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The average premium for Medicare Advantage plans are expected to increase slightly next year, according to the Biden administration. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services announced Tuesday that premiums will go up $0.64 per month in 2024. The number of plans is also expected to increase from 5,674 to more than 5,700. The data comes as signups in the Medicare Advantage program are expected to make up more than half of all Medicare enrollment next year and amid growing congressional scrutiny over how plans advertise to seniors. (King, 9/26)

CMS’ data on private equity ownership of nursing homes has significant limitations, according to a Government Accountability Office report first obtained by Pulse. The details: The report to House Ways and Means Committee ranking member Richard Neal (D-Mass.) found that CMS’ data didn’t include all of many nursing homes’ owners. That could be because some didn’t meet reporting requirements for ownership or comply with reporting mandates. (Leonard and Cirruzzo, 9/26)

The owner of a lab testing company has been ordered to pay $372 million by a federal court that ruled he had bilked Medicare through a fraudulent billing scheme. A former operations manager for one of four labs owned by Kentucky businessman Rajen Shah filed a whistleblower lawsuit in 2019, alleging Shah billed Medicare for expensive molecular tests not ordered by a licensed healthcare provider. The federal government intervened in the civil lawsuit filed in Florida in August 2022. (Kacik, 9/26)

Vice President Kamala Harris asked a crowd of students from historically Black colleges and universities to raise their hands if they had ever participated in an active shooter drill. Every hand went up. Last week, Harris stood outside the White House as the creation of the Office of Gun Violence Prevention was announced. On Tuesday, she was on the latest stop on her college tour to talk about issues including guns with young Americans. (Gerson, 9/26)

Millions of more students will gain access to free breakfast and lunch at school, the U.S. Department of Agriculture's announced Tuesday. The expansion of the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP) will make some 3,000 additional school districts serving more than 5 million students eligible for meals at no cost. (Habeshian, 9/27)

Safety-net providers bought a record $53.7 billion worth of medicines under the federal drug discount program last year — a 22% jump over 2021 that came while drug price growth lagged behind overall inflation, according to a published report. (Bettelheim, 9/27)

The U.S. FDA is cracking down on lax testing practices by dozens of makers of healthcare products following hundreds of deaths overseas from contaminated cough syrups, a Reuters review of regulatory alerts found. The Food and Drug Administration has reprimanded at least 28 companies this year, saying they failed to prove sufficient testing of ingredients used in over-the-counter drugs and consumer products for the toxins ethylene glycol (EG) and diethylene glycol (DEG), according to a Reuters analysis of agency import alerts and warning letters to manufacturers. (Wingrove, 9/26)

You would have been forgiven for being surprised on Sept. 12 when a panel of advisers to the Food and Drug Administration concluded that the active ingredient in Sudafed PE and other over-the-counter decongestants is completely ineffective. It was front-page news, birthed myriad explainer stories on the internet, and even inspired a lawsuit against companies that sold the medicine, phenylephrine. Yet when T.J. Parker, the entrepreneur and pharmacist who sold PillPack to Amazon, saw the news, he tweeted, “Didn’t everyone know this?” (Herper, 9/27)

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) today published draft guidance for defining appropriate duration of use in antibiotics used in the feed of food-producing animals.The guidance aims to address an issue that critics say the FDA has neglected in its efforts to promote more judicious use of medically important antibiotics in livestock and poultry. Roughly one-third of medically important antibiotics approved for use in food-producing animals have no duration limit, meaning farmers can use those antibiotics in animal feed for extended periods of time to prevent disease—a practice critics say compensates for poor living conditions that promote disease in herds and flocks. (Dall, 9/26)

The FDA is weighing the first stem cell treatment to treat amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, and agency documents indicate regulators are leaning against clearing it for market. FDA scientists said they have “major concerns” about the candidate, called NurOwn, ahead of a Wednesday meeting of the agency’s expert advisers. The drug, made by BrainStorm Cell Therapeutics, intends to treat ALS by using patients’ own stem cells to produce proteins thought to prevent neurons from dying. (Lim, Ellen Foley and Gardner, 9/26)

Drug Enforcement Administration interdictions of fentanyl are running ahead of last year and likely to break annual records, Administrator Anne Milgram said Tuesday. “We are facing and confronting a threat that is ever-growing. It has never been more deadly or dangerous,” Milgram told grieving families gathered at the annual National Family Summit on Fentanyl, which brought together people who lost loved ones to fentanyl poisoning. (Paun, 9/26)

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“Health Minute” brings original health care and health policy reporting from the KHN newsroom to the airwaves each week. (9/26)