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President Biden started his sprawling national address Thursday night with a warning to Republicans: Women have rebuked attempted abortion limits in past elections, and they will do it again. (Owermohle, 3/7)

The president never used the word abortion — a word he is deeply uncomfortable with as a devout Catholic — but he vowed to protect and champion reproductive freedom, which has been a powerful booster of Democrats’ political fortunes since the Supreme Court in 2022 overturned Roe. “Those bragging about overturning Roe v. Wade have no clue about the power of women,” Biden said, in an apparent reference to Trump. (Pager and Olorunnipa, 3/7)

Biden confronted the Supreme Court—with some justices in the audience looking on—over the decision that eliminated the right to an abortion. “With all due respect, justices, women are not without electoral or political power,” Biden said. “You’re about to realize just how much.” It was an unusually direct rebuke of the court by Biden, an institutionalist who has long said he respects the independence of the court. (Lucey, 3/8)

Latorya Beasley was supposed to undergo an embryo transfer this week at her clinic, Alabama Fertility, in hopes of having her second child through in vitro fertilization (IVF). But her plans were thwarted by a state Supreme Court ruling that halted IVF for many in the state. Now, she’s attending President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address as a guest of First Lady Jill Biden. (Panetta and Luthra, 3/7)

As a sign of what a political liability the IVF issue has become for Republicans, Senator Katie Britt of Alabama was selected to provide the party's rebuttal to Biden's address. "We support continued nationwide access to in vitro fertilization," she said during her rebuttal. Last month, Senate Republicans blocked a bill to protect IVF nationwide. Biden’s defense of IVF treatments was a shift in the messaging he had been delivering on reproductive rights for nearly two years, since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in the Dobbs decision. He also lambasted former President Donald Trump and other Republicans for boasting about having nominated three of the Supreme Court justices that helped overturn the nearly 50-year constitutional right of access to abortions. (Bennett, 3/8)

Some advocates believe that merely reinstating access as it existed under Roe is insufficient for truly protecting abortion rights. Biden’s remarks on Thursday, and the larger messaging by Democrats ahead of a difficult election season, reflect an ongoing struggle within the movement to determine how to truly ensure everyone who wants an abortion can obtain one. (Segers, 3/8)

President Joe Biden mostly painted in broad strokes in his State of the Union Address Thursday when it came to healthcare, touting a raft of healthcare accomplishments and proposals aimed at lowering costs for patients but perhaps raising costs for companies. He also pointed to some new proposals, including expanding the number of drugs that can be negotiated by Medicare to 50 a year, extending a $2,000 cap on out-of-pocket drug costs to all Americans, and launching a $12 billion women's healthcare initiative. (McAuliff, 3/7)

Often, a president’s State of the Union address is a staid affair, with platitudes and calls for bipartisanship and unity. But President Biden blasted the pharmaceutical industry with its unflattering moniker, “Big Pharma,” not once, but three times Thursday night, only the second time ever that sobriquet has been used in such a setting, after Biden’s address last year. (Wilkerson, 3/7)

If you’re a drug company executive, you probably feel like you got up on the wrong side of bed. On Thursday night, President Biden proposed expanding one of his most popular policies: the Medicare price negotiation process that was put in place as part of the Inflation Reduction Act. “Americans pay more for prescription drugs than anywhere else,” Biden said. “It’s wrong and I’m ending it.” (Herper, 3/8)

�鶹Ů�� Health News' 'What The Health?' Podcast: The State Of The Union Is ... Busy

At last, Congress is getting half of its annual spending bills across the finish line, albeit five months after the start of the fiscal year. Meanwhile, President Joe Biden delivers his annual State of the Union address, an over-the-counter birth control pill is (finally) available, and controversy erupts over new public health guidelines for covid-19 isolation. Alice Miranda Ollstein of Politico, Sarah Karlin-Smith of the Pink Sheet, and Sandhya Raman of CQ Roll Call join �鶹Ů�� Health News’ Julie Rovner to discuss these issues and more. (3/7)

