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Former President Trump is backing off his support for a controversial drug pricing plan that struck fear into the hearts of pharmaceutical executives during his first term. Trump in 2020 signed an executive order to make sure that Medicare didn’t pay more for prescription drugs than other developed countries. The aggressive policy could have slashed more than $10 billion per year from the pharmaceutical industry’s bottom line. The Biden administration ultimately rescinded the policy following a court order that stopped the program from going into effect. (Zhang, 10/4)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: Even Political Rivals Agree That Medical Debt Is An Urgent Issue

While hot-button health care issues such as abortion and the Affordable Care Act roil the presidential race, Democrats and Republicans in statehouses around the country have been quietly working together to tackle the nation’s medical debt crisis. New laws to curb aggressive hospital billing, to expand charity care for lower-income patients, and to rein in debt collectors have been enacted in more than 20 states since 2021. (Levey, 10/7)

�鶹Ů�� Health News' 'What The Health?' Podcast: The Health Of The Campaign

The 2024 presidential race is taking on a familiar tone — with Democrats accusing Republicans of wanting to ban abortion and repeal the Affordable Care Act and Republicans insisting they have no such plans. Voters will determine whom they believe. ... Also this week, Rovner interviews �鶹Ů�� Health News’ Lauren Sausser, who reported and wrote the latest �鶹Ů�� Health News-Washington Post “Bill of the Month,” about a teenage athlete whose needed surgery lacked a billing code. (Rovner, 10/4)

Heading into the court’s opening session on Monday, the justices have agreed to hear 40 cases this term. None of those cases is nearly as consequential as the high court’s forays in recent years into abortion, affirmative action and gun rights. The cases on tap do include some politically sensitive disputes, like a fight over a Tennessee law banning hormone treatments for transgender minors. There’s also an argument set for Tuesday on the Biden administration’s effort to ban so-called “ghost guns,” which are assembled from kits purchased over the internet and are often untraceable. Another case tests a new Texas law that requires visitors to porn websites to provide identification proving they’re over 18. (Gerstein,10/7)

The number of untraceable homemade guns recovered at crime scenes has fallen since the enactment of rules restricting the sale of the weapons, according to law enforcement statistics. (Thrush, 10/7)