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WASHINGTON — Medicare can’t seem to figure out how to pay for pricey CAR-T cancer therapies.

The latest glaring example of the struggle? A daylong advisory meeting Wednesday in Baltimore, ostensibly convened to discuss how patient-reported data should fit into the way Medicare pays for the therapies, devolved into a confusing debate about what the meeting was supposed to be about in the first place.

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By the end, as panel members were finally set to vote on exactly what kind of advice to provide to the agency that oversees Medicare, it was clear that even they weren’t all sure what they’d been talking about.

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