Pharma industry giants including Bristol Myers Squibb, Johnson & Johnson, Novartis, and Novo Nordisk deployed a half-dozen lawyers to a courtroom here Thursday in a bid to dismantle Medicare’s new drug price negotiation program, just hours before President Biden is set to glorify it in his State of the Union. (Cohrs, 3/7)

President Joe Biden on Thursday used his State of the Union to take concerns about his age head on. Biden waited until almost the end of his address, but the president made it clear that he would not ignore the question consuming his reelection. "When you get to be my age, certain things become clearer than ever," he said. "I know the American story. Again and again I've seen the contest between competing forces in the battle for the soul of our nation." (Griffiths, 3/7)

President Biden delivered a vigorous and rapid speech for 67 minutes at high volume. He had some stumbles but also delighted his staff with the way he jostled with Republicans. He painted himself as an experienced, steady hand, even if he was getting long in the tooth. The speech was well received by Democrats. “Nobody is going to talk about cognitive impairment now,” Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) told the president shortly after he was done. (Lemire, 3/7)

Thursday’s prime-time address came just weeks after special counsel Robert Hur released a report that painted a devastating portrait of Biden’s memory as “significantly limited.” Hur is scheduled to testify before Congress next week, an event that could refocus attention on his claims that Biden could not recall the year his vice presidency began or when his son Beau died, which Biden has denied. (Viser, 3/7)

Kansas moved closer Thursday to requiring abortion providers to ask patients why they want to terminate their pregnancies and report the answers to the state. It would join other states with Republican legislatures that ban most abortions even though Kansas voters have affirmed abortion rights. The House approved, in an 81-39 vote, a bill that would require providers to ask patients 11 questions about their reasons for terminating a pregnancy, including that they can’t afford another child, raising a child would hinder their education or careers, or a spouse or partner wanted her to have an abortion. The bill goes next to the state Senate, where it also is likely to pass. (Hanna, 3/7)

A top trade group for pharmaceutical companies has asked the US supreme court not to shred the power of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in an upcoming case that could cut access to a drug commonly used in abortions. But in a move that appears to undermine its own position, it has also given more than $125,000 to a GOP organization that backs the Republicans who want the supreme court to do exactly the opposite. (Sherman, 3/8)

A growing network of advocates helps patients navigate the emotional, physical, and logistical journey of terminating a pregnancy. (Yarvis and Mohammed, 3/8)

Providers in Alabama are resuming some in vitro fertilization services Thursday, the day after the state’s Republican governor signed a bill into law aimed at protecting IVF patients and providers from the legal liability imposed on them by a controversial state Supreme Court ruling. The new law does not address the issue of personhood at the heart of last month’s unprecedented ruling, which prompted some providers to halt some IVF services, and experts say it’s going to take more work to fully protect fertility services in the state. (Mascarenhas and Rosales, 3/7)

Vitaly Kushnir’s fertility clinic offers to screen an embryo to predict a baby’s sex, but the service can lead to ethically murky territory, like when a couple wanted it so their first child could be a boy. It struck him as a sexist motive, he said, and initially he declined. But the couple pushed back, saying that they would simply abort the baby if it was a girl. “I’m not in the business of bringing in unwanted children,” said Kushnir, who owns West Coast Fertility Centers and teaches at the University of California at Irvine. Kushnir, who ultimately agreed to the couple’s wishes, said he thinks there should be some restrictions on selecting a baby’s sex, but in the United States, there aren’t any. (Gilbert, 3/7)

Patients from all over the country are filing lawsuits against medical supply giant CooperSurgical, alleging that fluid the company sent to in vitro fertilization clinics destroyed their embryos. (Lawrence, 3/8)

UnitedHealth Group reopened Change Healthcare's electronic prescribing platform, and expects to restore other key parts of the system next week, the company said in a notice on its website Thursday. Change Healthcare's electronic prescribing platform came back online Thursday, according to UnitedHealth Group, which operates Change Healthcare through its Optum subsidiary. The company anticipates reactivating the electronic payments platform on March 15 and restoring the medical claims network for customers the week of March 18. (Young, 3/7)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: Biden Team, UnitedHealth Struggle To Restore Paralyzed Billing Systems After Cyberattack

