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The health care industry’s interest isn’t necessarily rooted in political analysis. It’s financial: Those subsidies are worth $25 billion annually. Insurance companies that sell ACA plans retain some of that federal revenue as profit. Hospitals and doctors who treat patients with ACA coverage benefit from those plans’ higher payment rates and avoid bad debt if those patients had no insurance coverage at all. Oscar Health’s business heavily depends on Congress renewing those subsidies. The publicly traded insurer sells only ACA plans. Over the summer, Oscar forecast its ACA membership would decline 18% over a two-year period if the enhanced subsidies went away. (Herman, 11/18)

But eliminating the subsidy increase poses political risks. If subsidies fall to their pre-2021 level, experts say, many new subscribers would choose not to renew their coverage — the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office predicted that 3.4 million more people would become uninsured — and many of them live in states that lean heavily Republican. Health policy research organization �鶹Ů�� said that if the subsidy expansion expires, premiums would more than double in 12 heavily Republican states — including Texas, West Virginia and Alaska — while rising less sharply in many blue states. (Weil, 11/17)

The results of a study by the Pennsylvania Insurance Department (PID) reveal some startling problems with the Affordable Care Act marketplace. The biggest issue found was the inaccuracy of health insurer provider directories, which can delay care, hinder scheduling and result in surprise out-of-network billing, the agency said. The study found that only 13% of the provider listings had accurate contact information, and up to 44% of providers were unreachable because of incorrect information. The most common inaccuracies involved outdated contact information and incorrect specialty listings, which can mislead patients and lead to care delays and unexpected charges. (Coller, 11/15)

Efforts to get the Senate to vote on a bill to expand Social Security benefits are intensifying, as the House-passed Social Security Fairness Act enjoys rare bipartisan support but has only a short window of time — six weeks — to be passed. Decades in the making, the legislation would eliminate a provision that reduces Social Security payments to some retirees who also collect a pension from jobs that aren't covered by the retirement program, such as state and federal workers including teachers, police officers and U.S. postal workers. It would also end a second provision that reduces Social Security benefits for those workers' surviving spouses and family members. (Gibson, 11/15)

The House has passed legislation that would provide full Social Security benefits to millions of people, pushing it one step closer to becoming law. The Social Security bill on Tuesday won bipartisan support in the House, 327-75, in what is now the lame-duck period for Congress. The bill now heads to the Senate, where passage is not assured despite considerable support. Here’s what to know about the legislation and what could happen next. (11/16)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: Social Security Tackles Overpayment ‘Injustices,’ But Problems Remain

In March, newly installed Social Security chief Martin O’Malley criticized agency “injustices” that “shock our shared sense of equity and good conscience as Americans.” He promised to overhaul the Social Security Administration’s often heavy-handed efforts to claw back money that millions of recipients — including people who are living in poverty, are elderly, or have disabilities — were allegedly overpaid, as described by a �鶹Ů�� Health News and Cox Media Group investigation last year. “Innocent people can be badly hurt,” O’Malley said at the time. (Hilzenrath and Fleischer, 11/18)

Congress has tried for much of the last two years to pass legislation to rein in pharmacy benefit managers, only to have negotiations fall just short. With lawmakers back for a post-election lame duck session, analysts see one last chance — but also a likelihood the effort may wait until Republicans take control of Capitol Hill next year. (McAuliff, 11/15)

The Drug Enforcement Administration and Health and Human Services ended an impasse over the virtual prescribing of controlled substances that threatened access to drugs like Adderall by extending pandemic-era flexibilities through the end of 2025. Keeping the status quo leaves the question of whether to make controlled substances available without an in-person doctor's visit for the Trump administration to decide. (Bettelheim and Goldman, 11/18)

The future of one of President Joe Biden’s key domestic policy achievements — getting Medicare to negotiate drug prices — could either become part of the Biden administration’s legacy, get rolled back by the incoming Congress or be weakened by President-elect Donald Trump’s administration. Trump has remained relatively mum about the drug pricing provisions of the 2022 reconciliation bill and its future appears even murkier now that Republicans will control both the House and Senate. (DeGroot and Hellmann, 11/15)

Eli Lilly sued the federal government as the pharmaceutical manufacturer tries to limit the discounts it provides to hospitals. The company on Thursday sued the Health and Human Services Department and its subagency the Health Resources and Services Administration, claiming the government cannot dictate how it distributes 340 drug discounts. Under the 340B program, drugmakers must sell discounted outpatient drugs to hospitals and clinics that treat many low-income patients to stay enrolled in Medicare and Medicaid. (Kacik, 11/15)

