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The Federal Trade Commission is preparing a lawsuit against the three largest drug intermediaries over their use of rebates for insulin and other drugs, according to a person familiar with the probe. The agency has been investigating whether the rebate practices of insulin manufacturers and three pharmacy benefit managers — units of CVS Health Corp., Cigna Group and UnitedHealth Group Inc. — violate federal law, said the person, who asked not to be named discussing an ongoing probe. (Nylen and Tozzi, 7/10)

Senator Bernie Sanders on Wednesday expressed confidence that Novo Nordisk can be convinced to cut the U.S. prices of its popular Ozempic and Wegovy drugs used for weight loss by publicly shaming the company over how much it charges compared with prices in other countries. Novo Nordisk CEO Lars Jorgensen is set to testify before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP), which Sanders chairs, in a September hearing focusing on U.S. prices for Ozempic and Wegovy. (Aboulenein, 7/10)

Abbott Laboratories hid the risks of its premature-infant formula causing a potentially fatal bowel disease from parents even though company officials acknowledged the peril in internal documents, a lawyer told a Missouri jury. The company was accused of putting profits over safety by an attorney for the mother of a premature baby girl who developed necrotizing enterocolitis, or NEC, and suffered brain damage after being fed Abbott’s Similac Special Care 24, a cow’s milk-based formula. (Feeley, 7/10)

Four in five people taking GLP-1 medications for weight loss quit them in two years, even though the drugs are supposed to be taken much longer to maintain their benefits, according to a new report by Eagan-based Prime Therapeutics. Wednesday's report is disappointing because many people regain all their weight after discontinuing the injectable drugs such as Wegovy and put themselves back at risk for costly chronic diseases, said Pat Gleason, an associate vice president for health outcomes at Prime, which manages pharmacy benefits for Blue Cross insurance plans nationwide. (Olson, 7/10)

Some people are trading UV rays for tanning pills, as numerous social media influencers have raved about how these supplements have given their skin a tan glow. But are they safe? These pills contain a variety of ingredients – including L-tyrosine, beta-carotene and astaxanthin – that could potentially have a color-changing effect on the skin. Doctors are warning that this alternative means of bronzing the skin can come with risks. (Stabile, 7/10)

Medicare physician payments would decline 2.9% in 2025 under a proposed rule the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services published Wednesday. The draft regulation provoked sharp criticism from the American Medical Association and other medical societies, which renewed their calls for Congress to come to their aid. The proposed rule also includes significant policies related to the Medicare Shared Savings Program and telehealth reimbursement. (Early, 7/10)

Hospital outpatient departments and ambulatory surgical centers would receive 2.6% reimbursement hikes next year under a proposed rule the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services issued Wednesday. The draft regulation also includes a slew of maternal health and health equity provisions hospitals that participate in Medicare would be required to follow to receive the full pay hike, including policies on treatment and transfer protocols for pregnant patients. (Early, 7/10)

A legal victory for Medicare Advantage insurers and marketers ironically may cause some headaches when open enrollment for 2025 rolls around. Last week, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas ordered a stay against the final rule the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services published in April that prohibits insurers from offering volume-based bonuses to top Medicare Advantage marketers, thereby suspending the regulation's cap on broker fees. (Tepper, 7/10)

The federal government will not modify regulations that dictate how hospitals publish their prices for consumers, ignoring pleas from patient advocates who have said hospitals still are not fully complying with the 3-year-old law. The Biden administration on Wednesday proposed an annual rule that sets payment rates for hospitals. This document is where the government has in the past rolled out changes to the so-called hospital price transparency rule, but the Biden administration did not address the issue in this edition. (Herman, 7/10)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: ‘A Bottomless Pit’: How Out-Of-Pocket TMJ Costs Drive Patients Into Debt 