Margaret Parsons, one of three dermatologists at a 20-person practice in Sacramento, California, is in a bind. Since a Feb. 21 cyberattack on a previously obscure medical payment processing company, Change Healthcare, Parsons said, she and her colleagues haven’t been able to electronically bill for their services. She heard Noridian Healthcare Solutions, California’s Medicare payment processor, was not accepting paper claims as of earlier this week, she said. And paper claims can take 3-6 months to result in payment anyway, she estimated. (Tahir, Wolfson and Chang, 3/8)

Training bottlenecks, uneven distribution of certain providers and expected regulation are adding roadblocks to efforts to tackle pervasive staffing shortages throughout healthcare. The National Center for Health Workforce Analysis predicts that by 2036 the industry will have shortages of more than 68,000 primary care physicians, 62,400 psychologists, 42,100 psychiatrists, 6,600 obstetrician-gynecologists and 33,100 family medicine physicians, in addition to deficits of other specialties. (Devereaux, 3/7)

Electronic health record company Epic said Thursday its software is available on Apple's App Store. Clinicians who use Apple's Mac computers can download the program directly through the technology giant's App Store. This version of Epic is designed specifically for Apple computers, the EHR company said. This is the first time Epic will run its application directly on Mac computers. (Turner, 3/7)

Researchers at the University of New Hampshire found that a machine learning model – a form of artificial intelligence – could better detect inadequacies in medical news than a layperson in a new study. Ermira Zifla, assistant professor of decision sciences at UNH’s Peter T. Paul College of Business and Economics, said she decided to look into fake news during the pandemic, when dubious health claims circulated widely on social media. (Gokee, 3/7)

A New York jury on Wednesday convicted the former CEO of Stimwave, a company that sold devices with dummy pieces of plastic, on two counts of health care fraud. The maximum jail sentence for each count is 20 years. (Lawrence, 3/7)

The Senate passed legislation Thursday that would compensate Americans exposed to radiation by the government by renewing a law initially passed more than three decades ago. The bill by Sens. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., and Ben Ray Lujan, D-N.M., would expand the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act to include more people who believe that exposure caused their illnesses. While some Republicans have balked at the cost — an estimated $50 billion, according to Hawley’s office — the senators have argued that the government is at fault and should step up. (Jalonick and Salter, 3/7)

A collection of year-end health policy deadlines are increasing the chances that Congress will face another must-pass bill come December, after lawmakers punted a number of bipartisan health riders from the most recent spending package. (Clason, 3/7)

When Hurricane Florence hit the Carolinas in 2018, causing $24 billion worth of damage, the South Carolina WIC agency jumped into action. Dispatching their mobile clinics to flooded areas across the region, the agency was able to reach participants to replace lost vouchers, which are used to purchase things like infant formula and healthy foods, and enroll newly eligible residents. (Kutz, 3/7)

A commission investigating the October mass shooting in Lewiston, Maine, interrogated Army Reserve colleagues of the gunman, Robert R. Card Jr., at a hearing Thursday, pressing for answers about their failed efforts to prevent him from inflicting harm and eliciting some of the most detailed accounts yet of the months leading up to the rampage. Members of the commission drilled down on key moments of inaction by military supervisors who knew of the shooter’s threats, erratic behavior and access to weapons, seeking accountability among the multiple law enforcement agencies and military personnel who traded concerns about Mr. Card, as his mental state deteriorated last year. (Russell, 3/7)

Brain injury experts are cautioning against drawing conclusions from newly released and limited information about evidence of a brain injury in an Army reservist who killed 18 people last year in Maine’s deadliest mass shooting. (Ramer and Casey, 3/8)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: VIP Health System For Top US Officials Risked Jeopardizing Care For Soldiers

