Worth your time

 
Almost every side of the drug-pricing debate includes stakeholders whose financial backing is murky at best, but this Washington Post storyoutlines a few particularly brazen efforts that make pro-pharma advertising hard to pin down. One group called Citizens for American Ideas has been sending direct-mail ads to voters that bash Democratic policy ideas, all while concealing its internet service provider and listing a P.O. box as its business address.  — Lev Facher

This Kaiser Health News story sheds light on a little-known nonprofit hospital business practice — sorting through medical records to find wealthy patients, giving them better treatment, and then asking them for money. — Ike Swetlitz
 
Atul Gawande's new health care venture is raising more than just eyebrows: one potential competitor, Optum, is suing a new hire in a trade secrets case. STAT Plus subscribers can meet the former Optum execwho's unexpectedly at the center of the lawsuit. — Erin Mershon

As its headline implies, this Politico story sets out to answer a counterintuitive but important question: What can the bloated U.S. health care system learn from a rural hospital in Rwanda? And, boy, does it deliver. It's a tale of idealism put into action — with a healthy dose of policy, too. — Nick Florko

Meet Donna Shalala (again) I’m an unabashed policy wonk, and on Monday, I met my match. I sat down with Rep. Donna Shalala, the newly elected Democrat from Florida's 27th Congressional District, to talk drug pricing, Medicaid, and the Affordable Care Act. Does that name ring a bell? I hope so. Shalala is a former HHS secretary — the agency’s longest-serving chief who headed the department from 1993 to 2001 under President Clinton. Freshman lawmakers typically don’t have much influence in Congress — but that’s not exactly the case with Shalala. While she won’t hold seats on the Energy and Commerce or Ways and Means Committees (she wanted both but knew “they weren’t going to let a freshman on”), she’s had encouragement from the chairs of both committees, Reps. Richard Neal of Massachusetts and Frank Pallone of New Jersey to “play as much as I want in the health care arena” and she’s already heard from current HHS Secretary Alex Azar, who also wants to come by the matchbox-sized office she calls her own. Shalala and I got into the weeds on everything from drug importation to prescription drug advertising (she’s not a big fan of either), and I came away with one clear impression: Anyone working on health care in Washington will soon be trekking up to Longworth to make an appointment with Donna Shalala.   That said, don’t expect her to be the next Democratic firebrand. Inflammatory rhetoric, especially toward the drug industry, makes her “squirm a little bit,” she told me, adding that ”at the end of the day, we need a dynamic, multinational pharmaceutical industry.”

How long will it take FDA to get back up to speed? Gottlieb’s not sure At his first public appearance since the government started back up again Monday, FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb told reporters — including STAT’s Ike Swetlitz — that “it’s hard to say” how long it will take the agency to get back on track reviewing applications for new drugs. “We’re going to be putting out guidance really soon,” Gottlieb said. “We have to see how many applications come in. So I think in the next two weeks, we’ll have a better assessment.” During the shutdown, the FDA couldn’t accept applications for new drugs or medical devices.   But now that the president signed a short-term spending bill to keep the government open until Feb. 15, business can return to normal. Gottlieb said that the agency usually gets applications for about 50 generic drugs and a dozen new drugs in January. It remains to be seen how many of those will be filed and when, but Gottlieb confirmed the agency has already received a few applications — despite the FDA being reopen for less than a full business day