Up to 10,000 lives could be saved each year by improving access to blood in the field, a group of surgeons said in a news conference last month. The event, which took place at an American College of Surgeons clinical conference in San Francisco, emphasized how faster access to blood could improve survival during emergencies. (Blakemore, 11/16)

Pharmaceutical companies are typically rewarded for their innovation with years of market exclusivity before cheaper generics enter the scene. But for diabetes and obesity drugs like Ozempic and Zepbound, known as GLP-1s, cheaper copycats emerged almost immediately. This is due to a provision that permits drug compounders to produce copies during periods of shortage. For GLP-1s, supply constraints have persisted ever since Wegovy’s approval for obesity in 2021, giving rise to a booming market for compounders. (Wainer, 11/17)

Lately, Dr. Ruth Namazzi and her colleagues have been stopping one another in their hospital ward with worried looks. ... For years, Namazzi — who is also a lecturer at Makerere University College of Health Sciences — has turned to a medication called artemisinin. The drug is derived from an ancient Chinese malaria treatment that was rediscovered several decades ago and has saved millions of lives. It made such a profound difference that one of the people who helped revive the medical recipe received a Nobel prize for her work. (Emanuel, 11/15)

Health officials around the world are alarmed over the likely impact of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — a longtime vaccine skeptic who was tapped for the health secretary role this week — on global health. Experts from Samoa have been particularly vocal in sounding the alarm, citing the destructive impact of Kennedy’s rhetoric on the tiny Polynesian island nation. Warning that Kennedy will empower the global anti-vaccine movement and may advocate for reduced funding for international agencies, Aiono Prof Alec Ekeroma, the director general of health for Samoa’s Health Ministry told The Washington Post that Kennedy “will be directly responsible for killing thousands of children around the world by allowing preventable infectious diseases to run rampant.” (Westfall and Sun, 11/15)

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President-elect Trump’s nominee for secretary of Health and Human Services, has criticized laws that provide companies that make vaccines with protections from lawsuits. If he takes office, he has broad power to strip those protections, experts told STAT. Most routine vaccines have had protections from lawsuits for nearly 40 years, and vaccines developed to address emergencies have enjoyed protections for 20. For the most part, the programs have been uncontroversial. (Zhang, 11/15)

US Ambassador to Australia Caroline Kennedy described her cousin Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s views on vaccinations as “dangerous,” the latest public rebuke by a senior member of the storied family against the man Donald Trump has tapped for a key Cabinet post. Ambassador Kennedy said Monday that her uncle, the late Senator Ted Kennedy, had spent 50 years “fighting for affordable health care” in the US Senate. “It’s something that our whole family is so proud of,” she said. “I would say that our family is united in terms of our support for the public health sector and infrastructure, and has the greatest admiration for the medical profession in our country, and Bobby Kennedy has got a different set of views,” she added. (Westcott, 11/17)

Dr. Deborah Birx, former White House Coronavirus response coordinator, said Sunday she is "excited" for the data on key health issues that will surface in Senate confirmation hearings for Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., President-elect Donald Trump's controversial pick for Health and Human secretary who has spread false information on vaccines and autism. "I'm actually excited that in a Senate hearing he would bring forward his data and the questions that come from the senators would bring forth their data," Birx said on "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan." (Maguire, 11/17)

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has a famous name and infamous views on vaccines, COVID-19 and other health issues. But the would-be Health and Human Services secretary is a virtual stranger to the healthcare sector. The former independent presidential candidate is President-elect Donald Trump's choice to lead a department that regulates every aspect of healthcare and distributes more than $1 trillion a year in payments to providers and health insurance companies. Yet Kennedy's views on Medicare, Medicaid, the health insurance exchanges and other crucial programs are mostly unknown. (Early and McAuliff, 11/15)

Boxes of brightly colored breakfast cereals, vivid orange Doritos and dazzling blue M&Ms may find themselves under attack in the new Trump administration. In excoriating such grocery store staples and their mysterious ingredients, Robert F. Kennedy tapped into a zeitgeist of widening appeal for healthy foods to curb obesity and disease that helped propel President-elect Donald J. Trump to select him to oversee the country’s vast health agency. (Jewett and Creswell, 11/15)

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has pledged to tackle high rates of chronic diseases such as diabetes and obesity as President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to lead the US Department of Health and Human Services. They’re goals that many in the public health world find themselves agreeing with — despite fearing what else the infamous anti-vaccine activist may do in the post. Just don’t suggest that he tackle those goals with medications like Ozempic. (Tirrell, 11/17)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: What To Know About RFK Jr.'s Stances On Key Health Issues And What He Could Do At HHS

