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President Biden has promised to require fair prices from drugmakers that use federally funded research — and now, in a major recent move, said he’ll trigger government march-in on patents for drugs that run afoul of that goal. “It’s a simple principle. You shouldn’t pay the highest price in the world for drugs that your tax dollars have already helped create,” Biden said last month as he touted the move at the National Institutes of Health. But the new NIH director, locked in the center of this debate, isn’t taking any big steps yet. (Owermohle, 1/16)

The plan to allow Florida to import cheaper prescription drugs from Canada is already facing outrage from Canadians who claim it could make their own drug supply shortages worse. And experts in the U.S. have doubts the program will ever help people in Florida get a cost break on medications for conditions like heart disease and diabetes. ... “The U.S. needs to solve its own drug pricing problem, and not rely on other countries to do it for them,” said Dr. Joel Lexchin, a professor emeritus at the School of Health Policy and Management at York University in Toronto. (Lovelace Jr., 1/12)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: Trump Official Who OK’d Drugs From Canada Chairs Company Behind Florida’s Import Plan

Alex Azar advanced Canadian drug importation as Donald Trump’s secretary of Health and Human Services. Now he chairs the board of a company managing Florida’s importation program. (Galewitz, 1/12)

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin was released from the hospital Monday, Pentagon officials said, after a two-week stay due to complications from prostate surgery last month. Austin is now recuperating at home, according to a Pentagon statement. “The Secretary continues to recover well and, on the advice of doctors, will recuperate and perform his duties remotely for a period of time before returning full-time to the Pentagon,” according to the statement. “He has full access to required secure communications capabilities.” (Lubold, 1/15)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: What Would A Second Trump Presidency Look Like For Health Care? 

On the presidential campaign trail, former President Donald Trump is, once again, promising to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act — a nebulous goal that became one of his administration’s splashiest policy failures. “We’re going to fight for much better health care than Obamacare. Obamacare is a catastrophe,” Trump said at a campaign stop in Iowa on Jan. 6. (Rovner, 1/16)

Congress is racing to fund the government by Friday’s partial shutdown deadline, a heavy task that is bound to get weightier as Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) navigates growing anger in his conference over his handling of spending matters. The mad dash comes after congressional leaders rolled out a bipartisan deal to avert a shutdown over the weekend, settling on another two-set stopgap bill that would keep the government funded into March. The Senate is scheduled to hold the first procedural vote for the legislation late Tuesday. (Schnell, 1/16)

Democratic and Republican leaders in the U.S. Congress on Sunday unveiled a short-term spending bill that would avert a partial government shutdown and keep federal agencies operating into March. The agreement aims to avert short-term chaos and buy more time to craft the complex spending legislation that funds government activity. Government agencies that oversee transportation, housing, and other services are due to run out of funding by midnight on Friday and would have to scale back activity if new funding is not signed into law. (Sullivan and Morgan, 1/14)

When she arrived in Congress last year, Representative Anna Paulina Luna, a hard-right Republican from Florida, joined the rest of her party in staunchly opposing proxy voting, a practice adopted by House Democrats to allow for remote legislating during the pandemic. Then, in August, she gave birth to her first child and her perspective changed. Now, Ms. Luna is pressing to allow new mothers in Congress to stay away from Washington immediately after giving birth and designate a colleague to cast votes on the House floor on their behalf. (Karni, 1/16)

Rapper and singer Jelly Roll made an impassioned plea to Congress this week in support of a proposed bill to crack down on fentanyl, but experts and advocates say the growing crisis of fentanyl overdose deaths in the U.S. is a complicated problem to solve. Deaths blamed on fentanyl have exploded over the last decade as the synthetic opioid has reached virtually every corner of the country, and officials have called for greater action to both curb the flow of illegally manufactured fentanyl smuggled into the U.S., and address addiction. (Santucci, 1/13)

With the deadline of 11:59 p.m. Tuesday approaching, Florida has more than 4 million Obamacare enrollees. Nationally, the ACA added 3.7 million for a record tally of about 20 million. (Pederson, Cabrera and Mayer, 1/12)

