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House Energy & Commerce Committee members finished a marathon markup session late Wednesday afternoon for their reconciliation bill, which among other provisions included an estimated $715 billion in cuts to Medicaid and other health programs over a 10-year period. Committee Chair Rep. Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.) opened the hearing at 2 p.m. on Tuesday, arguing that the Biden administration was largely responsible for Americans' current healthcare difficulties. (Frieden, 5/14)

The House Energy and Commerce Committee was 16 hours into a nearly 27-hour markup when it became clear that top Republicans on the panel weren’t clear on what key Medicaid provisions in the legislation they were actively debating would actually do. Couple that with confusion from moderates over the committee’s complex and controversial proposal ... and it spells possible troubles ahead for the domestic policy megabill central to enacting President Donald Trump’s domestic agenda. (Leonard and Lee Hill, 5/14)

The House Agriculture Committee voted 29-25 along party lines to advance legislation that would cut as much as $300 billion in food aid spending to pay for Republicans’ domestic policy megabill and some farm bill programs. The Wednesday vote sends the measure to the House Budget Committee for consideration before a full floor vote in the chamber on the bill. (Yarrow, 5/14)

A key House panel on Wednesday advanced legislation that includes a provision aimed at cutting off Medicaid funding from Planned Parenthood, a longtime goal of congressional Republicans. (Panetta, 5/14)

States will struggle to make up hundreds of billions in federal Medicaid cuts congressional Republicans are attempting to speed to President Donald Trump, leaving local leaders facing tough decisions on benefit cuts, provider payments reductions or tax increases. Exactly how those choices get made will vary dramatically among the states, and could take years to play out depending how federal and state officials interpret certain portions of the bill the House Energy and Commerce Committee advanced Wednesday, which aims to cut $625 billion from Medicaid over 10 years. (McAuliffe, 5/15)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: The GOP’s Trying Again To Cut Medicaid. It’s Only Gotten Harder Since 2017

It has been nearly eight years since Sen. John McCain’s middle-of-the-night thumbs-down vote torpedoed Republican efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act and make drastic cuts to Medicaid. With Donald Trump back in the White House and the GOP back in control of Congress, Republicans again have their eyes on Medicaid, the government health program for those with low incomes or disabilities. (Galewitz, 5/14)

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., one of the nation's most publicly recognized vaccine skeptics, took a softened approach on vaccines when he answered questions before a House committee Wednesday morning, saying, "I don't think people should be taking medical advice from me." Kennedy, who also testified before a Senate committee the same day, defended the massive cuts to the department's workforce and laid out his priorities for the Trump administration's proposed budget. (Kekatos, McDuffie, Haslett, and Hensley, 5/14)

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. delivered a defiant defense on Wednesday of his drastic overhaul of federal health agencies, insisting to members of Congress that he had “not fired any working scientists” and was “not withholding money for lifesaving research" despite evidence to the contrary. In back-to-back appearances before House and Senate committees, Mr. Kennedy, a longtime critic of vaccination, also made clear that he did not think the health secretary should be in the business of making vaccine recommendations. (Gay Stolberg, 5/14)

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Wednesday told Congress the Trump administration would not cut funding for Head Start, after layoffs at the agency and funding freezes raised fears the six-decade-old program would be radically downsized. In an appearance before a Senate subcommittee, Kennedy said the administration would “emphasize healthy eating in Head Start, and ensure the program continues to serve its 750,000 children and parents effectively.” (Balingit, 5/14)

Sen. Bill Cassidy helped clinch Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s bid to lead the Department of Health and Human Services months ago after securing commitments from Kennedy to, among other things, avoid undercutting public faith in vaccinations. Now, the Louisiana Republican says the secretary has “lived up to” those promises — even as critics accuse Kennedy of trying to poison the well of faith in vaccines. (Kamisar, Santaliz and Thorp V, 5/14)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: RFK Jr.’s Hearing With Senate HELP Committee: A Live Discussion

