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The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) sent letters Wednesday to hospitals that provide transgender care services to children, demanding data on their quality standards and finances. CMS Administrator Mehmet Oz sent letters to “select hospitals,” giving them 30 days to provide specific information on “medical interventions for gender dysphoria in children.” (Choi, 5/28)

Since 2020, every new year has brought a new record of state bills attempting to roll back transgender rights. Most of that legislation has not become law. Even as the sheer volume of bills continues to grow, LGBTQ+ advocates continue to defeat the majority of them. But each year, Republicans introduce more and more bills. And each year, those bills become broader and more extreme, as politicians look for new ways to enforce a binary definition of gender — and that escalation is turning up in the bills that do pass. (Rummler, 5/28)

A well-known drug-policy lawyer is joining the Department of Health and Human Services to work on psychedelics policy, according to two sources with knowledge of the move who requested anonymity because it hasn’t been announced yet, POLITICO’s Natalie Fertig reports. Matt Zorn ... has been involved in numerous cannabis and psychedelics cases over the years, including representing one of the parties selected to participate in the DEA’s administrative law hearings regarding the ongoing effort to move marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule III under the Controlled Substances Act. (Schumaker, 5/28)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: Language Service Cutbacks Raise Fear Of Medical Errors, Misdiagnoses, Deaths

Health nonprofits and medical interpreters warn that federal cuts have eliminated dozens of positions in California for community workers who help non-English speakers sign up for insurance coverage and navigate the health care system. At the same time, people with limited English proficiency have scaled back their requests for language services, which health care advocates attribute in part to President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown and his executive order declaring English as the national language. (Sánchez and Orozco Rodriguez, 5/29)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: Feds Chop Enforcement Staff And Halt Rules Meant To Curb Black Lung In Coal Miners

In early April, President Donald Trump gathered dozens of hard-hat-clad coal miners around him in the White House East Room. He joked about arm-wrestling them and announced he was signing executive orders to boost coal production, “bringing back an industry that was abandoned,” and to “put the miners back to work.” Trump said he calls it “beautiful, clean” coal. “I tell my people never use the word ‘coal’ unless you put ‘beautiful, clean’ before it.” (Sisk, 5/29)

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) is staking out his spot as a populist defender of Medicaid in opposition to the steep cuts contained in the House-passed megabill to fund President Trump’s domestic agenda. The senior senator from Missouri — who as the state’s attorney general once signed on to a lawsuit seeking to overturn the Affordable Care Act — has made his position clear: He will not support a bill that cuts Medicaid benefits. Hawley has long warned his party against Medicaid cuts; the $800 billion question is whether other senators will join him. (Weixel, 5/28)

A rally in Philadelphia Wednesday drew dozens of people to fight against proposed cuts to Medicaid. It's legislation that Republicans say will only go after wasteful spending and fraud. That legislation is now headed for the Senate. Wednesday's message was focused on the Republican senator from Pennsylvania, Dave McCormick, urging him to vote against legislation passed by the House that would cut an estimated $800 billion from Medicaid, which provides health care coverage for low-income Americans. The reductions would come from work requirements and other provisions. (Stahl and Nau, 5/28)

The possibility of North Carolinians who depend on Medicaid being subject to a work requirement to keep their coverage has grown more plausible with the U.S. House of Representatives’ passage of a GOP-backed budget bill that includes the measure. Legislation approved by the U.S. House on May 22 would require “able-bodied” adults enrolled in Medicaid, which provides health insurance to more than 3 million people in North Carolina, to prove that they work, volunteer or attend school for at least 80 hours a month. (Baxley, 5/29)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: A Medicaid Patient Had A Heart Attack While Traveling. He Owed Almost $78,000

On Christmas Day at the WaTiki indoor water park, Hans Wirt was getting winded from following his son up the stairs to the waterslides. Wirt’s breathing became more labored once they returned to the nearby hotel where they and Wirt’s girlfriend were staying while visiting family in Rapid City, South Dakota. (Zionts, 5/29)

On March 1, the world's largest database for biomedical literature -- PubMed -- went down, immediately causing a global panic that the nation's essential publishing resource was yet another casualty of the new administration's many budget cuts and executive orders. ... Though the outage was apparently just a glitch and PubMed was back up the next day, the pause in the ability to access published research prompted the fear that PubMed could disappear, and soon. ... Now that fear has spurred some to action, but not in the U.S. (Clark, 5/28)

China is becoming a top donor country to WHO after promising this month that it'll make a $500 million gift over five years to the group. President Trump announced in January that he's pulling the United States out of WHO, leaving a power vacuum within the global health consortium that Beijing is trying to fill. (Goldman, 5/29)

While the U.S. Food and Drug Administration agrees taking expired medications carries certain health risks, the agency also recognizes, in some cases, "testing has shown that certain properly stored medical products can be used beyond their labeled expiration date if they retain their stability." ... The Cleveland Clinic suggests keeping a few things in mind if you are considering taking an expired medication, including the type of drug. "Taking some expired ibuprofen for a headache is probably OK. But using expired insulin for diabetes or nitroglycerin for angina is a different story," the clinic says. (Moniuszko, 5/28)

Tech billionaire Elon Musk, who was granted special government employee status to lead the Department of Government Efficiency, said Wednesday evening that his time in the Trump administration has come “to an end.” During his time helming DOGE, Musk oversaw major cuts to the federal workforce as part of the Trump administration’s efforts to reduce federal spending. (Iyer and Blackburn, 5/28)