The Florida House on Friday began moving forward with its version of a plan aimed at boosting the number of physicians in the state and taking other steps to expand access to health care. (1/13)

A study published last week led by American Cancer Society researchers compared cancer patients in states that expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act with patients in states that did not. In states that expanded Medicaid, about 1 in 5 college- or working-age adults diagnosed with cancer were insured by Medicaid, the government health insurance program for low-income families and the disabled. Just 2% of cancer patients in these states were uninsured as of 2019. (Alltucker, 1/14)

Calling 9-1-1 for a medical emergency typically leads to a trip in an ambulance to a nearby emergency room. ... Now, Alameda County wants to change that wasteful practice so ambulance providers are more accountable for providing an appropriate level of care. ... The county will require its next provider to develop an “appropriate tiered system” for their responses, offering things like at-home telehealth appointments when appropriate, instead of just transporting people to the hospital. (Blair Rowan, 1/12)

At a medical facility on the west side of San Antonio, the patients show up with disturbing regularity — most of them men. They have sores on their feet that won’t go away. And they leave with the same devastating news: Their diabetes has progressed to the point that their leg must be amputated to save their lives. Diabetes has been on the rise around the world, and Latino communities in the United States have been especially hard hit. A lethal combination of genetics, poor access to health care, diets high in processed foods and sedentary lifestyles has created a crisis in places like San Antonio, a majority Mexican American city in Southern Texas, that is costing a growing number of men their feet and legs — and eventually, for some, their lives. (Sandoval, 1/16)

It's a chilly, winter evening outside the Boulder Public library, with the sun low in the sky. Inside, tucked behind a spiral staircase, a small crowd begins to file into a meeting room. They are here for a distribution of coupons for the Fruit and Veg Boulder program, run by county health department staff and community groups. ... This program is part of a growing wave of nutrition incentive projects across the country. The federal government pays for many of these programs, but ... some places, like Boulder, are generating their own funding through a local soda tax. (Simmons-Duffin, 1/15)

Marijuana is neither as risky nor as prone to abuse as other tightly controlled substances and has potential medical benefits, and therefore should be removed from the nation’s most restrictive category of drugs, federal scientists have concluded. The recommendations are contained in a 250-page scientific review provided to Matthew Zorn, a Texas lawyer who sued Health and Human Services officials for its release and published it online on Friday night. An H.H.S. official confirmed the authenticity of the document. The records shed light for the first time on the thinking of federal health officials who are pondering a momentous change. (Jewett and Weiland, 1/12)

The health agency in August recommended that the Drug Enforcement Administration change marijuana’s classification as a Schedule I drug, a designation reserved for substances that have a high potential for abuse and no accepted medical use. The classification has long been a source of criticism that one of the most commonly used drugs is in the same category as heroin and LSD. The DEA has yet to act on the recommendation. (Nirappil, Ovalle and Diamond, 1/13)

Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser joined a group of attorneys general from a dozen other states who sent a letter this week to the federal government asking that cannabis be reduced from a Schedule I to a Schedule III controlled substance. ... This would allow states to bring in revenue from a legal cannabis businesses and consumers' sales tax, the letter claimed. That revenue could then be applied to public health and safety measures such as education and further research into the drug's impacts. (Smith, 1/12)

A new study has found that there was no association between using cannabis and non-medical opioid use in people receiving pharmacotherapy for opioid use disorder. The findings neither confirm that using cannabis leads to opioid use nor that it's effective in reducing it. Cannabis has gained popularity, in part due to its widespread legalization, leading to the perception that, due to its lower associated risks compared to ‘harder’ drugs, it can be an effective treatment for drug addiction, especially addiction to opioids. (McClure, 1/15)

A bill introduced in the Washington state legislature aims to limit high potency cannabis products amid concerns of increasing potency and risks posed to younger people using the products. The bipartisan bill would increase the age limit to buy high-potency cannabis products to 25 — which lawmakers say is “consistent with science about brain development.” (Bourgeois, 1/15)