In his first public testimony on Capitol Hill since taking office, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on May 14 appeared before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions and a House Appropriations subcommittee. Lawmakers questioned the secretary about the mass layoffs at HHS, funding cuts, and other changes. (5/14)

The head of the Environmental Protection Agency came under bipartisan criticism Wednesday over his agency’s actions to cancel billions of dollars in congressionally approved spending to address chronic pollution in minority communities and jump-start clean energy programs across the country. Nearly 800 grants were awarded by former President Joe Biden’s administration under the 2022 climate law, which directed the EPA to spend $3 billion on grants to help low-income and minority communities improve their air and water and protect against climate change. (Daly, 5/14)

There were 30,000 fewer U.S. drug overdose deaths in 2024 than the year before — the largest one-year decline ever recorded. An estimated 80,000 people died from overdoses last year, according to provisional Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data released Wednesday. That’s down 27% from the 110,000 in 2023. The CDC has been collecting comparable data for 45 years. The previous largest one-year drop was 4% in 2018, according to the agency’s National Center for Health Statistics. (Stobbe and Mulvihill, 5/14)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: Mental Health And Substance Misuse Treatment Is Increasingly A Video Chat Or Phone Call Away

More Californians are talking to their therapists through a video screen or by phone than in person, marking a profound shift in how mental health care is delivered as record-setting numbers seek help. While patients and providers say teletherapy is effective and easier to get than in-person services, experts in the field noted that teletherapy often requires a skilled mental health practitioner trained to pick up subtle communication cues. (Reese, 5/15)

More than half of Americans say their mental health became important to them in the last five years, a new survey found. Conducted in April by Rula Health, a virtual behavioral health company, the survey reached more than 2,000 U.S. adults and aimed to understand the current state of mental health. The findings revealed more than half of Americans have accessed mental health services at some point in their lives. Of those, more than a quarter are currently in therapy and another quarter sought therapy within the past year. (Gliadkovskaya, 5/14)

Men are twice as likely to die from the stress-related heart condition commonly called "broken heart syndrome" compared to women, according to new research. The condition, formally known as Takotsubo cardiomyopathy, is associated with severe emotional distress or stressful events, such as the death of a loved one. Symptoms typically include chest discomfort, shortness of breath, heart palpitations and arrhythmia, or irregular heartbeat. A study published Wednesday in the Journal of the American Heart Association analyzed nearly 200,000 U.S. adults with data from 2016 to 2020. It found that despite the condition being more common among women, the death rate among them was 5.5%, compared to 11.2% for men. (Moniuszko, 5/14)

Samples of store-bought rice from more than 100 different brands purchased in the United States contained dangerously high levels of arsenic and cadmium, according to a new report released exclusively to CNN. (LaMotte, 5/15)

A study conducted in Dallas of 1,666 COVID-19 patients, of which 80 (5%) had long COVID, reveals that those with long COVID, on average, had lower pre‐COVID fitness. The study was published yesterday in the Journal of the American Heart Association. (Soucheray, 5/14)

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has made combating chronic disease a rallying cry as he looks to overhaul the health department and “Make America Healthy Again.” So how healthy is America, historically? It isn’t that we used to be healthier, data show, but the biggest threats have changed. (Abbott, 5/14)

Estimated influenza vaccine effectiveness (VE) in California during the 2023-24 respiratory virus season was 41% against lab-confirmed flu and 68% against influenza B, but just 32% against influenza A and 26% among older adults. These findings, published yesterday in The Journal of Infectious Diseases, were made possible by California's 2023 mandate requiring flu vaccination reporting and all flu lab test results to the state immunization information system, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)-led research team said. (Van Beusekom, 5/14)

Statements from a federal official about potential changes to the way vaccines are evaluated have left experts with more questions than answers. Earlier this month, an apparent policy change appeared in a statement to the Washington Post in which an HHS spokesperson told the paper that "All new vaccines will undergo safety testing in placebo-controlled trials prior to licensure -- a radical departure from past practices." (Fiore, 5/14)

