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The House voted 230 to 196 to pass a three-year extension of enhanced Affordable Care Act premium subsidies, with 17 Republicans joining all Democrats in favor. Five Republicans did not vote. (Wilkerson, 1/8)

Republicans in competitive seats see a grave threat to their reelections in skyrocketing insurance premiums. That was apparent Thursday in the defection of 17 in the House who voted for Democrats’ bill to restore expired Obamacare subsidies for three more years. The GOP revolt was bigger than anticipated and a stunning rebuke to Speaker Mike Johnson and President Donald Trump. The 17, primarily from swing seats or districts with large numbers of people enrolled in Obamacare plans, sent a clear message from the GOP’s most-at-risk members that they’re more afraid of losing their voters in an unfavorable midterm climate than they are of bucking their party leaders. (Kashinsky and Levien, 1/8)

House Republicans on Thursday said they are summoning top health insurance executives to testify later this month as part of a series of hearings about health care affordability. The move from the leaders of the House Energy and Commerce and Ways and Means committees comes weeks after the enhanced Affordable Care Act (ACA) subsidies expired on Dec. 31, resulting in significant out-of-pocket cost increases for tens of millions of low- and middle-income Americans on ACA plans. (Weixel, 1/8)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: �鶹Ů�� Health News’ ‘What The Health?’: New Year, Same Health Fight
Congress returned from its holiday break to the same question it faced in December: whether to extend covid-era premium subsidies for health plans sold under the Affordable Care Act. The expanded subsidies expired at the end of 2025, leaving more than 20 million Americans facing dramatically higher out-of-pocket costs for insurance. (Rovner, 1/8)

Related news from Massachusetts and Connecticut —

Massachusetts is dipping into its reserves for $250 million as a way to help cover the hole in health insurance coverage created by the expiration of federal Obamacare subsidies. The funding boost will cover only a portion of the lapsed aid, though about 270,000 residents are expected to see at least some relief from the infusion. “Massachusetts families cannot afford President Trump’s drastic increases to their health insurance premiums,” Governor Maura Healey, a first-term Democrat running for reelection this year, said in a statement. (Ryan, 1/8)

With uncertainty in Congress around reviving expired federal health care subsidies, Connecticut officials are considering another extension of open enrollment for 2026 Affordable Care Act plans. Federal lawmakers are trying different avenues to bring back the enhanced premium subsidies in some form after they lapsed at the end of the year. But depending on what Congress may do over the coming weeks, the state’s marketplace, Access Health CT, said it is in discussions with carriers about potentially extending the final deadline beyond Jan. 31 for another month or two. (Agen, 1/8)

More updates from Capitol Hill —

With the deadline for making pandemic-era telehealth flexibilities permanent looming at the end of the month, the American Medical Association (AMA) issued a brief aimed at convincing lawmakers to take action. "Since the COVID-19 public health emergency, Congress has repeatedly extended telehealth flexibilities for Medicare patients -- often at the last moment -- creating uncertainty for millions of patients and their physicians," said AMA President Bobby Mukkamala, MD, in a press release. (Firth, 1/8)

Senators Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Ron Wyden, D-Ore., are expanding their probe into UnitedHealth Group’s nursing home programs after the company provided what they said is an insufficient response to their initial inquiry, along with new allegations of resident deaths. In a Jan. 7 follow-up letter to UnitedHealth Group CEO Stephen Hemsley, the senators wrote they are renewing their inquiry “with heightened alarm” after the company failed to meaningfully respond to their initial request for information in August. The letter warns that if UnitedHealth fails to fully respond, the senators “will pursue answers to this critical inquiry using all tools at the Committee’s disposal.” (Emerson, 1/8)

Johnson & Johnson reached a deal with the US government to lower drug prices for some Americans, joining a cadre of major pharmaceutical companies to make price concessions in exchange for tariff exemption. The American drugmaker was one of 17 companies President Donald Trump called on last summer to lower prices, and among the last ones to announce a deal. The two remaining companies are AbbVie Inc. and Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc., which previously said they are in talks with the White House. (Tong, 1/9)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: California Ends Medicaid Coverage Of Weight Loss Drugs Despite TrumpRx Plan
Many low-income Californians prescribed wildly popular weight loss drugs lost their coverage for the medications at the start of the new year. Health officials are recommending diet and exercise as alternatives to heavily advertised weight loss drugs like Wegovy and Zepbound, advice experts say is unrealistic. “Of course he tried eating well and everything, but now with the medications, it’s better — a 100% change,” said Wilmer Cardenas of Santa Clara, who said his husband lost about 100 pounds over about two years using GLP-1s covered by Medi-Cal, California’s version of Medicaid. (Thompson, 1/9)

