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Floridians are at an increased risk of "life-threatening" bacterial infections in the wake of Hurricane Milton, state health officials have warned. Residents have been urged to avoid floodwaters as the department continues to monitor and respond to health risks posed by this year's hurricane season. Hurricane Milton made landfall on Wednesday evening as a Category 3 storm along Florida's Gulf Coast. As of 5 a.m. ET on Thursday morning, the National Weather Service has warned of "life-threatening" storm surges along the east coasts of Florida and Southern Georgia as well as heavy rainfall across Northern and Central Florida. (Dewan, 10/10)

As Hurricane Milton battered Florida’s Gulf Coast on Thursday, Chloe Ottani followed the news with horror from her parents’ Connecticut home. She had just evacuated her apartment at the University of Tampa for the second time in two weeks. Ms. Ottani and other students were evacuated on Tuesday as Milton morphed into a Category 5 storm. The mayor of Tampa, Jane Castor, warned that day that those who remained in evacuation zones were “going to die.” (Schmall, 10/10)

Hurricane Milton carved an uneven path of destruction across Florida. It maintained hurricane-strength winds from its landfall on the Gulf Coast last night until its exit this morning into the Atlantic Ocean. Coastal neighborhoods were swallowed by storm surge, inland towns were flooded with rain and nearly three million homes and businesses — about a quarter of the state — remain without power. The storm also caused several intense tornadoes on Florida’s Atlantic coast that killed at least five people, including some in a retirement community. (Cullen, 10/10)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: Watch: Biggest Dangers And Health Concerns From Hurricane Milton

�鶹Ů�� Health News' Céline Gounder shares advice on how to prepare before a hurricane. (Gounder, 10/10)

A Florida factory that makes IV fluids critical to hospitals nationwide will restart Friday morning after shutting down while Hurricane Milton tore through the state. B. Braun Medical’s manufacturing site and distribution center in Daytona Beach were not seriously impacted by the hurricane, said company spokesperson Allison Longenhagen. No injuries to employees have been reported. The company, with help from the federal government, had moved more than 60 truckloads of IV solutions inventory north of Florida before the storm. Longenhagen said that they will be returned to the distribution site. (Murphy, 10/10)

Almost 90% of providers are experiencing an IV fluid shortage due to the temporary closure of Baxter's North Carolina plant, according to a survey from group purchasing organization Premier. The survey conducted Monday and Tuesday found 88% of 257 providers surveyed said they were receiving less than half their requested IV fluid orders. The Baxter plant in Marion, North Carolina, which produces 60% of the IV solutions used daily, was shut down Sept. 29 due to Hurricane Helene and sustained damage. (DeSilva, 10/10)

Shortages of intravenous (IV) fluids, worsened by Hurricane Helene damage at Baxter's Marion, North Carolina, manufacturing plant, are expected to continue for months, although allocations to customers and distributors have increased, the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) said in a letter to hospitals yesterday. (Van Beusekom, 10/10)

Planned Parenthood’s Asheville clinic, the only abortion provider in western North Carolina, is temporarily closed because of damage inflicted by the remnants of Hurricane Helene — taxing an already strained environment of abortion access. Helene, which brought historic rainfalls to western North Carolina, tore a path of destruction across the region. Buncombe, the most populous county in western North Carolina and home to the city of Asheville, was among the hardest hit. At least 72 people died. (Crumpler, 10/11)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: Abortion Emerges As Most Important Election Issue For Young Women, Poll Finds

Abortion has emerged as the most important issue in the November election for women under 30, according to a survey by �鶹Ů�� — a notable change since late spring, before Vice President Kamala Harris entered the presidential race. Nearly 4 in 10 women under 30 surveyed in September and early October told pollsters that abortion is the most important issue to their vote. Just 20% named abortion as their top issue when �鶹Ů�� conducted a similar survey in late May and early June. (Wayne and Adams, 10/11)

North Dakota won’t be allowed to enforce its near total abortion ban while the state appeals a judge’s ruling that struck down the law. The latest decision by District Judge Bruce Romanick means that, for now, his September ruling stands while the state appeals it to the North Dakota Supreme Court. No abortion clinics have operated in North Dakota since the Red River Women’s Clinic moved from Fargo to nearby Moorhead, Minnesota, in 2022. (Dura, 10/10)

The Florida Supreme Court on Thursday unanimously rejected an attempt to block Gov. Ron DeSantis' administration from using government resources to advocate against the state's abortion access ballot measure. It's the second failed legal action that sought to stop state officials' alleged election interference in trying to tank support for Amendment 4, which would ensure abortion access if it gets at least 60% of Floridians' vote. (Soule, 10/10)