South Carolina’s Supreme Court upheld the state’s ‘fetal heartbeat’ law in a Wednesday ruling.  Justices ruled the state can continue to ban abortion starting at six weeks of gestation, when the current law states a ‘fetal heartbeat’ can begin to be detected. Abortions in the state have been banned as soon as a health care provider can detect “cardiac activity, or the steady and repetitive rhythmic contraction of the fetal heart, within the gestational sac,” under a 2023 law called the Fetal Heartbeat Protection from Abortion Act. (O’Connell-Domenech, 5/14)

Missouri voters will decide whether to reimpose an abortion ban next year, after a landmark statewide vote last year that enshrined the right to the procedure in the state constitution and overturned a previous ban. The Republican-controlled Senate on Wednesday approved a proposed constitutional amendment that, if approved by voters, would overturn a November vote that legalized abortion access. (Bayless and Shorman, 5/14)

Citing parental rights, a Florida appeals court Wednesday ruled that a law that can allow minors to have abortions without their parents’ consent is unconstitutional. (Saunders, 5/14)

Arguments surrounding first-of-its-kind legislation that categorizes two widely used abortion -inducing drugs as “controlled dangerous substances” in Louisiana are scheduled to take place before a state judge Thursday morning. In a lawsuit against the state, plaintiffs say the reclassification of misoprostol and mifepristone — which have critical reproductive health care uses in addition to being used as a two-drug regimen to end pregnancies — could cause needless and potentially life-threatening delays in treatment during medical emergencies. (Cline, 5/15)

A Houston-area midwife accused of performing illegal abortions has laid out the case for her innocence for the first time, alleging in an appeal filed Monday that the Texas Attorney General’s office was so desperate to prosecute an abortion case that it “conducted a shoddy investigation and leapt to wild conclusions.” (Klibanoff, 5/14)

An emboldened fringe movement is breaking with the antiabortion establishment by pushing for women who get abortions to face criminal charges, a departure from decades of “pro-life” tradition. The “abortion abolitionist” movement wants to see the procedure eradicated and supports changing the law to grant personhood to embryos, making their destruction an act of homicide that would be punishable by death in some states. (Bellware, 5/14)

Cara Stanton didn’t get her period until she was 22. For years, doctors — including her pediatrician — recommended taking hormonal birth control to kickstart it. But Stanton was hesitant. “If something doesn’t make sense to me, I question it,” said Stanton, now a 32-year-old nurse practitioner based in Michigan. “It was just one of those things where I thought, ‘I don’t know that my ovaries are broken, so quit trying to put a bandaid on them.’ (Gerson and Padilla, 5/14)

Yesterday the US Preventive Services Task Force released a final recommendation statement on screening for syphilis infection during pregnancy, giving screening the grade of  "A" and suggesting early, universal screening for syphilis infection during pregnancy for all women. The task force has been issuing recommendations on maternal syphilis screening since 1996, most recently in 2018. (Soucheray, 5/14)

Suicide was the top cause of death for medical residents and fellows, though the rate was significantly lower than age- and gender-matched rates in the general population, according to a cross-sectional study. From 2015 to 2021, 161 of over 370,000 residents and fellows died during training, with the top cause of death being suicide (29.2%), followed by neoplastic diseases (17.4%), other medical and surgical diseases (13.7%), accidents (13.7%), and accidental poisoning (13%), reported Nicholas Yaghmour, MPP, of the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) in Chicago, and colleagues. (Robertson, 5/14)

UnitedHealth Group Inc. is under criminal investigation for possible Medicare fraud, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing unidentified people familiar with the matter. The Justice Department has had a probe into the company’s Medicare Advantage business since at least last summer, according to the people. (Tozzi, 5/14)