Top U.S. officials in the Washington area have received preferential treatment from a little-known health care program run by the military, potentially jeopardizing care for other patients including active-duty service members, according to Pentagon investigators. White House officials, senior military and other national security leaders, retired military officers, and family members have all benefited. (Hilzenrath, 3/8)

In a report completed three years ago, the Pentagon found that Rear Adm. Ronny L. Jackson had mistreated subordinates while serving as the White House physician and drank and took sleeping pills on the job. The report recommended that he face discipline. Now it turns out that the Navy quietly punished him the next year. Though he had retired from the military in 2019, he was demoted to captain — a sanction that he has not publicly acknowledged. (Sullivan, Shear and Schmitt, 3/7)

Hannah Cvancara is the namesake of the "Hannah Cvancara Service Act," a bill introduced by Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash., in February. If passed, it would allow amputees interested in joining the military to serve in medical personnel fields in the National Guard, reserves and on active duty. Cvancara was born with a condition called fibular hemimelia, meaning she was born without a fibula bone and had a few other bone defects through her left leg and foot. As a one-year-old, she underwent a below-the-knee amputation and has been using prosthetics since. (Nostrant, 3/7)

In Maryland, those without limbs are fighting to make insurance companies pay for prosthetics that are essential for their mobility. There's a push in Maryland to mandate coverage that can change lives. "I'm a high-ranking, professional sprinter. I snowboard. I surf. There are so many things that I'm able to do by the access that I'm allowed. I want to be able to give that to other people," said John Edward Heath. Heath, a Marine veteran and Paralympian, lost his leg after being hit by a drunk driver. (Hellgren, 3/7)

The Medicaid call center in Florida is experiencing long wait times and high rates of disconnection that could be preventing qualifying families from renewing or accessing Medicaid coverage, according to a report by UnidosUS, a national Hispanic civil rights and advocacy organization. Around 1 million people, 17% of Floridians enrolled, have lost coverage since April, which is when the state started redetermining Medicaid eligibility for the first time since 2020. (Sesin, 3/7)

A bill that would create a new category of “rural emergency hospitals” in Florida is headed to Gov. Ron DeSantis. The House on Wednesday unanimously passed the bill (SB 644), which was approved by the Senate last week. (3/7)

Dale Adams just thought he had a cold when he felt tired and run-down last November. “Northerners! We try and tough through everything,” he said. But after eight or nine days, the Grand Rapids city council member wasn’t getting any better. His son urged him to seek medical treatment. Doctors diagnosed Adams with Legionnaires’ disease, a serious form of pneumonia. He spent several days in the hospital for treatment. (Marohn, 3/8)

Kentucky state Rep. Mark Hart has been drinking fluoridated water his entire life. In 1954, five years before Hart was born, his home state mandated adding or adjusting levels of the mineral, which occurs naturally in water, in drinking water systems of populations larger than 3,000. ... He’s been trying to reverse the state’s mandate since 2018, with several unsuccessful legislative attempts. ... Fluoridation lessens tooth decay in children and adults by 25%, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (Sequeira, 3/7)

Suicide rates in the United States have increased 37 percent since 2000, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control. And in Minnesota, it’s increasing faster in rural areas, when compared to urban and suburban numbers. (Wurzer, Levin and Moini, 3/7)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: California May Face More Than $40M In Fines For Lapses In Prison Suicide Prevention

California could face more than $40 million in fines after it failed to improve suicide prevention measures in state prisons despite a federal judge’s warning that she would impose financial penalties for each violation. Chief U.S. District Judge Kimberly Mueller told state officials over a year ago that she would start imposing fines unless they implemented 15 suicide prevention protocols that had been lacking for nearly a decade. But court expert Lindsay Hayes reported March 1 that the state continues to lag on 14 of the 15 safeguards. (Thompson, 3/8)

Chicago public health officials on Thursday said they had identified the first case of measles in the city since 2019 and urged city residents to make sure they were vaccinated against the disease. Illinois saw five measles cases in 2023, public health officials said. (Kubzansky, 3/7)

Three new measles cases and hundreds of potential exposure have been reported in Michigan, one of the latest states impacted by the spread of the infection across the U.S. (Walrath-Holdridge and Jordan Shamus, 3/7)