A Texas man has dropped wrongful death claims against three women he says assisted his former wife in obtaining medicine for an unlawful abortion. Marcus Silva abandoned the case and agreed to not try it again, according to a district court filing in Galveston County on Thursday. ... In exchange for dropping the case, two of the women Silva sued agreed to drop counterclaims against him for invasion of privacy and for accessing a computer without the owner’s consent, court records show. (Autullo, 10/11)

One round of in vitro fertilization or IVF can cost you around $20,000 (or more). It's a multi-step process that involves retrieving eggs from ovaries, fertilizing them in a lab, watching the embryos develop, and then transferring them into the uterus. For those who are lucky enough to get pregnant and have a baby, it can take several cycles to get there. It’s so expensive that access to insurance coverage for IVF is basically access, period. (Simmons-Duffin, 10/10)

As the presidential race enters its final month, Vice President Kamala Harris sat down for a town hall in Las Vegas on Thursday with undecided Latino voters who lamented a “broken” immigration system and the rising cost of housing, health care and groceries. In a roughly hourlong taped discussion hosted by Univision, set to be broadcast Thursday evening, Harris heard from people including a woman struggling with the recent death of her undocumented mother, another who has faced roadblock after roadblock since she was diagnosed with long COVID and “lost everything,” a man who wants to see a pathway to citizenship for so-called “DREAMers” and a man who appeared skeptical of Harris’ rise to the top of the Democratic ticket this summer. (Aldrete and Neugeboren, 10/10)

If former President Donald Trump returns to the White House next year, he's likely to revive policies President Joe Biden repealed and eliminate some of the Democrat's own initiatives, shifting the healthcare system to the right. Trump hasn’t been forthcoming about healthcare during the campaign, his policy platform doesn’t feature specifics and he confessed during his debate last month with Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, to having mere "concepts of a plan" for healthcare. (Early, 10/10)

Vice President Kamala Harris and the White House criticized Donald Trump for his attacks on the federal response to Hurricanes Helene and Milton and suggested he was wrongly trying to turn the deadly storms to his political advantage. Attending a town hall sponsored by Univision in Las Vegas, Harris was asked about complaints that federal officials have bungled disaster recovery efforts. She responded, “In this crisis — like in so many issues that affect the people of our country — I think it so important that leadership recognizes the dignity” to which people are entitled. (Weissert, Volmert and Superville, 10/11)

�鶹Ů�� Health News' 'What the Health?' Podcast: Yet Another Promise For Long-Term Care Coverage

As part of her presidential campaign, Vice President Kamala Harris has rolled out a plan for Medicare to provide in-home long-term care services. The proposal would fill a longtime need for families trying to simultaneously care for young children and older parents, but its enormous price tag makes it a promise unlikely to be fulfilled. (Rovner, 10/10)

From Medicare to Obamacare, health care has long been a powerful and polarizing issue in the race for president. This year, the issue of reproductive health care is dividing Americans. The high cost of prescription drugs and access to affordable health care are also concerns. (10/10)

Donald Trump and the leading super PAC for Senate Republicans have spent millions on political ads this election cycle, stoking fears about transgender people in sports and gender-affirming care for immigrants and incarcerated people. Since August, the GOP has spent more than $65 million on television ads about transgender issues in states with competitive races, according to an analysis of AdImpact data from The New York Times. (Kalish, 10/10)

The U.S. government announced quality ratings for 2025 Medicare health and prescription drug plans on Thursday, the first indication of which large health insurers, including CVS Health, UnitedHealth Group and Humana, will get bonus payments in 2026. Sixty-two percent of people currently enrolled in Medicare Advantage plans that cover prescription drugs are covered by plans rated four or more stars, the Medicare agency said in its release, down from 74% last year. (Niasse, 10/11)

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services sought to make it more challenging for Medicare Advantage insurers to win top quality scores and the payment bonuses that go along with them. It's working. On Thursday, CMS released the latest Medicare Advantage star ratings, and the contrast to just a few years ago is stark. In 2022, 74 Medicare Advantage with prescription drug coverage contracts garnered five-out-of-five stars. For the 2025 plan year, only seven did. (Tepper and Broderick, 10/10)

Health systems are growing increasingly frustrated with fighting to receive payments from insurers in the Medicare Advantage program, which now provides health coverage to more than 55% of the nation's older adults, about 33.8 million people. MA continues to grow, but so do its administrative challenges, as health insurers prioritize their margins in the segment. (Condon, 10/10)

