag­nosed hear­ing loss have a low­er risk of being diag­nosed with demen­tia, depres­sion or anx­i­ety in the fol­low­ing three years, and a low­er risk of suf­fer­ing fall-relat­ed injuries,…

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September 17th @ UC Berkeley: Disrupting neurodegenerative diseases

__________ Quick heads-up about a great event next month for those based in the San Fran­cis­co Bay Area. When: Tues­day, Sep­tem­ber 17, 2019 / 8:30 AM – 6:00 PM PDT Where: Pauley Ball­room, UC Berke­ley What: 2019 UC Berke­ley Aging Research & Tech­nol­o­gy Sum­mit: Dis­rupt­ing Neu­rode­gen­er­a­tive Dis­eases Alzheimer’s and neu­rode­gen­er­a­tive dis­eases are

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Brain health center closes after Medicare challenges its medical claims and treatments

. New Brain Cen­ter Clos­es Amid Medicare Dis­pute (Bethes­da Mag­a­zine): “Neur­Ex­pand Brain Cen­ter, the brain fit­ness and devel­op­ment cen­ter that opened in August in Friend­ship Heights, abrupt­ly closed this month amid a dis­pute with Medicare. Neu­rol­o­gist Majid Fotuhi, NeurExpand’s founder, said that Medicare reviewed the practice’s clin­i­cal pro­gram and 

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