Over three decades of relentless pain, Jonna Tallant has tried about every TMJ treatment: mouthguards, six sets of braces, dental crowns and appliances, drugs, physical therapy, Botox, massage, acupuncture, chiropractic care, and surgery. Nothing has helped. Tallant, 51, of Knoxville, Tennessee, said she lives in agony and cannot eat any food that must be chewed. Despite spending a small fortune on treatment, she can barely open her mouth enough to squeeze in a toothbrush. (Kelman and Werner, 7/11)

They’re marketed as healthy, “dietitian-approved” meals and delivered directly to the homes of people seriously ill from cancer, diabetes, or heart disease: a Jimmy Dean frozen sausage breakfast sandwich, biscuits and gravy, a cheeseburger. These are among the offerings sold by an Idaho-based company, Homestyle Direct, which is paid millions of dollars each year by taxpayer-funded state Medicaid programs to deliver what the company calls medically tailored meals. The company, which advertises delivering 7.8 million meals annually, has menus catering to customers trying to manage their cancer and diabetes, as well as “heart healthy” and “renal friendly” dishes. (Florko, 7/11)

Hospitals are volunteering, sometimes begrudgingly, to pay bigger taxes to help states close Medicaid budget gaps. When fiscal 2025 began in most states July 1, health systems in Delaware, Idaho, Kansas, Maine, Missouri, Nebraska, New Mexico and elsewhere are on the hook for higher taxes in exchange for Medicaid reimbursement increases or coverage expansions. (Tepper, 7/10)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: Colorado Dropped Medicaid Enrollees As Red States Have, Alarming Advocates For The Poor

Colorado stands out among the 10 states that have disenrolled the highest share of Medicaid beneficiaries since the U.S. government lifted a pandemic-era restriction on removing people from the health insurance program. It’s the only blue state in a cluster of red states with high disenrollment rates — a group that includes Idaho, Montana, Texas, and Utah — in the Medicaid “unwinding” underway since spring 2023. (Bichell, 7/11)

Investigators are examining potential Medicaid fraud among Minnesota autism services, and state lawmakers say they will consider licensing the providers, whose numbers have increased dramatically across the state. The Minnesota Department of Human Services has 15 active investigations into organizations or individuals providing certain autism services and has closed 10 other cases, the agency told the Star Tribune. The investigations were first reported by the the Reformer, which wrote last month that the FBI is looking into fraud by autism service providers. (Berkel, 7/10)

Coming off some of the deadliest years on record for drug overdoses in the state, Rhode Island finally saw its first decline in fatalities in five years, according to data released by the state Department of Health Wednesday morning. Fentanyl and other opioids are continuing to drive these fatalities, totaling about 85 percent of all fatal overdoses in Rhode Island in 2023. (Gagosz, 7/10)

The idea was ingenious, Richard Lopez thought: a slow but relentless way to phase out tobacco for good. Lopez chairs the board of health in Reading, Mass., a town of 25,000 north of Boston. Last month, the board adopted a regulation to create what advocates call a “nicotine-free generation. ”Anyone born in 2004 or later will not be allowed to buy cigarettes or nicotine products in Reading when they turn 21, the legal age to purchase. (Slater, 7/10)

Sonja Verdugo lost her husband to an opioid overdose last year. She regularly delivers medical supplies to people using drugs who are living — and dying — on the streets of Los Angeles. And she advocates at Los Angeles City Hall for policies to address addiction and homelessness. Yet Verdugo didn’t know that hundreds of millions of dollars annually are flowing to California communities to combat the opioid crisis, a payout that began in 2022 and continues through 2038. (Pattani and Thompson, 7/11)

The Arkansas secretary of state on Wednesday rejected an effort for an abortion-rights ballot measure that would ensure access to the procedure up to 18 weeks in the state. In a letter to Arkansas for Limited Government — the group behind the effort — Secretary of State John Thurston said the group did not submit the required statements about paid signature gatherers. The group, in a statement Wednesday, said it was “alarmed and outraged” by Thurston’s letter. The group said it worked with the secretary of state’s office to ensure all rules and regulations were followed. (Nazzaro, 7/10)