Now that it has been two years since recreational cannabis sales began in New Mexico, lawmakers are taking a second look at what they want to tweak with the laws surrounding the drug. “Now that we’ve had a couple of years to see how recreational cannabis is working in New Mexico, we now know where we need to make adjustments cause we have the benefit of that bug testing,” said Senator Katy Duhigg (D-Albuquerque). (Wadas, 1/15)

Leaders of Oregon’s cannabis industry are asking the state to permanently restrict the number of new marijuana businesses. To date, Oregon has approved over 3,000 licenses for the farming, processing or sale of marijuana. Industry advocates say since businesses can’t export to other states, that’s far more than what their customers need. (Wilk, 1/15)

On a recent weekend, fans of Mike Tyson, one of the greatest boxers ever, lined up by the hundreds at dispensaries in New York for a chance to meet him and to support his latest business move: selling weed in his home state. With the recent release of his Tyson 2.0 line, Mr. Tyson, 57, has become the most visible newcomer of the celebrity wave in the state’s cannabis industry. Although actors, athletes and musicians have been cashing in on weed with product lines and endorsement deals over the last decade as legalization has swept the United States, the tide is just rising in New York. And Mr. Tyson is one of the biggest names yet to test how far fame can carry a brand in a market that is shaping up to be one of the largest and most competitive in the world. (Southall, 1/16)

The number of adult tobacco users has dropped steadily in recent years, the World Health Organization said on Tuesday, but it warned Big Tobacco is working hard to reverse that trend. In 2022, about one-in-five adults around the world were smokers or consumed other tobacco products, compared to one-in-every-three in 2000, the United Nations health agency said. A fresh report looking at trends in the prevalence of tobacco use between 2000 and 2030 showed that 150 countries were successfully reducing it, the WHO said. (1/16)

Global tobacco use has tumbled in a generation with one in five people smoking versus one in three in 2000, the World Health Organization said on Tuesday. The drop comes despite what the U.N. global health agency said were ongoing efforts by Big Tobacco to seek to influence global health policies to its own advantage. (Farge, 1/16)

A bill in Montpelier is making its way throughout the statehouse that would ban all forms of flavored tobacco products, including menthol. It’s garnering mixed reactions from many. Some lawmakers have been trying to get this ban passed for years because they say the flavors are getting the youth addicted to nicotine. (1/12)

In 1985, the NCAA began conducting studies to examine student-athletes' use of drugs, alcohol and tobacco. The study's 10th and current iteration shows declines in the use of narcotic pain medication and spit tobacco, as well as binge drinking, among student-athletes. ... Overall, 15% of all men's sport student-athletes reported using spit tobacco within the last year, which is down from 22% in the 2017 study. The percentage of users has steadily decreased since 2009. (1/9)

As students at the University of Sydney prepared for their end-of-year exams in late 2023, a trio in brightly coloured jumpsuits pulled up to the campus in a van, armed with tiny bottles labelled “Ryde wellbeing shots”. They approached students as they studied on the campus lawns, asking them to share their strategies to cope with exam stress and filming their responses for TikTok. The students gave sensible answers – healthy diet, exercise, meditation, taking breaks between periods of study. The “Ryde Response Team” handed out bottles of Ryde, which contains ingredients such as taurine, lemon balm and ginseng extract, telling the students that one 60ml shot could “revive” them and give them focus. ... What was not revealed to students, and is not on the Ryde product label, is that the Water Street Collective is a wholly owned subsidiary of British American Tobacco. The Ryde website only once mentions British American Tobacco, and only as BAT. (Davey and May, 1/14)

Nicotine pouches are marketed as smokeless products intended to help people to stop smoking or vaping, but they are trending among teens, which is causing alarm in the public health sector. Videos about using Zyn, a popular pouch brand, are all over TikTok, with some of the videos getting millions of views — though some of the highest-performing videos are from doctors warning against using the products. (11/29/23)