Quick Health, a Pennsylvania call center, was indicted along with its former chief executive and three other leaders, accused of signing up tens of thousands of customers for cheap, bare-bones health plans using “false, misleading, and deceptive sales practices.” Alan Redmond, 42, identified by prosecutors as the “de facto” boss of Quick Health, and Arthur Walsh, 65, the former CEO, were among those charged with wire fraud and conspiracy in an indictment unsealed in federal court in Philadelphia on Wednesday. (Mider, 5/15)

Almost 25% of inpatient rehabilitation facilities in the U.S. exceeded the national rate of patient falls between July 1, 2023, and June 30, 2024, according to CMS data released March 26. The majority of facilities reported a fall rate at or below the national rate of 0.2, with 56.18% reporting a fall rate of zero. Inpatient rehabilitation facilities are required to report to CMS the number of patients who experience one or more falls resulting in a major injury during their stay. CMS publishes the data online at both the provider and national level, and makes it available to consumers through the Medicare website. (Gregerson, 5/14)

Hospitals and other healthcare organizations participating in a federal pilot aimed at supporting dementia patients have encountered turbulence in the program’s first year. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ Guiding an Improved Dementia Experience, or GUIDE, could be a game-changer for dementia and Alzheimer’s disease care, providers said — but participants have been hamstrung by patient eligibility requirements, low reimbursements and other challenges. The program, along with other Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation initiatives, also faces an uncertain future as the Trump administration reevaluates how it will prioritize healthcare spending. (Eastabrook, 5/15)

Nine years ago, one of the world’s leading artificial intelligence scientists singled out an endangered occupational species.“ People should stop training radiologists now,” Geoffrey Hinton said, adding that it was “just completely obvious” that within five years A.I. would outperform humans in that field. Today, radiologists — the physician specialists in medical imaging who look inside the body to diagnose and treat disease — are still in high demand. A recent study from the American College of Radiology projected a steadily growing work force through 2055. (Lohr, 5/14)

Danish pharmaceutical giant Novo Nordisk and U.S. biotech Septerna agreed to collaborate on the development of pills to treat obesity, type 2 diabetes and other metabolic conditions. Under the terms of the agreement, Septerna is eligible to receive around $2.2 billion from Novo Nordisk, including more than $200 million in upfront and near-term milestone payments. (Chopping, 5/15)

Prescriptions for benzodiazepines like Xanax, Ativan and Valium have been trending down since 2016, in part because of doctors’ concerns. Even so, these medications are considered quick and efficacious, and they remain among the most commonly prescribed drugs in the country to treat conditions including anxiety and sleep disorders. In 2019, an estimated 92 million benzodiazepine prescriptions were dispensed in the United States, according to the Food and Drug Administration. Current guidelines recommend prescribing the lowest effective dose for the shortest possible duration, usually less than four weeks. But patients tend to stay on them longer than that. (Caron, 5/14)

What inspired Shark Tank star and billionaire Mark Cuban to launch his pharmaceutical company, Cost Plus Drugs, was conversations with politicians about a contentious topic: Obamacare. “Going back to 2018 or 2017, being here in Texas, I had some Republican friends who were asking me questions like, ‘Do you have any ideas how the Republicans can replace the ACA, Obamacare?'” Cuban told the hosts of the “Hims House” podcast on Tuesday. (Freedman, 5/14)

Missouri Senate Republicans voted Wednesday to repeal portions of a voter-approved law that allowed employees to earn paid sick leave and a higher minimum wage. Members of the Senate voted 22-11 to pass legislation that repeals parts of Proposition A, which Missouri voters approved in November with 57.6% of the vote. (Kellogg, Rosenbaum and Lewis, 5/14)