Multiple people in Houston have been infected with a severe bacterial disease that triggered a statewide health advisory last month, according to the Houston Health Department. Between November and February, four adults and three children in Houston were infected with meningococcal disease. This highly infectious but vaccine-preventable illness can lead to meningitis, or inflammation of the brain and spinal cord membranes. (Gill, 3/7)

A new monoclonal antibody product to protect against respiratory syncytial virus was 90% effective at preventing little children from being hospitalized with RSV, according to new data from the first season it was in use. (Branswell, 3/7)

COVID-19 affects men and women differently, with men having greater increases in skin temperature, breathing rate, and heart rate, concludes a study published yesterday in PLOS One. (Van Beusekom, 3/7)

A new study by a prominent team of researchers from the Yale School of Medicine and the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai has found that women with long Covid had significantly lower levels of testosterone compared to those who had recovered from their infection. (Jarvis, 3/7)

Free COVID tests are over, for now. So are guidelines for infected people to isolate. Half of the country thinks the pandemic is finished. But, in reality, COVID-19 is still with us. Though the official trappings of the crisis keep fading away and it's increasingly being treated like the flu, the virus remains an ever-present threat that's killing hundreds of Americans every week and consuming health care dollars and resources. (Goldman, 3/8)

Pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly is finally weighing in on Hollywood’s obsession with Ozempic. In a commercial spot released Thursday, the company criticizes people who prescribe or take weight loss drugs without an obesity diagnosis. The ad hits the airwaves days before the 96th Academy Awards, an epic Hollywood gathering where people tend to be laser-focused on celebrities and their bodies. Eli Lilly is the company behind tirzepatide, sold under the brand name Zepbound, which was approved in November to treat people with obesity. (Rodriguez, 3/7)

[Some] are gambling on a do-it-yourself strategy to ease off the drugs and stay slim by stretching out doses, taking the medication intermittently or stopping and starting again only if needed. (Aleccia, 3/7)

Cigna Group said on Thursday its pharmacy benefit management unit had launched a program aiming to cap annual cost increases for health insurance providers and employers from new weight-loss drugs at 15%, as demand for the treatments soars. (Leo, 3/7)

Facing criticism over its pricing, Boehringer Ingelheim plans to cap out-of-pocket costs at $35 a month for its entire line of inhalers that are used to combat asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. (Silverman, 3/7)

A clinical trial’s encouraging results won US Food and Drug Administration breakthrough therapy status for an LSD formulation to treat generalized anxiety disorder, Mind Medicine Inc. announced Thursday. The biopharmaceutical company is developing the drug. (LaMotte, 3/7)

More parents with young children are taking melatonin to sleep. And some of them are going to the emergency room after their children took melatonin accidentally. The number of children who visited emergency rooms for unsupervised melatonin consumption increased 420% from 2009-2020, federal data showed. Melatonin was implicated in some 7% of recent E.R. visits for children 5 and younger who had taken medication without supervision. (Wernau, 3/7)

About one in three women and a smaller proportion of men say they've experienced severe physical violence at the hands of an intimate partner. Studies suggest most women in this group have sustained at least one mild TBI, a brain injury commonly known as a concussion. The symptoms usually resemble those seen in sports or the military: headaches, dizziness, fatigue, sensitivity to noise and light, and problems with memory and thinking. (Hamilton, 3/8)

A recent Mayo Clinic study examining the effects of daylight saving time (DST) on heart health suggests that the impact is likely minimal. (Jacobbi, 3/7)

Research and data show that African American girls are disciplined more harshly in U.S. public schools than white girls. According to data from the U.S. Department of Education, Black girls are suspended from public schools six times more than white girls. In a study published last month in the Journal of Black Psychology, Washington University in St. Louis assistant professor Seanna Leath and co-authors found that spaces created by Black women for Black girls foster community, inspire and promote self-worth. (Henderson, 3/8)