Millions of Social Security recipients will get a 2.5% cost-of-living increase to their monthly checks beginning in January, the Social Security Administration announced Thursday. The cost-of-living adjustment, or COLA, for retirees translates to an average increase of more than $50 for retirees every month, agency officials said. About 72.5 million people, including retirees, disabled people and children, get Social Security benefit. But even before the announcement, retirees voiced concern that the increase would not be enough to counter rising costs. (Hussein, 10/10)

Healthcare companies pursuing mergers and acquisitions will be required to submit additional information about their proposals under a final rule approved by the Federal Trade Commission Thursday. The final rule amends the Hart-Scott-Rodino Act form, which had not been updated for 46 years. When the rule goes into effect, likely early next year, healthcare companies involved in M&A proposals must list acquisitions that occurred within the last five years, disclose private equity and minority stakeholders with decision-making authority and report supplier relationships shared by the merging parties to the FTC, among other requirements. (Kacik, 10/10)

A group of Democrats led by Sen. Elizabeth Warren proposed new restrictions on private-equity firms, saying tougher rules are needed to prevent buyout firms from “looting” the businesses they own in the wake of hospital operator Steward Health Care System’s bankruptcy. On Thursday, six senators and eight U.S. representatives announced the Stop Wall Street Looting Act of 2024, an updated version that puts more teeth in a measure Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, has pushed since 2019. (Cumming, 10/10)

Microsoft is adding new artificial intelligence tools for healthcare customers, the big tech company announced Thursday. The company said it has partnered with electronic health record vendor Epic Systems along with several health systems to build an ambient AI solution that will allow nurses to efficiently document in the electronic health record. It was important for the company to create a solution that’s differentiated from the numerous physician-centric AI documentation tools, said Mary Varghese Presti, vice president of portfolio evolution and incubation at Microsoft Health and Life Sciences, during a briefing with reporters. (Perna, 10/10)

Hospitals are performing better on quality and safety metrics than they did pre-pandemic, despite seeing sicker patients—and more of them. That's according to a new report from the American Hospital Association and Vizient, a health care performance improvement company. The organizations analyzed data from Vizient's Clinical Data Base, which contains information from more than 1,300 hospitals and collects data on more than 10 million inpatients and 180 million outpatients each year. (Kayser, 10/10)

A lack of infection prevention and control staffing leads to more healthcare-associated infections, according to a new study published today in the American Journal of Infection Control. The study is based on a new online calculator aimed at providing facility-specific recommendations for infection prevention staffing instead of a standard infection preventionists (IPs) per inpatient bed. (Soucheray, 10/10)

A new report from the World Health Organization (WHO) suggests that new and existing vaccines could have a substantial impact on the emergence and spread of antimicrobial resistance (AMR). Released today, the WHO report estimates that the introduction and deployment of 44 vaccines against 24 pathogens could avert more than half a million deaths from drug-resistant infections annually, cut AMR-related healthcare costs and productivity losses by billions of dollars, and reduce the number of antibiotics needed to treat infections by 2.5 billion doses annually. (Dall, 10/10)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: Extended-Stay Hotels, A Growing Option For Poor Families, Can Lead To Health Problems For Kids

As principal of Dunaire Elementary School, Sean Deas has seen firsthand the struggles faced by children living in extended-stay hotels. About 10% of students at his school, just east of Atlanta, live in one. The children, Deas said, often have been exposed to violence on hotel properties, exhibit aggression or anxiety from living in a crowded single room, and face food insecurity because some hotel rooms don’t have kitchens. (Miller and Rayasam, 10/11)

Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd, opens new tab has agreed to pay $450 million to resolve allegations it used charities that help cover Medicare patients' out-of-pocket drug costs as a means to pay kickbacks to boost sales of its multiple sclerosis drug Copaxone and conspired to fix prices for generic drugs. The two settlements announced by the U.S. Department of Justice on Thursday included one, opens new tab for $425 million resolving a lawsuit filed in federal court in Boston in 2020 as part of an industry-wide probe of drugmakers' financial support of patient assistance charities. (Raymond, 10/10)

There’s a war brewing over blockbuster weight loss medications — and patients are now getting caught in the crossfire. Last week, the Food and Drug Administration declared an end to the shortage of Eli Lilly’s tirzepatide, sold under the brand name Mounjaro for diabetes and Zepbound for obesity. The move was a clear warning to compounders that they can no longer make copycat versions of the drugs — a process that is only permitted when the medications are on an official agency shortage list. (Chen, 10/11)