Supporters of a ballot measure that would amend Arizona's constitution to establish a right to abortion sued Republican lawmakers on Wednesday over language in a pamphlet to be distributed to voters before they go to the polls in November, saying the document's use of the phrase "unborn human" is not neutral. Arizona for Abortion Access, the group behind the ballot measure, in its lawsuit asked the Maricopa County Superior Court for an order requiring the Arizona Legislative Council, a committee of lawmakers overseeing the pamphlet, to adopt "impartial" language. The group said "fetus" would be "a neutral, objective, and medically accurate term uniformly used by medical professionals and government agencies." (Pierson, 7/10)

With polls showing ballot measures restoring abortion rights in Florida and legalizing recreational marijuana supported by most voters, Gov. Ron DeSantis is facing an uphill fight in his campaign to defeat them this fall.  The Republican governor has just a trickle of the torrent of money he’s looking to raise for his Florida Freedom Fund, a political committee he intends to weaponize against the proposals, which defy the hard right direction in which he’s moved the state. But until more money arrives, DeSantis is mostly on his own. (Kennedy, 7/10)

With states now firmly in control of laws determining abortion access, the last several years have seen a rash of increasingly restrictive state-level policies. While the Supreme Court preserved women’s access to the abortion pill earlier this month, its decision was a narrow one; lawmakers in red states will continue attempts to ban mifepristone or seek to restrict abortion access in other ways. The Supreme Court’s ruling on emergency abortions in Idaho due to dire pregnancy complications may likewise offer only a temporary reprieve: the Supreme Court merely lifted a stay that had blocked the policy in wake of Idaho’s strict ban on virtually all abortions and remanded the case back to the lower courts. (Deckman, 7/11)

Senate Republicans on Wednesday blocked legislation led by Democrats to revive the protections of Roe v. Wade in the wake of the Supreme Court eliminating the nationwide right to abortion. The vote was 49-44, falling short of the super-majority needed to defeat a filibuster due to broad opposition from Republicans, who dismissed it as a political stunt. (Kapur and Thorp V, 7/10)

The Massachusetts House unanimously approved legislation Wednesday that would ban companies from selling cellphone location data collected during visits to reproductive and gender-affirming care clinics. Democratic House Speaker Ronald Mariano said the goal is to ensure that the right to receive and provide that type of care remains ironclad in Massachusetts. (LeBlanc, 7/10)

The Biden administration on Wednesday rolled out its latest election-year initiative on women's health, proposing standards that would require the hospital industry to invest billions in maternity care improvements to remain in Medicare. Why it matters: Maternal health has proven to be a winning issue for Democrats as restrictive abortion laws and insufficient care draw attention to poor access and outcomes. (Goldman, 7/11)

A new report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) said the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has yet to identify lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic. The report examined the status of obligations and expenditures related to COVID-19 and how FEMA estimated spending from January 2020 to March 2024. For fiscal years 2020 through 2024, Congress passed both annual and supplemental appropriations for the Disaster Relief Fund (DRF) totaling $97 billion, the GAO said. (Soucheray, 7/10)

The former CEO of healthcare software company SCWorx Corp was found guilty of investor fraud for falsely stating the company was becoming a major supplier of COVID-19 rapid tests early in the pandemic, the U.S. Justice Department said on Wednesday. The Justice Department said in a statement that a federal jury in New Jersey convicted Marc Schessel, 64, of two counts of securities fraud for public statements by SCWorx in April 2020, early in the pandemic, claiming that it was buying and reselling at least 48 million COVID-19 test kits, despite knowing that the statements were false. SCWorx said it had a binding contract to acquire the rapid COVID test kits from an Australian supplier. (Singh, 7/10)