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, is coming into the nomination process in an unusual position, with a long list of his own policy priorities separate from the president-elect’s, and a public promise by Trump to let him “go wild” on his ideas. (Gounder, 11/15)

�鶹Ů�� Health News and Politifact: Does Fluoride Cause Cancer, IQ Loss, And More? Fact-Checking Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Claims

President-elect Donald Trump’s incoming administration could try to remove fluoride from drinking water, according to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Kennedy, who was tapped last week by Trump to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, called fluoride an “industrial waste” and linked it to cancer and other diseases and disorders while campaigning for Trump. (Putterman, 11/18)

President-elect Donald Trump said Sunday he was naming Brendan Carr as the next Federal Communications Commission chairman, positioning the regulatory agency to do battle against social media companies and TV broadcasters that Republicans portray as too liberal. ... One issue on which Carr has been out of step with Trump is TikTok, which the president-elect has said he will “save” from a looming nationwide ban. Carr, an outspoken China hawk, has repeatedly called TikTok a danger to national security and has supported banning the app. (Dou and Lima-Strong, 11/17)

Pat Curry, a Republican lawmaker in Texas, pre-filed a bill in the state legislature this week that would classify the two drugs as schedule IV substances there. The next legislative session does not begin until January 14—if passed, the bill would take effect in September 2025. Curry did not immediately respond to a Facebook message from Mother Jones on Sunday. (McShane, 11/17)

While the early focus on a Trump administration Food and Drug Administration has been on vaccine policy, one of its first moves could be overhauling the federal rules that have made it easier to access the widely used abortion pill mifepristone. Use of the drug has surged as states enacted near or total abortion bans after Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022. But new agency leadership could quickly move to roll back some of the policies that were the focus of a closely watched Supreme Court case this year. (Reed, 11/18)

The head of the Southern Baptist Convention’s public policy arm implored President-elect Donald Trump to quickly adopt pro-life positions and undo Biden administration executive orders shielding transgender people from discrimination when he takes office in January. In a letter to Trump’s transition team dated Monday, SBC Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission President F. Brent Leatherwood outlined “five critical policy actions that reflect deeply held values for Southern Baptists and warrant the incoming administration’s immediate attention during President Trump’s first 100 days in office.” (Koplowitz, 11/15)

Mifepristone has about a five-year shelf life, and misoprostol lasts about two years. While having this medication on hand is important for some people, stockpiling the pills can lead to shortages. (Brown, 11/15)

A Las Vegas couple has filed a lawsuit against the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer and other generic manufacturers for one of their birth control products, which they believe causes brain cancer. According to court documents, Tina Stephens-Smith and her husband have filed ten separate claims for relief against Pfizer after being diagnosed and treated for a type of brain cancer. The lawsuit details that Greenstone and Pfizer distributed a “generic” version of Depo-Provera, a birth control shot, also known as Medroxyprogesterone acetate. Court documents state that scientific studies have confirmed Depo-Provera can cause or substantially contribute to the growth of intracranial meningioma, or a type of brain tumor. (Defran, 11/15)

Dr. Adam Rodman, an expert in internal medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, confidently expected that chatbots built to use artificial intelligence would help doctors diagnose illnesses. He was wrong. Instead, in a study Dr. Rodman helped design, doctors who were given ChatGPT-4 along with conventional resources did only slightly better than doctors who did not have access to the bot. And, to the researchers’ surprise, ChatGPT alone outperformed the doctors. “I was shocked,” Dr. Rodman said. (Kolata, 11/17)

CareMax Inc., which runs a system of medical centers catered toward elderly patients, has filed for bankruptcy. Miami-based CareMax filed Chapter 11 in Texas on Sunday, listing assets of between $100 million and $500 million, and liabilities between $500 million and $1 billion. CareMax sought court protection after cost cuts and attempts to refinance its debt. (Randles, 11/17)

Indiana University Health is restructuring operations and cutting some leadership roles. IU Health is consolidating its six operational regions to four, according to a Friday news release. The health system expects the changes to affect about 100 jobs, a spokesperson said. (Hudson, 11/15)

Nurses at UI Health are back at work—ending a four-day strike. The Illinois Nurses Association said it reached a tentative contract agreement with the hospital late Saturday night. The union said the four-year deal includes improvements to hospital safety, better wages, and more input in staffing decisions. ... Nurses will vote to ratify the new contract this coming Tuesday. (Odenthal, 11/17)