Over 230 million women and girls have undergone female genital mutilation, most of whom live in Africa, according to a report issued on Friday by the United Nations children’s agency. In the last eight years, some 30 million people have undergone the procedure, in which external genitalia are partially or fully removed, UNICEF estimated in the report, which was released on International Women’s Day. (Elhennaway, 3/8)

A large study of “discordant twins,” in which only one suffered abuse or neglect, adds to evidence linking childhood trauma to adult illness. (Barry, 3/6)

At 19 months old, Lucas Guo has never crawled, walked, or stood by himself. He babbles but can’t say words. He struggles to chew and swallow. He gets most of his nutrition through a feeding tube attached to his belly. Lucas has one of the world’s rarest diseases, ZTTK syndrome, a complex neurological disorder caused by a genetic mutation. Scientists have documented only about 60 cases worldwide and estimate that, at most, it afflicts several hundred people — far too few to encourage drug makers to find a treatment. (Saltzman, 3/4)

Ibogaine, a formidable psychedelic made from the root of a shrub native to Central Africa, is not for the timid. It unleashes a harrowing trip that can last more than 24 hours, and the drug can cause sudden cardiac arrest and death. But scientists who have studied ibogaine have reported startling findings. According to a number of small studies, between a third and two-thirds of the people who were addicted to opioids or crack cocaine and were treated with the compound in a therapeutic setting were effectively cured of their habits, many after just a single session. (Jacobs, 3/5)

A Pennsylvania prison unit is helping men with autism and other intellectual and developmental disabilities stay safe behind bars while learning life skills. (Lauer, 3/3)

Determining whether someone has Alzheimer’s disease usually requires an extended diagnostic process. A doctor takes a patient’s medical history, discusses symptoms, administers verbal and visual cognitive tests. The patient may undergo a PET scan, an M.R.I. or a spinal tap — tests that detect the presence of two proteins in the brain, amyloid plaques and tau tangles, both associated with Alzheimer’s. All of that could change dramatically if new criteria proposed by an Alzheimer’s Association working group are widely adopted. (Span, 3/4)

An academic health system in America's heartland is testing the potential of artificial intelligence in a clinical setting. Nebraska Medicine, based in Omaha, Nebraska, is using AI at two of its primary care clinics to detect diabetic retinopathy in patients. Diabetic retinopathy is an eye condition that can lead to blindness in patients with diabetes. (Perna, 3/4)

A bunch of archconservative Kansas Republicans would love nothing more than to ban abortion for all women in all circumstances. Because our state Supreme Court ruled that the Kansas Constitution protects the right to bodily autonomy — and because Kansas voted overwhelmingly to preserve that right — that’s not going to happen anytime soon. So anti-abortion activists have settled on a new tactic: harassing women who want to terminate their pregnancies. (Clay Wirestone, 3/8)

As a geriatrician, I discuss the effects of aging with patients every day. I wish I had a chance to give my usual talk to everyone who chortles or tears their hair out about President Biden’s fitness for his job. First, memory. I explain to patients that there are three components to consider. One is formation. Then storage. And finally, recall. The most common issue among seniors is slow recall. This is the familiar “tip of the tongue” phenomenon, when a word seems to hide or a name won’t come to mind. You know the name, it’s in your bank of memories, it just can’t be accessed quickly. Given time, it usually arrives. (Daniel J. Stone, 3/7)

In many ways, psychiatry is still flying blind. People experiencing mental health conditions are prescribed various drugs until one (or a combination) finally works — a painful process that can take years. As a psychiatrist and neuroscientist, I became increasingly impatient and frustrated with this ineffective way of treating patients. This guided the core question behind my research: Can biology explain how people with the same psychiatric disorder respond differently to the same treatment? (Amit Etkin, 3/8)

Shootings such as what happened at the Chiefs Super Bowl parade stir up debate about guns, with everyone seeing evidence supporting their own view — frankly, some of the opinion columns seemed as if they were prewritten by authors waiting for just this kind of a tragedy. But while policing and public safety are important debates, we need to do a better job of thinking them through. (Patrick Tuohey, 3/8)