Some dairy farmers are resisting Michigan's nation-leading efforts to stop the spread of bird flu for fear their incomes will suffer from added costs and hurt rural America. The government's restrictions, which include tracking who comes and goes from farms, are rekindling unwanted memories of COVID-19 in Martin and other small towns in central Michigan. (Polansek, Huffstutter and Douglas, 7/11)

The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) today added five more dairy herds in three states to its list of H5N1 avian flu outbreak confirmations. Also, APHIS confirmed the virus in three more cats from two states, both of which are experiencing H5N1 outbreak in dairy cows and poultry. (Schnirring, 7/10)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: Finland Is Offering Farmworkers Bird Flu Shots. Some Experts Say The US Should, Too

As bird flu spreads among dairy cattle in the U.S., veterinarians and researchers have taken note of Finland’s move to vaccinate farmworkers at risk of infection. They wonder why their government doesn’t do the same. “Farmworkers, veterinarians, and producers are handling large volumes of milk that can contain high levels of bird flu virus,” said Kay Russo, a livestock and poultry veterinarian in Fort Collins, Colorado. “If a vaccine seems to provide some immunity, I think it should be offered to them.” (Maxmen and Allen, 7/11)

A four-state Salmonella outbreak linked to raw (unpasteurized) milk products has infected at least 165 people—many of them children—from fall 2023 to June 2024, Food Safety News (FSN) reported today based on data it obtained from the California Division of Communicable Disease Control (CDCDC) and the California Department of Health. The median age of patients is 7 years. (Van Beusekom, 7/10)

The Navy reported a record number of suicides in the first quarter of 2024, again drawing attention to the myriad issues revealed about the quality of life for sailors and the service's ability to prevent such deaths. According to recently released Pentagon data on suicide across all the services, the Navy reported 24 suicides among its sailors for the first three months of 2024. That is the highest-ever quarterly figure for the service going back to 2018, when data first started being released. (Toropin, 7/10)

Veterans with combat-related injuries rallied near the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday to urge lawmakers to finally act on a long-stalled proposal to allow all veterans full access to military retirement pay and Department of Veterans Affairs disability benefits. Despite wide bipartisan backing, the Major Richard Star Act has languished for years, increasingly frustrating the veterans who are losing thousands of dollars in benefits that could help them support themselves and their families. (Kheel, 7/10)

Parents of young officers in training and incoming recruits who died in connection with military activities want Congress to approve death benefits that others in the armed forces already receive. “It’s just been an absolute nightmare. There’s no aspect of our lives that are the same,” said Jessica Swan. Swan’s daughter, Mackenzie Wilson, 19, a student at Oregon State University and an Air Force Reserve Officer Training Corps cadet, died in a vehicle accident in June 2022, while at an Air Force base in Idaho for a development program. (Lehrfeld, 7/10)

The mother of a then-Fort Bragg soldier found dead in his barracks room in January 2020 hopes service members will check on each other to prevent future deaths like her son’s. Pvt. 2nd Class Caleb Smither’s mother, Heather Baker, spoke to The Fayetteville Observer last June about her visit to Washington, D.C., to make members of Congress and Army leaders aware of her son’s death and make changes so missteps don’t happen again. Smither, 19, was found dead in his room at Fort Bragg, now known as Fort Liberty, on Jan. 22, 2020, seven weeks after being assigned to the 82nd Airborne Division and five days after he was given an order to rest after striking his head in the motor pool earlier in the month. Months after his death, doctors concluded that Smither’s cause of death was bacterial meningitis. ((Riley, 7/10)

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology introduced a proposed rule on Wednesday to improve interoperability between payers, public health organizations and providers. ONC's proposed rule would establish voluntary certifications for health IT software tools used by public health organizations and payers. The proposed rule implements provisions of the 21st Century Cures Act, which was signed into law in December 2016 by President Obama. (Turner, 7/10)