Eleven days after a security guard was killed at the state psychiatric hospital, in November 2023, the Department of Safety gave Gov. Chris Sununu a list of recommended security enhancements for all state buildings. Sununu had requested the list, saying safety was the “number one priority” in the wake of the shooting. A year later, the state has completed some safety measures at the state hospital, but officials are only just beginning to take on most of the other recommendations, including a professional safety assessment of state facilities. (Timmins, 11/15)

Epic, Oracle Health and other electronic health records companies are eyeing opportunities abroad, primarily in countries where the digitization of healthcare lags behind the U.S. The U.S. hospital market for EHR vendors has firmly shifted in Epic’s favor over the last few years. It was the only vendor to add beds and hospital customers in 2023, according to a May report from market research firm KLAS. Consolidation among health systems has meant that more than half of acute care beds use Epic, and that share is expected to grow as more large integrated systems switch to the vendor. (Perna, 11/15)

The U.S. on Saturday reported its first case of a more aggressive strain of mpox: an individual in California who had recently traveled from eastern Africa. The case was confirmed by the California Department of Public Health and reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The person was treated in San Mateo County based on their travel history and symptoms and is now isolating at home and recovering, the state's health department said in a press release. (Bendix, 11/16)

Oregon is the latest state to confirm a case of avian influenza in a human, according to a release from the state Health Authority. It’s the first time that a human transmission of the virus has been confirmed in Oregon by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. So far, there have been 52 cases in people across the country, including 11 in Washington. (Wiley, 11/15)

Almost one in four Americans may be suffering from long COVID, a rate more than three times higher than the most common number cited by federal officials, a team led by Boston area researchers suggests in a new scientific paper. The peer-reviewed study, led by scientists and clinicians from Mass General Brigham, drew immediate skepticism from some long COVID researchers, who suggested their numbers were “unrealistically high.” But the study authors noted that the condition is notoriously difficult to diagnose and official counts also likely exclude populations who were hit hardest by the pandemic but face barriers in accessing healthcare. (Piore, 11/17)

For the first time, new home tests — available at pharmacies without a prescription — can test for both the flu and COVID simultaneously. The tests are very reliable — they rarely say someone's positive when they're really negative or vice versa, according to the FDA. If you test negative but are still having symptoms that feel like COVID or the flu a couple of days later, doctors recommend taking a second test. (11/18)

Nearly a fifth of dengue infections in the Americas and Southeast Asia were propelled by climate change, according to a study that researchers from the University of Maryland, Harvard University and Stanford University presented Saturday at the annual American Society for Tropical Medicine and Hygiene meeting in New Orleans. The latest data from the Pan-American Health Organization shows that in the first 10-plus months of 2024, there were nearly 7,500 deaths and more than 12.3 million infections – three times the number of cases in 2023, which was record-setting at the time. (Cuevas, 11/17)

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is investigating an E. coli outbreak in at least 18 states linked to some organic carrots, which has led to at least one death. At least 39 cases of E. coli have been linked to the carrots since early September, leading to 15 hospitalizations and one death, according to the CDC. (Mascarenhas, 11/17)

Online e-cigarette and vape retailers are under fire for not complying with sales restrictions. Regulations are in place to help prevent the sale of vape products to minors, including age verification, shipping methods and flavor restrictions. Researchers at the Herbert Wertheim School of Public Health and Human Longevity Science at University of California San Diego put those regulations to the test. (Stabile, 11/17)

Cancer cases are on the rise among people under 50 — and researchers aren’t sure why. A recent study by the American Cancer Society found that 17 out of 34 cancer types were increasing among younger people. At the Milken Institute’s Future of Health Summit on Thursday, researchers and health care executives talked about efforts to detect cancers earlier, save lives, and get to the root of why cancers have begun to rise in this population. (Oza, 11/18)

On a sunny day in July, while other Bay Area kids were playing at camps or water parks, 8-year-old Charlotte O’Neill was leaning back in a reclining chair in a small, carpeted San Jose office room. Her eyes were fixed on a television playing her favorite cartoon, “Bluey.” Maureen and Bill O’Neill, her parents, sat beside her in the room at Summit Brain Health, where a neuro-technician had placed a large, figure-eight-shaped magnetic coil on her forehead. Every 28 seconds, the coil sent a magnetic pulse to her brain, which required Charlotte’s eyes to be closed for five seconds at a time. (Vainshtein, 11/16)