In related news about tariffs —

The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday could rule on the legality of President Donald Trump’s tariffs, a decision poised to have far-reaching impacts on not only trade policy, but also the U.S. fiscal situation. Though it’s not certain that the high court will make its ruling, it has scheduled Friday as a “decision day” for handing down opinions, and there is widespread speculation that the tariff case will come up. (Cox, 1/8)

Chinese crackdowns on chemicals used to make illicit fentanyl may have played a significant role in the sharp reduction of U.S. overdose deaths, according to research published Thursday. The paper suggests that the illicit fentanyl trade — which drove a historic surge in drug deaths during the past decade — experienced a large-scale decline in supply. Overdose deaths had surpassed 100,000 annually during the Biden administration but began to decline in mid-2023 and plunged further in its final year. They have kept falling under President Donald Trump, who invokes drug trafficking as he imposes steep tariffs on other countries and unleashes missile strikes on suspected drug boats in the Caribbean. (Ovalle and Cadell, 1/8)

Plus: Scroll down to our Editorials and Opinions section to read what two authors of the study think about the opioid research.

More updates on the Trump administration —

Attorneys general in five Democratic-led states filed a lawsuit Thursday against President Donald Trump’s administration after it said it would freeze money for several public benefit programs, citing concerns about fraud in the programs designed to help low-income families. The states — California, Colorado, Minnesota, Illinois and New York — called the move an unconstitutional abuse of power. The Trump administration announced earlier this week it was withholding their social safety net funding. The funding went toward three federal programs, two of which focus on lifting families with children out of poverty. (Balingit, 1/9)

Federal immigration agents shot and wounded two people in a vehicle outside a hospital in Portland on Thursday, a day after an officer fatally shot a woman in Minnesota, authorities said. The shooting drew hundreds of protesters to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement building at night, and Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield vowed to investigate “whether any federal officer acted outside the scope of their lawful authority” and refer criminal charges to the prosecutor’s office if warranted. (Rush and Johnson, 1/9)

A Government Accountability Office (GAO) report released yesterday finds that while the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has made strides in carrying out the 2011 Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA), gaps remain in implementing the rules and in establishing the systems needed to measure whether the FDA’s efforts are working. (Bergeson, 1/8)

The FDA's approach to collaborating with the public is shifting, as is its approach to how it handles reviews of new products in some cases. The changes are happening at the same time as a massive exodus of staff and are raising questions about the agency's stability. (Adams, 1/7)

Also —

NASA will bring a crew of four astronauts home from the International Space Station before its scheduled return because of a “controlled medical evacuation,” agency officials said on Thursday. During the 25-year history of the space station, this is the first time that astronauts will return early because of a medical issue. NASA did not provide details on who had the medical issue, or what the issue was. But the agency said that the astronaut was in stable condition. (Chang and Holpuch, 1/8)

The U.S. childhood vaccination schedule has been dramatically reduced, purportedly because, as federal health officials argued, the now-discarded schedule recommended children get far more vaccines than kids in “peer countries.” (Branswell, 1/9)

Vermont officials and health experts are reaffirming the state’s commitment to its existing childhood immunization schedule, which recommends many of the vaccines that the CDC had removed. (Gieger, 1/8)

North Carolina’s vaccination schedule for children requires two vaccines — against hepatitis B and meningococcal disease — that are no longer recommended by the CDC. Despite the mismatch between the North Carolina and federal schedules, North Carolina health officials said Wednesday that the state has no plans to change any recommendations about vaccines. Requirements for vaccines that are needed before a child can attend day care and school will not change. (Fernandez, 1/9)

Children’s Mercy says they will not follow the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s revised recommendations for childhood vaccinations, but instead will follow the recommendations of The American Academy of Pediatrics. (Alviz-Gransee, 1/8)

More on flu, HPV, hepatitis, measles and covid —

After skyrocketing in mid-December and causing a torrent of fever, chills and coughs, influenza appears to be retreating somewhat in New York City.“There is some good news: Over the last two weeks, cases have declined,” Dr. Michelle Morse, the acting health commissioner for New York City, said Thursday at a news conference. (Goldstein, 1/8)