More than 200 schools across the UK have received information packs this week warning about the rise of “snus” – small nicotine pouches that are placed between the user’s gums and lips. Based on a Swedish tobacco product, the nicotine-only pouches have become popular with footballers, who have been spotted using the products on social media. Children are able to buy packs relatively easily because the pouches aren’t (yet) classified alongside tobacco products like cigarettes and can be sold to under-18s, despite worrying tales of bleeding gums and sickness. In the EU, the product is banned across most of the bloc. Politico reports that the EU’s tobacco legislation could be altered to further restrict and manage the sale of snus, much like e-cigarettes. The lesson of flavoured vapes is that the law needs to catch up faster. (1/16)

Sixty years ago, the U.S. surgeon general released a report that settled a longstanding public debate about the dangers of cigarettes and led to huge changes in smoking in America. Today, some public health experts say a similar report could help clear the air about vaping. Many U.S. adults believe nicotine vaping is as harmful as — or more dangerous than — cigarette smoking. That’s wrong. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration and most scientists agree that, based on available evidence, electronic cigarettes are far less dangerous than traditional cigarettes. (Stobbe, 1/15)

Key indicators for respiratory illness declined for the first time in weeks after the holidays, signaling that the tripledemic of flu, COVID-19 and RSV may have peaked nationwide, according to updated Centers for Disease Control and Prevention statistics. (Bettelheim, 1/12)

As Colorado slogs through its fourth winter of the COVID-19 pandemic, a curious trend has emerged. This season — at least so far — the state reached its peak for hospitalizations of people with COVID in the second-to-last week of November. That’s almost exactly when a peak happened last year. And the year before that. And the year before that. (Ingold, 1/15)

Toward the beginning of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy’s latest podcast, the center’s director, epidemiologist Michael Osterholm, makes this statement about COVID-19: “there’s no arguing that we’re in the midst of a surge.” Similarly, the title of a recent article in the New York Times began, “We are in a big COVID wave…”  Both statements are driven at least in part by data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showing that COVID-19 levels measured in wastewater are now higher nationally than they have been for almost two years.  (Helmstetter, 1/12)

During the holidays, we gather to be merry and sneeze on each other. The result? A lump of coal in the form of increased circulation of COVID-19, influenza and respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV. But now that we’re heading toward mid-January, it’s far from behind us. We won’t stop running fevers, sniffling and coughing for some time. It is still several weeks before these viruses are expected to hit a peak and fade, local health experts said. (Washington, 1/15)

Last fall, the World Health Organization and some national drug regulators urged influenza vaccine manufacturers to drop the component known as B/Yamagata from flu vaccines as quickly as possible, citing the fact that this lineage of flu B viruses appears to have been snuffed out during the Covid-19 pandemic. It might seem like that request would be as simple as deciding to leave blueberries out of a mixed-fruit smoothie. It turns out it is not. (Branswell, 1/16)

Virginia health officials said Saturday that a person passing through D.C.-area airports in early January after returning from international travel has come down with measles, warning that others may have been exposed to the disease. The Virginia Department of Health urged unvaccinated travelers who were at Dulles International Airport from 4 to 8 p.m. on Jan. 3 to be on the lookout for signs of measles. Health officials also issued a warning for people who were at Reagan National Airport between 2:30 and 6:30 p.m. on Jan. 4. (Diaz, 1/14)

It sounds like something Elon Musk might have cooked up: “Disease X.” In fact ... it’s the somewhat mysterious name for an illness caused by a currently unknown, yet serious microbial threat. The World Health Organization added Disease X in 2017 to a short list of pathogens deemed a top priority for research, alongside known killers like Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) and Ebola. The issue made it onto the agenda of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, with WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus joining other health officials to discuss it. (Gale, 1/15)

Employee mental health services have become a billion-dollar industry. New hires, once they have found the restrooms and enrolled in 401(k) plans, are presented with a panoply of digital wellness solutions, mindfulness seminars, massage classes, resilience workshops, coaching sessions and sleep apps. These programs are a point of pride for forward-thinking human resource departments, evidence that employers care about their workers. But a British researcher who analyzed survey responses from 46,336 workers at companies that offered such programs found that people who participated in them were no better off than colleagues who did not. (Barry, 1/15)