A state appeals court says 100 or more senior citizens in California, scammed into making medical payments to a company that later went bankrupt, are entitled to payments of up to $50,000 from a state fund for victims of fraud. A company called Senior Care Advocates told elderly Californians 20 years ago that it could qualify them for the Medi-Cal program for a fee — the state actually accepts applicants without any cost — and charged them thousands of dollars for access to nonexistent health care benefits, according to Tuesday’s court ruling. A filing in their case said they were also told they would have access to a skilled nursing home if they paid the fee. (Egelko, 5/14)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: Newsom’s Pitch As He Seeks To Pare Down Immigrant Health Care: ‘We Have To Adjust’

Gov. Gavin Newsom on Wednesday proposed that California roll back health care for immigrants without legal status, saying the state needed to cut benefits for some to maintain core services across the board. It’s a striking reversal for the Democrat, who had promised universal health care and called health coverage for immigrants the moral and ethical thing to do. But a $12 billion state budget deficit, potential federal spending cuts, and larger-than-expected Medi-Cal enrollment have forced him to dial back. (Mai-Duc and Sánchez, 5/15)

Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey on Wednesday signed legislation putting new regulations on gummies, drinks and other products containing cannabinoids from hemp, a legal variety of the marijuana plant. The law would allow gummies, drinks and other consumable products to continue to be sold, but limits the amount of psychoactive compounds in the products. It also puts restrictions on where the products can be sold. The governor signed the legislation Wednesday, Ivey spokeswoman Gina Maiola said. (Chandler, 5/15)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: Prisons Routinely Ignore Guidelines On Dying Inmates’ End-Of-Life Choices

Brian Rigsby was lying with his right wrist shackled to a hospital bed in Montgomery, Alabama, when he learned he didn’t have long to live. It was September 2023, and Rigsby, 46, had been brought to Jackson Hospital from an Alabama state prison 10 days earlier after complaining of pain and swelling in his abdomen. Doctors found that untreated hepatitis C had caused irreversible damage to Rigsby’s liver, according to his medical records. (Rayasam, 5/15)

The World Health Organization, which faces an extraordinary financial crunch in the wake of the U.S. withdrawal from the agency, has dramatically trimmed its top management. (Branswell, 5/14)

Siemens Healthineers announced Wednesday it is investing $150 million to expand production and support innovation in the United States. The company is relocating its radiotherapy equipment manufacturer Varian from Baja, Mexico, to Palo Alto, California, which will add about 50 manufacturing jobs. The move will reduce the complexity of its global supply chain, according to a news release. (Dubinsky, 5/14)

Just northwest of Copenhagen, a cluster of small towns surrounded by trees and lakes is home to three of the world’s biggest hearing-aid makers. The area’s outsize control of the market, which has helped Denmark earn the moniker “Silicon Valley of Sound,” seems set to endure after devices for chronic disabilities were among the rare segments to escape the Trump tariff burn. ... This small yet sensitive medical-care segment was shielded from tariffs during President Donald Trump’s first term and spared again from the barrage of levies he unleashed last month. (Pham, 5/15)

President Donald Trump incorrectly placed the blame for high prescription drug prices in the U.S. on foreign nations, making the comments Monday when signing an executive order intended to lower their cost. The order sets a 30-day deadline for drugmakers to electively lower prices in the U.S. or face new limits in the future over what the government will pay. If favorable deals are not reached, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will be tasked with developing a new rule that ties prices the U.S. pays for medications to lower prices paid by other countries. Here’s a closer look at the facts. (Goldin, 5/14)

The Trump administration has sharply expanded its campaign against experts who track misinformation and other harmful content online, abruptly canceling scores of scientific research grants at universities across the country. The grants funded research into topics like ways to evade censors in China. One grant at the Rochester Institute of Technology, for example, sought to design a tool to detect fabricated videos or photos generated by artificial intelligence. Another, at Kent State University in Ohio, studied how malign actors posing as ordinary users manipulate information on social media. (Myers, 5/15)