The Vaccine Integrity Project (VIP), an initiative of the University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP), announced this week that it will conduct an independent, transparent review of the scientific evidence related to the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine. The announcement comes amid growing uncertainty around US vaccine policy and the dismantling of long-standing immunization recommendations. (Bergeson, 1/8)

After plunging over the past several decades, hepatitis A and B rates could climb again now that the CDC has removed both vaccines from its list of universally recommended childhood immunizations, public health experts warned. "We're going to start to see diseases that we thought were on the ash heap of history," Saul Karpen, MD, PhD, president of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases, told MedPage Today. (McCreary, 1/8)

As measles outbreaks flared up across the US last year, causing a record number of cases, Scott Thorpe kept a wary eye on Spartanburg County, South Carolina. Nestled in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains in South Carolina’s upstate region, it’s a community with pockets of residents who have particularly low vaccination rates. (McPhillips, 1/8)

COVID-19 is still killing more than 100,000 Americans a year, new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) study shows—underscoring how the virus remains a major health threat even if the height of the pandemic has long subsided. In a study published in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine, CDC researchers estimated that there were 43.6 million COVID-19–associated illnesses and 101,300 resulting deaths in the U.S. in the period from October 2022 to September 2023, and 33.0 million illnesses and 100,800 deaths subsequently between October 2023 to September 2024. (Fleur Afshar, 1/8)

On the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force —

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is quietly undermining an influential task force that has for years played a key role in combating chronic disease, making cancer screenings and medications accessible to millions of Americans. The task force has not met in person since March. Without citing a reason, Mr. Kennedy abruptly postponed its July meeting, when members were scheduled to discuss approaches to preventing heart disease. Amid the fall federal shutdown, his office also postponed the task force’s November meeting. Neither was rescheduled, according to two people from groups that typically attend the meetings. (Agrawal, Astor and Blum, 1/9)

A large nonprofit health system based in Philadelphia has filed a lawsuit against multiple pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) and drug companies, alleging they actively conspire to control the price of insulin, artificially increasing the price of the crucial hormone. In its Dec. 30 court filing, Jefferson Health said the alleged collusion caused it to spend more on patient care. The complaint comes shortly after the city of Philadelphia filed a similar lawsuit, alleging its public health insurance plan has suffered from the actions of drug manufacturers and the PBM middlemen, who set costs for medical plans looking to buy drugs for members. (Alstin, 1/8)

As Missouri lawmakers begin their new session, some say this year it's critical to pass legislation regulating pharmacy benefit managers. "I can tell you that if we don't get some sort of PBM reform taken care of this session, you're going to see a lot of independent pharmacies, like myself and anybody else in the area, that aren't going to be able to stay open," said Anthony Desha, owner of Flow's Pharmacy in Columbia and Summit Pharmacy in Holt's Summit. "This is going to create pharmacy deserts and healthcare deserts if something doesn't get changed." (Cummings, 1/8)

The Pharmaceutical Care Management Association has named David Marin as president and CEO, effective Jan. 20. Juan Carlos “JC” Scott, who had led the pharmacy benefit manager trade group since 2018, stepped down in November. PCMA Chief Government Affairs Officer Lucia Lebens then served as president and CEO for an interim period. (DeSilva, 1/8)

In other pharmaceutical industry news —

Merck & Co. is in talks to acquire the cancer-focused biotech company Revolution Medicines Inc., according to a report in the Financial Times. The article comes one day after the Wall Street Journal reported that AbbVie Inc. was near a deal to buy Revolution. AbbVie said that story was inaccurate. The FT reported, citing a person familiar, that the price tag being discussed was between $28 billion and $32 billion. This would make it one of the biggest pharmaceutical deals since Pfizer Inc. bought Seagen Inc. for $43 billion in late 2023. (Muller, 1/8)

A research letter yesterday in JAMA Network Open highlights the high perceived prevalence of US drug shortages and the negative outcomes related to patient care, primary care practice, and physician well-being. (Soucheray, 1/8)

On science and research —

Scientists are making inroads in understanding one of the central mysteries of human reproduction: Why do women’s eggs deteriorate as they age? The broad strokes have been well-known — the ticking of a woman’s biological clock increases risk of miscarriage and infertility, often caused by eggs with the wrong number of chromosomes, the structures that carry DNA. Researchers who presented their work at the Fertility 2026 conference in Edinburgh, Scotland, say they have identified how the decline of a particular protein as women age could be a clue to the problem. (Johnson, 1/9)