CarePoint Health and Hudson Regional Hospital have signed a letter of intent to form a new healthcare system—Hudson Health. The new system in New Jersey would include CarePoint’s Bayonne Medical Center, Christ Hospital in Jersey City, Hoboken University Medical Center and Hudson Regional Hospital in Secaucus. (DeSilva, 1/12)

Harris County Attorney Christian Menefee said his office plans to take legal action after the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality approved a permit for a concrete crushing facility near LBJ Hospital, officials said Friday. ... The project has faced intense pushback from community leaders, state lawmakers and county hospital officials who say the presence of dust and other pollutants will endanger already vulnerable patients and residents. (Gill, 1/12)

UnitedHealth Group turned in a better-than-expected fourth quarter but surprised Wall Street with medical costs that soared 16%. Shares of UnitedHealth and other major health care and insurance providers slipped Friday after the company announced results. Health insurers dealt with rising medical costs for much of last year. UnitedHealth has said claims jumped from its Medicare Advantage business as more seniors got heart and orthopedic outpatient procedures. (Murphy, 1/12)

The health care industry is again grappling with how aggressively to push providers into payment arrangements that hold them financially accountable for delivering better and more efficient care after the debate was largely put on hold during the pandemic. (Goldman, 1/16)

Hospitals are returning to the municipal-bond market as they aim to pivot from survival to revival. So far this year, hospitals are tapping the market with more than $1.7 billion to expand and upgrade facilities, according to data compiled by Bloomberg as of Jan. 12. That figure outpaces $390.7 million of issuance by hospitals last January. (Coleman-Lochner, 1/12)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: Federal Program To Save Rural Hospitals Feels ‘Growing Pains’ 

Folks in this Mississippi River town hope a new federal program can revive the optimism engraved long ago in a plaque on the side of their hospital. “Dedicated to the Future of Health Care in the Tri-State Area,” the sign declares. “May 11, 1981.” More recent placards posted at the facility’s entryways are ominous, however. “Closed,” they say. “No Trespassing.” The Keokuk hospital, which served rural areas of Iowa, Illinois, and Missouri, closed in October 2022. But new owners plan to reopen the hospital with the help of a new federal payment system. The Rural Emergency Hospital program guarantees hospitals extra cash if they provide emergency and outpatient services but end inpatient care. (Tribble and Leys, 1/16)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: Mary Lou Retton’s Explanation Of Health Insurance Takes Some Somersaults 

The gold-medal gymnast’s explanation of why she remained uninsured has health policy experts doing mental gymnastics — because it makes little sense. (Appleby, 1/12)

Private equity gets a bad rap in health care. But some doctors see that kind of cash and consolidation as the only way for their practices to survive — and now, they’re taking that message to Washington. (Trang, 1/16)

In her final presentation for health policy class at the University of Chicago, first-year medical student Robin Ji informed her classmates that the Food and Drug Administration does not require randomized controlled trials of most medical devices. Her peers’ immediate reaction was disbelief. (Lawrence, 1/16)

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation plans to spend more this year than ever before -- $8.6 billion -- as wider health funding for the lowest income countries stutters after the COVID-19 pandemic. The 2024 budget agreed by the foundation’s board is up 4% on last year and $2 billion more than in 2021.In a statement, the foundation said global health budgets were in decline overall and contributions to health in the lowest-income countries were stalling. (Rigby, 1/15)

The operating room has long functioned in secrecy, a sanctum where a team works in quiet synchrony to cut open and, hopefully, repair an unconscious patient’s body. ... But now an AI-powered technology may put an end to the mystery, by recording what goes on in the OR in the finest detail — every move each person makes, every word uttered, every instrument used, every shift in the patient’s vital signs, more than a half-million data points from each OR over the course of each day. (Freyer, 1/13)

A U.S. law enforcement agency has determined that Apple can use a redesign to bypass an import ban on newer Apple Watch models stemming from its patent infringement dispute with Masimo, the medical-monitoring technology company said in a court filing on Monday. The import ban, issued by the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC), applies to Apple's current Series 9 and Ultra 2 watches and initially went into effect on Dec. 26. Apple convinced the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit to pause the ban the next day, and has since resumed selling the watches as it contests the import ruling. (Brittain, 1/16)