Jason Jimenez had brown eyes when he walked into a New York clinic last month. When he emerged a few hours later, they were light gray. The 39-year-old real-estate agent is among a growing number of people who have permanently changed their eye color through cosmetic surgery. Many doctors say the surgery hasn’t been proven safe and warn it could cause lasting damage. (Mosbergen, 11/17)

Would you put beef fat on your face? Beef tallow, a pale paste rendered from cow fat, is usually used as a cooking fat due to its high smoke point. It was once McDonald’s fat-of-choice to cook fries. Now, companies are pitching beef tallow as the skincare solution of our ancestors and claim their ointments can soothe dry skin and alleviate acne. And they’re reporting a spike in sales. Amallow, a beef tallow-based skincare brand in Cincinnati, sold 400 units in May, when the company launched. In October, it sold about 15,000. (Amenabar, 11/15)

The Maryland Department of Health unveiled a new dashboard tracking adverse incidents to marijuana use on Wednesday. The tool tracks instances like emergency room visits, calls to poison control, youth and adult use and the utilization of substance abuse centers. Maryland saw an increase in ER visits related to marijuana that coincided with the legalization of recreational cannabis. Recreational cannabis was legalized in the state on July 1, 2023. In 2024, the state saw 817 ER visits per month, a 5% increase from 2023. There was also an increase in calls to Poison Centers. According to MDH, marijuana-related calls tripled for children aged 10 to 14 and increased by 26% for teens 15 to 19 from 2021 to 2023. (Maucione, 11/14)

Texas can go forward with the execution of Robert Roberson, who was convicted of killing his 2-year-old daughter in a case that relied on evidence of shaken baby syndrome, the Texas Supreme Court ruled on Friday. Lawmakers of both parties in the Texas House, who believed Mr. Roberson deserved a new trial, had temporarily halted the execution last month by issuing a legislative subpoena for Mr. Roberson to testify before a House committee. (Goodman, 11/15)

From monitoring suspected child abuse and neglect cases to accounting for children in foster care to taking on additional emergency responsibilities and maintaining essential services amid power and communication outages, county Department of Social Services offices faced major disruptions as a result of Tropical Storm Helene in Western North Carolina. Damage to roads has created ongoing challenges for mandatory home visits for child protective services and foster care oversight, as well as inspections of long-term care facilities for adults. (Thomae, 11/16)  

Heat, diseases, air quality, mental health and migration. The Florida Climate Conference hosted by the Climate Adaptation Center covered these topics this past week at the University of South Florida Sarasota-Manatee campus. Climate change training isn't part of most medical school curriculums, said Dr. Ankush Bansal, co-founder of the organization Florida Clinicians for Climate Action. And he argued that it should be. (Meszaros, 11/18)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: Journalists Examine Health Care For Native Americans And Recent Food Recalls

�鶹Ů�� Health News and California Healthline staff made the rounds on national and local media in recent weeks to discuss topical stories. Here’s a collection of their appearances. (11/16)

Although I’ve heard every argument about abortion, pro and con, over the years, the anti-abortion case made by three Republican-led states in a recent Federal District Court filing stopped me in my tracks. (Linda Greenhouse, 11/18)

Nothing brought Olivia more joy than when her daughter and grandchild visited her group home in Brooklyn in the early 2000s. Each hug and shared laugh lit up her face with pride like any mother’s, grounded in love, family, and connection. Olivia’s story should not be remarkable, but history almost denied her the chance to experience her family. For more than a century, Americans with intellectual and developmental disabilities (I/DD), like Olivia, were subject to forced sterilization — a brutal legacy of eugenics aimed at erasing their place in our communities and families. (Consuelo Senior, 11/18)

On Oct 25, Rithvik Talluri, a second-year medical student at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, rushed away from The View Condominiums’ parking garage as several police officers set up sniper rifles to target an unknown, armed assailant at the top of the building. At 2 p.m., just before Rithvik’s arrival at the parking garage, another resident of the building took one of his 12 weapons to fire from the 19th floor without purpose or reason at the street below. (Samuel Kim, 11/15)

Modern public health is one of civilization’s great achievements. In 1900, up to 30 percent of infants in some U.S. cities never made it to their first birthday. Since that time, vaccines, sanitation and effective medications have eliminated many previously commonplace illnesses and consigned others to extreme rarity. It’s easy to take much of that for granted, especially as those days have receded from living memory, but those achievements are fragile and can be lost. (Zeynep Tufekci, 11/16)

There are many reasons to strenuously oppose President-elect Donald Trump’s nomination of vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to head the Department of Health and Human Services. But this one matters most: his willful disregard for the scientific process. (Leana S. Wen, 11/15)