A nonprofit discovery lab in Teton County is developing a new rapid blood test to help diagnose ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease. The in-the-works test can identify an ALS patient with 97% accuracy, according to the findings recently published by the team at Brain Chemistry Labs in the peer-reviewed journal Molecular Biology. (Habermann, 1/8)

Researchers find that German cockroaches produce endotoxins that spread through household dust and air, amplifying allergic reactions and posing a hidden health risk in infested homes. (Levesque, 1/8)

New therapies for Alzheimer’s disease should target a particular gene linked to the condition, according to researchers who said most cases would never arise if its harmful effects were neutralised. The call to action follows the arrival of the first wave of drugs that aim to treat Alzheimer’s patients by removing toxic proteins from the brain. While the drugs slow the disease down, the benefits are minor, and they have been rejected for widespread use by the UK’s National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice). (Sample, 1/9)

Eli Lilly said Thursday that adding its weight loss drug Zepbound on top of its immunology therapy Taltz helped obese patients with an autoimmune condition that causes joint pain more than Taltz did alone. (Chen, 1/8)

In less than a year, new Medicaid eligibility restrictions may lead millions of people to lose coverage and then miss potentially lifesaving cancer screenings like colonoscopies or mammograms. A new analysis estimates that Americans may miss more than a million cancer screenings for colorectal, breast, or lung cancer over the two years after the new policy takes effect. (Chen, 1/8)

Medical practices are struggling with financial uncertainty and regulatory pressure after a tumultuous year. President Donald Trump’s administration and the Republican-led Congress engaged in high-velocity policymaking in 2025 that’s reshaping the healthcare sector. Trump’s tax law and its $1 trillion in healthcare cuts were the centerpiece, but the Health and Human Services Department and its agencies rolled out a slew of new regulations and Medicare payment models. (Early, 1/8)

About a decade ago, 48-year-old Darren Sidaway started having health concerns he didn’t think he could bring to his doctor. Sidaway, who lives in Cleveland, had long struggled with weight, and worried that he had metabolic issues that put him at risk for Alzheimer’s or early death. But his routine blood work seemed normal so he did not think his doctor would order more tests, and without that his insurance was unlikely to pay for it. (Ravindranath, 1/9)

IntelyCare has acquired staffing platform CareRev, expanding its reach to serve the acute-care marketplace. The deal closed Dec. 23 and was announced Thursday. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed. The company will market itself as two brands, with IntelyCare focusing on staffing in the post-acute space and CareRev serving acute-care markets. (DeSilva, 1/8)

Tallahassee's nonprofit hospice has announced a major expansion into the rural counties to the west of its present service area. Big Bend Hospice CEO Bill Wertman says the organization is gearing up to provide services to Jackson, Calhoun and Gulf counties, in addition to the eight-county region it already serves. So more hiring is underway. (Flanigan, 1/8)

New York Governor Kathy Hochul and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced a new investment to provide free child care for all 2-year-old children in the city, fulfilling part of Mamdani’s campaign pitch to offer universal care for children between the ages of 6 weeks and 5 years. The plan will cost $498 million over the next two years, Hochul said at a press briefing with Mamdani in Brooklyn Thursday. It will be paid for with existing state funds, without requiring new taxes or revenue raisers for the next fiscal year, she said. The 2 Care program will serve about 2,000 children when it opens later this year, Mamdani said. (Nahmias, 1/8)

In late 2024, Nimrod Shimrony, an emergency medical technician for the New York City Fire Department, tried to end his life. After completing an intensive outpatient treatment program, he and his wife searched for a therapist for months. Valeria Calderón, a special education teacher with New York City’s public school system, suffered a miscarriage that same year. Before she tried to have a baby again, she sought help with the depression and anxiety she had been struggling with. She called more than a dozen therapists. (Blau, 1/9)

The state-run health plan for municipal and other public-sector employees outside of state government paid almost $23 million more in claims than it collected in member premiums last fiscal year, according to a new report from Comptroller Sean Scanlon’s office. But Scanlon said this week the Connecticut Partnership Plan remains fiscally sound and generally has performed in the black since member premiums were adjusted in 2019. (Phaneuf, 1/8)

