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President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris on Tuesday promoted their health care agenda in the battleground state of North Carolina, arguing that Democrats like themselves would preserve access to care while Republicans would reverse gains made over the past decade and a half. ... Republicans have opposed Biden’s signature initiatives to lower medical costs, and they’ve seized opportunities to restrict abortion rights after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. (Megerian, 3/27)

Senate Republicans are warning former President Trump that restrictions on abortion should be left to the states and that proposing a 15-week national abortion ban ahead of this year’s election would be a major political blunder. Republican lawmakers have argued for years that states should have the authority to set parameters on abortion and hailed the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization in 2022 for handing that power to the states. (Bolton, 3/26)

A U.S. lawmaker involved in health policy has asked the Food and Drug Administration why it did not inspect Elon Musk's Neuralink before allowing the brain implant company to test its device in humans. Reuters reported last month that FDA inspectors found problems with record keeping and quality controls for animal experiments at Neuralink last June, less than a month after the startup said it was cleared to test its brain implants in humans. (Taylor, 3/26)

Widespread oversight of artificial intelligence in healthcare is still a work in progress but that doesn’t mean the technology is completely unregulated. AI regulation is in its early days and some observers say the plethora of solutions and overall excitement has led to a “wild west” environment within the industry. Congress doesn't appear close to moving significant legislation, which largely leaves the health tech industry to govern itself.  (Perna, 3/26)

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday approved Merck's (MRK.N) treatment for adults with high blood pressure due to constriction of lung arteries, adding another potential blockbuster drug to the pharmaceutical giant's portfolio. Shares of Merck were up more than 4% in extended trading. The therapy, branded Winrevair, is approved for treating pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH), which affects about 40,000 people in the United States. (Leo and Erman, 3/27)

When doctors told Katrina Barry that she had a rare and serious condition called pulmonary arterial hypertension or PAH, they warned her not to Google it. Come on, she thought; they wanted a young woman who was bound for graduate school, who had survived a transatlantic plane flight while having a heart attack and now open-heart surgery, not to look up the condition that kept trying to kill her? (Goodman, 3/26)

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s oversight of clinical research in hospitals and clinics has fallen considerably in recent years, due to disruptions caused by the Covid pandemic and challenges finding and keeping investigators, according to a new report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office. (Silverman, 3/26)