Bayer (BAYGn.DE) must pay $78 million to a Pennsylvania man who said he got cancer from using the company's Roundup weedkiller, a state court jury in Philadelphia found on Thursday. The verdict follows previous consecutive victories for Bayer in that court. The company had won 14 of the previous 20 trials over Roundup, though it has been hit with several massive verdicts in the litigation, including last November for $1.56 billion, later reduced to $611 million, and one in January for $2.25 billion, later reduced to $400 million. (Pierson, 10/10)

The fight between Starboard Value and drug giant Pfizer took an unusual, bitter turn Thursday. Hours after two former top Pfizer executives said they would no longer participate in Starboard’s activist campaign, the investor accused the drugmaker of pressuring the executives to remain loyal to their longtime employer. (Hopkins and Thomas, 10/10)

Sanofi has entered into discussions with U.S. private equity firm Clayton Dubilier & Rice to sell a controlling 50% stake in its consumer health business Opella, the French pharmaceutical group said on Friday. The announcement confirms an earlier Reuters report that it was closing in on a sale estimated at around 15 billion euros ($16.41 billion). Sanofi did not disclose any financial details of the potential deal and said further updates would be provided in due course. (10/11)

CVS Health is moving ahead with expansion plans for Oak Street Health, even as the company reportedly considers a restructuring in the coming months. CVS is conducting a strategic review, according to media reports citing people familiar with the matter, and is weighing options for separating some of the company’s businesses, which include its retail pharmacy, insurance arm Aetna, pharmacy benefit manager CVS Caremark and primary care provider Oak Street. (Hudson, 10/10)

A Johnson & Johnson (JNJ.N) subsidiary can pursue its third attempt to resolve tens of thousands of lawsuits alleging its talc products caused cancer in a federal bankruptcy court in Texas, a judge ruled on Thursday, allowing the company to avoid a venue that shot down its two previous efforts. (Knauth, 10/11)

A U.S. judge in Washington, D.C., on Thursday cut in half a $185 million legal fee payout for Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, awarding the law firm $92.4 million for its work on a multibillion-dollar federal healthcare insurance case. Judge Kathryn Davis of the U.S. Federal Claims Court said the reduced amount was a reasonable reward for Quinn Emanuel, a top U.S. business litigation firm. Quinn was awarded $185 million for its work on the case in 2021, but a federal appeals court last year struck down the award as excessive and ordered Davis to reconsider it. (Scarcella, 10/11)

Suki, an ambient artificial intelligence documentation vendor, received $70 million in a Series D funding round, the company said Thursday. The round was a traditional venture capital investment from private equity firm Hedosophia with participation from venture capital firms Venrock, March Capital, Flare Capital, Breyer Capital and inHealth Ventures. (Perna, 10/10)

Roughly 15.5 million U.S. adults have attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, and most of them struggle with gaining access to treatment for the condition, according to data from a U.S. study released on Thursday. Only about one-third of those reporting a diagnosis of ADHD said they had received a prescription for a stimulant drug used to treat it in the previous year, researchers reported in the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. (Singh, 10/10)

Children with autism have different brains than children without autism, down to the structure and density of their neurons, according to a study by the University of Rochester Medical Center, New York, published in Autism Research in September. "People with a diagnosis of autism often have other things they have to deal with, such as anxiety, depression, and ADHD," said first author Dr. Zachary Christensen, of the University of Rochester's School of Medicine and Dentistry, in a statement. (Willmoth, 10/10)

One in four people are told they have a different condition before receiving the correct Parkinson’s diagnosis, one poll reported. On the other side, nearly 42 percent of people are initially misdiagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, according to studies. The lack of a definite lab or imaging test is one reason for these errors, some experts said. The diagnosis is currently based on a visual clinical exam in which a physician looks for motor symptoms such as slowed movement, tremor or rigidity. (Kim, 10/10)

Denali Therapeutics (DNLI.O) said on Thursday its partner Sanofi (SASY.PA) has discontinued a mid-stage study testing their experimental drug to treat multiple sclerosis as it failed to meet the main and secondary study goals. ... The drug candidate, oditrasertib, co-developed by Sanofi and Denali, had failed to meet the main goal another mid-stage study testing it as a treatment for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a fatal neurodegenerative disease. (10/10)

Researchers are making progress toward vaccines that train healthy people’s immune systems to eliminate signs of cancer before it develops. Vaccines are in early trials for people with inherited genetic mutations that put them at a greater risk. Other shots are designed to destroy precancerous lesions to stop full-blown disease. (Abbott, 10/10)