About 800 people have drowned in the waters off Hawaii’s roughly 1,000-mile coastline in the last decade, with an increasing number of people frequenting remote stretches of coastline with little to warn them of risks. Yet the state has not called for a single new warning sign to be put up on a beach in more than 13 years. ... The state Department of Land and Natural Resources is planning to revive a task force charged with putting up warning signs at dangerous beaches. The group has not met since 2012. (Thompson, 1/7)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: Thrift Store. Clinic. Roller Rink. Center Becomes ‘Radical’ Lifeline Amid Homelessness, Drug Crises
From the outside, the abandoned Family Dollar store in the Lower 9th Ward looks intimidating. It’s covered in graffiti, with aluminum cans and trash dotting the parking lot. It sits on a street with other empty lots and decayed buildings — symbols of the lasting devastation this neighborhood, one of the city’s poorest, has endured since Hurricane Katrina. But inside, the store is a welcoming oasis. (Pattani, 1/9)

A state-by-state health report card, out today from the United Health Foundation, finds an array of encouraging signs for America: Rates for premature death, drug deaths, firearm deaths and homicides all fell. Rates of cancer screenings, physical activity and volunteerism all increased. (Allen, 1/8)

On gun violence and mental health —

Lawyers for a former officer charged with abandoning children in the police response accused prosecutors of withholding information. A judge ruled prosecutors had erred but denied a motion for a mistrial. (Sandoval, 1/8)

After Claudio Neves Valente was accused of killing two Brown students and a M.I.T. professor, former classmates recalled how he yearned to go to M.I.T. himself and failed, adding to his growing list of resentments. (Ahmed and Fonseca, 1/8)

Experts say it’s not uncommon for patients who need prostheses to be denied by insurance. “It’s not a matter of if, but when,” one advocate said. (Kopf, Llamas and Taylor, 1/8)

Here’s a good New Year’s resolution for older patients and their families: Figure out if their prescriptions pose a health risk, because often they can. For Barbara Schmidt, an 83-year-old great-grandmother in Delaware, doing so made a big difference. She had been suffering repeated tumbles, leading to broken bones and bruising. Her doctor told her the problem was probably tied to some of her prescriptions, so she pulled back on taking the painkiller gabapentin and the muscle relaxant methocarbamol. (Wilde Mathews, 1/8)

In the spring of 2024, Ali Kharrazi, then an editor-in-chief of the scientific journal Current Research in Environmental Sustainability, or CRSUST, received a routine request to review several papers. Although guest editors had already recommended accepting the work, something unusual stood out. One of the papers included the phrase: “The way to foster love is by cultivating disruption.” Kharrazi did not think the article had any place in a scientific journal, much less one where he was named as an editor. (Andrey Smith, 1/7)

The death of TJ Kimball was a private tragedy that underscores a widespread risk in the stressful field. (Kaysen, 1/8)

Suicide remains one of the most serious challenges facing U.S. service members and veterans. Veterans die by suicide at a higher rate than the general population, a disparity that has persisted despite years of federal attention and investment. According to the Department of Veterans Affairs, an average of 17.6 veterans die by suicide each day, but other sources claim as many as 24-44 die per day, underscoring the scale and urgency of the problem. (Fuller, 1/3)

Marc Dervaes journeyed to Mexico for a brain-bending, existential jolt from a psychedelic drug that more and more desperate military veterans are hoping will relieve their trauma. Then he went a second time. (Friedheim, 1/8)

If you need help —

In a nation with the highest maternal mortality rate among high-income countries, Dr. Janell Green Smith’s death is a uniquely American tragedy. (Renee Graham, 1/8)

One major contributor is a decline in the supply of fentanyl. (Jonathan Caulkins and Peter Reuter, 1/7)

Mr. Tshabalala (not his real name) sat on the examination table in a thin gown, his arms resting on his thighs. He spoke isiXhosa, and when I greeted him in his language, his face opened into a smile. He told me he was a primary school teacher. He had first noticed difficulty holding the chalk while writing on the blackboard; lately, his handwriting had become illegible and his speech had begun to change. (Busi Mombaur, 1/9)

Those battling chronic illness know what a long, difficult battle it is to get well again, understanding all too well that old sentiment, You don’t realize how important your health is until you lose it. (1/9)

Some patients are convinced cannabis helps them. Here’s how doctors can guide their care. (Leana S. Wen, 1/8)