Harvard University said it will free up an extra $250 million of school money to help pay for research during the coming year after the Trump administration scrapped multiyear federal funding of more than $2.6 billion. School leaders will also work with researchers to make “prudent decisions” about adjusting their programs amid the funding pressure, Harvard President Alan Garber and Provost John Manning said in a letter Wednesday to the university community. They described the federal freeze as “part of a broader campaign to revoke scientific research funding” by the US government. (Lorin, 5/14)

Although Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has said he cares deeply about Native American communities, the health of those communities is under severe threat because of massive cuts Kennedy is making to federal health services, U.S. senators and tribal leaders said at a hearing held Wednesday. (McFarling, 5/14)

The Trump administration announced criminal smuggling charges on Wednesday against Kseniia Petrova, a Harvard scientist who was detained three months ago after failing to declare scientific samples she was carrying in her luggage. In a hearing in federal district court earlier in the day, a government lawyer told a federal judge that the Trump administration intends to deport Ms. Petrova back to Russia, a country she fled in 2022, despite her fear that she will be arrested there over her history of political protest. (Barry, 5/14)

A meta-analysis of 9,600 pregnant women and newborns estimates a more than fourfold higher risk of severe microcephaly in babies born to Zika virus–infected mothers. (Van Beusekom, 5/14)

A US surveillance study shows that patients with recent COVID-19 infections contributed substantially to increases in hospital-onset methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) bacteremia during the pandemic. The findings were published today in Open Forum Infectious Diseases. (Dall, 5/12)

A study of positive blood cultures over a 5-year period found that antimicrobial resistance (AMR) was associated with a 10% relative increase in the risk of death among patients with bacteremia, Canadian researchers reported today in Clinical Infectious Diseases. (Dall, 5/13)

A new scientific study identified taurine, which is made naturally in the body and consumed through some foods, as a key regulator of myeloid cancers such as leukemia, according to a paper published in the journal Nature. (University of Rochester Medical Center, 5/14)

A transient ischemic attack, also known as a mini-stroke, is typically defined as a temporary blockage of blood flow to the brain that causes symptoms that go away within a day, but a new study finds that people who have this type of stroke may also have prolonged fatigue lasting up to one year. (American Academy of Neurology, 5/14)

Researchers have taken preliminary steps toward treating a devastating neurodevelopmental disorder, spinal muscular atrophy, with a genetic therapy delivered in the womb, before the worst damage to motor neurons can occur. (Molteni, 5/14)

The Trump administration faces a huge task under the president’s latest executive order: develop pricing targets in the next 30 days for thousands of drugs to equalize what Americans pay compared with patients overseas. They can accomplish his larger goal by embracing this opportunity to bring some rational thinking to the drug pricing system. (Darius Lakdawalla and Dana P. Goldman, 5/15)

“My ADHD? I figured it out on TikTok,” a new patient told me proudly. She hadn’t turned to social media for answers because she wanted to; she just couldn’t afford the cost of a formal psychiatric evaluation. Appointments for neuropsychological assessments, the gold standard for diagnosing conditions such as attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, are increasingly hard to come by. Many are also expensive and can run anywhere from $800 to over $10,000, depending on the complexity of the tests. (Sarah Gundle, 5/12)

One of the many traits that set California apart from other states is the way undocumented immigrants are woven into our communities. Their economic impact is obvious, and the Golden State would be hard-pressed to keep our status as a world-competing financial power without their labor. But most Californians know, and are OK with the reality, that at least some of our neighbors, our kids’ classmates, our co-workers, are without legal documents, or in blended-status families. (Anita Chabria, 5/14)

Imagine one in every five people you pass on the street — whether it’s your neighbor, your barista, a family member or a colleague — suddenly losing access to essential healthcare. That’s the threat looming over millions of Americans as Medicaid lands on Congress’s chopping block. (Raghuram Reddy, 5/14)

While we hold doctors and nurses to high ethical standards to be mandated reporters and to “do no harm,” there are some hospital workers making decisions that impact patient outcomes who are not required to be licensed- hospital administrators. (Paul Banach, 5/15)