At his rehabilitation medicine practice in Illinois, Dr. Azlan Tariq typically spent seven hours a week fighting with insurance companies reluctant to pay for his patients’ treatments. He often lost. There was the 45-year-old man who spent five months in a wheelchair while his insurer denied appeal after appeal for a prosthetic leg. Or the stroke survivor who was rehospitalized following a fall after his insurer determined his rehab “could be done at home.” (Rosenbluth, 7/10)

Steward Health Care indefinitely delayed the sale proceedings for some of its hospitals as the system continues to push back the sale timeline for its various assets. Steward, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in May, said in a Tuesday court filing it indefinitely postponed the planned July 11 sale hearing for its five hospitals in Arkansas, Louisiana, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Bids for those facilities were due June 24. (Kacik, 7/10)

Sanford Health and Marshfield Clinic Health System said Wednesday they are exploring a combination, following failed efforts of their own to expand. Under a nonbinding memorandum of understanding, the combined system would be headquartered in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, home to Sanford, and led by Sanford President and CEO Bill Gassen, according to a Wednesday news release. (Kacik, 7/10)

Geisinger plans to embark next year on an $880 million expansion of its Danville, Pennsylvania, medical center, including the addition of an 11-story patient tower. The project has been formally approved by Geisinger parent company Risant Health, said Megan Brosious, chief administrative officer for Geisinger’s central region, on Tuesday. (DeSilva, 7/10)

A searing heat wave that has gripped much of the United States in recent days is suspected of killing at least 28 people in the last week, according to reports from state officials, medical examiners and news outlets. The number, which is based on preliminary reports from California, Oregon and Arizona, is likely to grow as authorities assess the death toll of a heat wave that began last week, delivering record-breaking temperatures throughout the West and scorching East Coast cities. As of Wednesday, more than 135 million people across the Lower 48 were under heat alerts, many of which are expected to continue until the weekend. (Phillips,7/10)

The call came at 2 p.m. Sunday: A driver suffered a brain injury in a traffic accident and needed to be flown to a different hospital as soon as possible. Lead helicopter pilot Douglas Evans noted the 116.6-degree temperature in Redding, Calif., where he would need to land. The tarmac was probably even hotter. In 27 years of operating medical helicopters around California, Evans had never had to cancel a flight because of excessive heat — until now. (Mellen, 7/10)

Electricity outages caused by Hurricane Beryl in Houston and southeast Texas forced health care providers there into a sharp pivot on Wednesday as they were forced to hold onto discharged patients longer instead of having them return to powerless homes baking in the summer heat. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick addressed the scramble in a news conference, pointing to how Houston officials transformed NRG Arena, one of the event spaces used by the city’s annual rodeo and livestock show, into a field hospital for 250 discharged patients to free up space in local hospitals. (Simpson, 7/10)

NRG Arena is being converted into a 250-bed facility for patients who have been discharged from hospitals but cannot return to homes without power, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick announced Tuesday. The move, which Patrick announced during a news conference with Mayor John Whitmire and other Houston leaders, will alleviate a backup in some local hospitals and free up space for new patients. (MacDonald, 7/10)

As power outages caused by grid failures or extreme weather become more common — Hurricane Beryl leaving millions without electricity in Texas is the most recent example — people who rely on home medical devices face a growing risk. Some 4.5 million Medicare recipients and likely millions more of those with private insurance use such electricity-dependent equipment, including electric wheelchairs, hospital beds, ventilators and oxygen concentrators. (Graves, 7/11)

Researchers at Northwestern Medicine and Brigham and Women’s Hospital say they’ve discovered a root cause of lupus, a disease that affects hundreds of thousands of people in the U.S. Scientists have long suspected that a person’s genetics or hormones may predispose them to lupus, and that the disease may be triggered by environmental factors like a previous viral infection or exposure to certain chemicals. Now, a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature outlines a clear pathway for how the disease likely develops, pointing to abnormalities in the immune systems of people with lupus. (Bendix, 7/10)