Students who experienced racism said their mental health also deteriorated, a new study showed. In 2023, nearly a third of high school students across the U.S. said they'd experienced racism in school, which Centers for Disease Control and Prevention researchers who published the findings defined as unfair treatment due to a person's race or ethnicity. Students of color reported they'd had two to three times more racist experiences than white students who said they'd had. (Cuevas, 10/10)

A company is recalling nearly 10 million pounds of meat and poultry products made at an Oklahoma plant because they may be contaminated with listeria bacteria that can cause illness and death. BrucePac of Woodburn, Oregon, recalled the roughly 5,000 tons of ready-to-eat foods this week after U.S. Agriculture Department officials detected listeria in samples of poultry during routine testing. Further tests identified BrucePac chicken as the source. The recall includes 75 meat and chicken products. (Aleccia, 10/10)

More than 2 million Fisher-Price Snuga Swings were recalled following the deaths of five infants over a decade. State of play: Suffocation risks prompted the recall, and customers are told to remove parts of the swing before continuing to use it for "awake-time activities" only. (Rubin, 10/10)

Warehouses in Southern California have been linked with increased pollution in a study that used NASA satellites to map toxic particles in the air. As warehouses were built over the last two decades to keep up with online shopping, air pollution rose too—particularly affecting low-income neighborhoods nearby. Scientists identified diesel trucks visiting the warehouses as the source of the problem, because of contaminants emitted by their exhaust fumes as they visit to pick up and drop off goods. (Willmoth, 10/10)

Mpox is back. More than 900 people, mostly African children, have died this year and public health officials say the new variant inflicting that toll could arrive in the U.S. at any time. There’s a lot of blame to go around. It was only two years ago that mpox, previously known as monkeypox, arrived in the U.S. and began spreading. U.S. authorities contained it with a vaccination campaign targeted at those most at risk, men who have sex with men. But no vaccines got to Africa, where the disease is endemic in some countries, making it easier for the new variant to emerge. (Paun, 10/10)

California on Thursday confirmed a fourth case of bird flu in a person who had contact with infected dairy cattle. Nationwide, 18 people this year have tested positive for the virus, which has been confirmed in dairy herds in 14 states. All but one of the people were known to be exposed to sick cattle or poultry. The four people who tested positive in California, the most populous U.S. state, were exposed to infected cows at four separate farms, the California Department of Public Health said. (10/10)

Iowa, along with 19 other states and nursing home industry groups, is suing the federal government over a rule that would set new minimum staffing requirements in nursing homes. Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird is co-leading the lawsuit with Kansas and South Carolina against U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Seventeen other states’ attorneys general, along with several nursing home industry groups, have also signed on. (Krebs, 10/10)

The hospital is celebrating its 100th year, and still welcomes patients whether they can pay or not. (Neman, 10/10)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: Colorado’s Naloxone Fund Is Drying Up, Even As Opioid Settlement Money Rolls In

On a bustling street corner one recent afternoon outside the offices of the Harm Reduction Action Center, employees of the education and advocacy nonprofit handed out free naloxone kits to passersby. Distributing the opioid reversal medication is essential to the center’s work to reduce fatal overdoses in the community. But how long the group can continue doing so is in question. (Cleveland, 10/11)

On Thursday, the CDC released new data showing that almost 15.5 million U.S. adults are living with ADHD. More than half of those individuals received their diagnosis in adulthood. (Jeremy Didier, 10/10)

My 6-year-old disabled son is up to four times more likely to die or be critically injured during a natural disaster than his nondisabled peers, according to the National Council on Disability. Our family could have easily lived this nightmare amid Hurricane Helene. (Beth Connor, 10/11)

The FDA recently rejected an application to use the psychedelic drug MDMA to treat post-traumatic stress disorder, citing study flaws and the potential for serious health risks after taking the drug — and it is that kind of rigorous review that ensures drugs given to patients are safe and effective and potential risks are known. (10/10)

I am now a primary care doctor, and during my training years, I took care of homeless people who arrived at the hospital’s doors for various reasons: a drug overdose, an infected wound, new unexplainable chest pain. These things also happened to people who were not homeless. (Max Jordan Nguemeni, 10/11)

I entered medical school absolutely certain of one thing: I didn’t want to be a psychiatrist like my father. (Jessi Gold, 10/11)

In the first four minutes of a recent video for his “Make America Healthy Again” campaign promoting Donald Trump for president, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. presents a seemingly compelling case about how America’s toxin-laden food system harms us and, worse, our children, contributing to chronic and often fatal diseases. ... Then, much like other moments in RFK Jr.’s strange political trajectory — which has included peddling conspiracy theories on vaccines and other issues — his “MAHA” campaign plunges into outright falsehoods. (Christopher D. Cook, 10/11)