Data Leaked From Conservative Docs Group; Anti-Vax Legal Network; Cutting Copay Help

Welcome to the latest edition of Investigative Roundup, highlighting some of the best investigative reporting on healthcare each week.

Data Leaked From Conservative Docs Group

The American College of Pediatricians -- the conservative physician group that has been at the center of the ongoing legal fight over the abortion drug mifepristone -- has "suffered a significant data breach," WIRED reported.

A link to an unsecured Google Drive recently published on the organization's website pointed users to a large cache of documents that included financial and tax records, membership rolls, and email exchanges going back a decade, WIRED reported, noting it was first to report the leaked records.

"The more than 10,000 documents lay bare the outsize influence of a small conservative organization working to lend a veneer of medical science to evangelical beliefs on parenting, sex, procreation, and gender," the article stated.

One of the findings of WIRED's review was that the Southern Poverty Law Center's designation of "hate group" for the College "haunted its fundraising efforts." The College forcefully disputes that designation, the report stated.

Also leaked were volumes of literature created to influence relationships between pediatricians, parents, and children, as well as "reams of marketing material" aimed at being widely distributed among public school officials, WIRED reported.

"This includes pushing schools to adopt junk science painting transgender youth as carriers of a pathological disorder, one that's capable of spontaneously causing others – à la the dancing plague – to adopt similar thoughts and behaviors," the story stated.

The outlet noted that the Google Drive containing the documents "was taken offline soon after WIRED contacted the American College of Pediatricians. The College did not respond to a request for comment."

Legal Movement Focusing on Anti-Vax, COVID Litigation

As the pandemic winds down, a recent legal conference in Atlanta gathered lawyers with the aim of mapping out strategies for anti-vaccine and COVID-focused litigation, NPR reported.

"The lawyers met as the anti-vaccine movement is at a crossroads," the article stated. "The COVID-19 pandemic brought in new energy and supporters but is fading from public life. On May 11, the federal government's public health emergency will expire. To keep the cause alive, some in the movement are trying to build up a legal arm."

Legal fights range from those against educators who enforced mask mandates to seeking to have vaccination status made a protected class, like race or sexual orientation, NPR reported. There have been a plethora of lawsuits pushing back against public health measures since the start of the pandemic.

"The goal of this conference is to bring lawyers behind these suits together, study all that legal spaghetti on the wall and analyze what has and hasn't worked," according to the article. "They mean to probe for weak points in the law, build a network of experts and plaintiffs, and, they hope, inspire new laws."

The group is not alone in their strategic approach, the outlet noted.

The civil rights movements as well as organized labor and women's rights advocates have also relied on court battles and ground campaigns to "sway public sentiment," NPR reported. Going forward, keeping COVID-related grievances present in the courts could also help to sustain the large anti-vaccine movement.

Copay Assistance on the Chopping Block

For people who rely on expensive medicines, it's becoming more difficult for them to get financial help from the companies that make them, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Major pharmaceutical companies are scaling back programs that cover copays or provide free drugs, WSJ reported. "The programs have been costing drugmakers billions of dollars a year and have been increasing as health plans seeking to control their own spending have tried to take advantage of the assistance," the article stated.

Pharmaceutical companies created financial assistance programs that took care of out-of-pocket expenses for drugs and cleared the way for health plans to pay for the rest of the cost. In response, some health plans took steps to counter such programs in order to restrain rising spending on higher-priced drugs, WSJ reported.

Health plans stopped counting drugmakers' assistance toward deductibles, for example, or required members to seek the maximum amount of aid available before they would pay the rest of a drug's cost, the article stated. They also designed benefits to direct some members to pharmaceutical company foundations that provide free medications to people meeting certain income requirements, or who don't have insurance or whose health plan doesn't cover specific drugs.

Companies known as middlemen "sprouted up" to advise employers on how to save money by taking advantage of pharmaceutical assistance programs, according to WSJ.

All the while, the cost of financial assistance program ballooned. In 2022, drugmakers spent $18.7 billion on copay assistance, up 29% from $14.5 billion in 2018, WSJ reported. Now, pharmaceutical companies are taking a variety of steps to get those costs back down.

Comment