The French startup Bioptimus is releasing an artificial intelligence model trained off of hundreds of millions of images that, it said, will aid in the research and diagnoses of diseases. The model, called H-optimus-0, is capable of performing complex tasks including identifying cancerous cells and detecting genetic abnormalities in tumors, the Paris-based company said in a statement. Bioptimus described the system as the largest model for pathology that is open source and widely accessible. (Hennessey, 7/10)

Bengt I. Samuelsson, a medical researcher who shared the 1982 Nobel Prize for his role in explaining prostaglandins, hormonelike substances that regulate the intricate machinery of the human body, died July 5 at his summer home in Mölle, a coastal village in his native Sweden. He was 90. His death was announced by the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, the medical university where Dr. Samuelsson spent most of his career. He had cardiac disease, his family said. (Langer, 7/10)

Maxine Singer, a molecular biologist who helped map the inner workings of DNA and led seminal debates in the 1970s that contributed to the first guidelines on the potential risks and ethical implications of genetic engineering, died July 9 at her home in Washington. She was 93. The cause was chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and emphysema, said a statement from Carnegie Science, a research group that Dr. Singer headed from 1988 to 2002. (Murphy, 7/10)

A new report of foodborne illness surveillance in the United States shows the country is not meeting disease-reduction goals. That may be, however, because of increased use of culture-independent diagnostic tests (CIDTs), which allow for diagnoses of infections that previously would not have been reported. (Soucheray, 7/9)

A new study based on 2,149 healthcare workers (HCWs) employed at Danderyd Hospital in Stockholm, Sweden, shows that a significant proportion of those who contracted COVID-19 experienced lasting changes to taste and smell, with 45% reporting olfactory disorders 15 months after infection, and 24% still experiencing symptoms 2.5 years after infection. (Soucheray, 7/9)

A systematic review and meta-analysis of 12 studies suggests meningococcal vaccines show moderate effectiveness against gonorrhea infection, researchers reported yesterday in the Journal of Infection. (Dall, 7/9)

Pfizer's respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) vaccine for pregnant women was not tied to a higher risk of pre-term or early births, according to a study published on Monday that analyzed real-world use of the shots. The vaccine Abrysvo was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration last year for women in their second or third trimesters of pregnancy to prevent infections tied to RSV in babies in the first six months after birth. (Santhosh, 7/8)

As Covid-19 swept across the United States, schools were among the most highly affected public spaces. To prepare for a potential H5N1 avian influenza jump to humans, schools need to be preparing for the scenario now before a sustained transmission event occurs. (Mario Ramirez, 7/11)

Innovations in clinical trial designs and tools have the potential to unlock a new era of research that is more convenient for patients, more reflective of real-world treatment conditions, and more likely to enable participation of a diverse set of individuals. But a recent study reveals how far the U.S. is from realizing this potential: regions of the country with the worst social drivers of health are the least likely to host clinical trials. (Robert Metcalf and Jeffrey Francer, 7/10)

More people know the cost of losing someone to a drug overdose than you might realize. More than 40 percent of Americans say they know someone who died from an overdose, and 13 percent say such deaths have disrupted their lives, according to a study this year from the RAND Corporation. This research lays to rest the misconception that there’s anything rare or isolated about the impact of the opioid overdose crisis. As CEO of the nonprofit Caregiver Action Network, I know all too well that the opioid overdose crisis fueling so much of this grief impacts everyone it touches. Those trying to help or left to pick up the pieces suffer, too. (Marvell Adams Jr., 7/10)

A key part of the federal government’s narrative about the epidemic of addiction and overdose deaths in the U.S. has been that it is driven by doctors and other clinicians overprescribing opioid painkillers. That story line is false — and was never true. (Richard A. "Red" Lawhern, 7/11)

The overdose crisis is claiming lives across the United States, but it reaches new depths of despair in the criminal justice system. Overdose is the leading cause of death among people returning to their communities after being in jail or prison. Providing addiction treatment in these settings could change that. (Nora D. Volkow and Tisha Wiley, 7/9)