A team of high-powered scientists and billionaire investors said Friday that they’re launching a biomedical institute in Cambridge’s Kendall Square with $500 million in private funding with the aim of shortening the path from research breakthroughs to life-saving medicines. The institute, called Arena BioWorks, will put drug discovery and company creation under one roof, upending the traditional model where academic research and venture-backed drug development are separate. (Weisman and Saltzman, 1/12)

A man with Alzheimer's, knowing there's no cure for the disease, donned a million-dollar helmet for a cutting-edge treatment directing nearly a thousand beams of ultrasound energy at a target in his brain the size of a pencil point. Dan Miller, 61, said he didn't have anything to lose when he signed up for the experimental procedure, pioneered by Dr. Ali Rezai, a neurosurgeon. Doctors have used ultrasound for 70 years to get better views of organ and fetal development. Rezai is testing it now as a treatment tool for people with Alzheimer's and those battling drug addiction. (Alfonsi, Chasan, Campanile, and Hatcher, 1/14)

The orders for custom weight-loss drugs flooded into ACA Pharmacy in Nashville, where white bins holding prescriptions were stacked as tall as the staffers filling them. Over several months in 2023, ACA produced tens of thousands of its own variety of prescription weight-loss medications. A FedEx truck arrived regularly to ship the chilled boxes across the nation. Wall-mounted TV monitors inside the specialized pharmacy displayed its rising monthly revenue. Then, in late July, it all came crashing down. (Gilbert, 1/15)

Chronic ear infections could delay a child’s language development, new research suggests. University of Florida researchers launched a study about how the common childhood infection could impact speech. Early ear infections (otitis media) have the potential to impair hearing due to fluid buildup behind the eardrum, according to the study, which was published in the International Journal of Pediatric Otorhinolaryngology in November 2023. (Stabile, 1/15)

A record number of organ transplants were completed nationwide in 2023, but a surgeon at Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville says more organ donors are needed. Doctors did 46,632 transplants last year, up from 42,880 the year before, according to a news release this week from the nonprofit United Network for Organ Sharing, which serves as the nation’s transplant system under contract with the federal government. (Ponson, 1/13)

Older adults with certain eye diseases — cataracts, age-related macular degeneration (AMD) or glaucoma — are more likely to fall and break bones than other older adults, according to a study conducted in England and published in JAMA Ophthalmology. (Searing, 1/15)

Treatment for a life-or-death midair medical emergency can depend on which plane you happen to be on. More than 20 million Americans are estimated to have food allergies, based on data from the National Center for Health Statistics, yet not every commercial plane is stocked with epinephrine autoinjectors. The devices, commonly referred to by the brand name EpiPen, are the most critical treatment for potentially life-threatening allergic reactions known as anaphylaxis, doctors say. (Passy, 1/16)

While snow may be peaceful and pretty, removing it can be risky. Snow shoveling is one of the most dangerous winter activities, with research showing that it leads to around 11,500 injuries and medical emergencies and 100 deaths each year. The American Heart Association has identified snow shoveling as an activity that can put extra stress on the heart. (Rudy, 1/12)

The Quaker Oats Company has added two dozen additional types of granola bars, cereals and snack foods to a December recall over possible salmonella contamination. The company, which is owned by PepsiCo., announced the additional recall in the U.S. and Canada on Thursday. The expanded recall includes Quaker Chewy Granola Bars and Cereals, Cap’n Crunch Bars and select cereals, Gamesa Marias Cereal, Gatorade Peanut Butter Chocolate Protein Bars, Munchies Munch Mix and snack boxes that contain those products. (Aleccia, 1/12)

If you’re eating protein, you could be ingesting hundreds of tiny pieces of plastic each year, research finds. A new study by researchers with the nonprofit Ocean Conservancy and the University of Toronto found microplastics — tiny particles ranging from one micrometer (one thousandth of a millimeter) to half a centimeter in size — in nearly 90 percent of protein food samples tested. (Chiu, 1/12)

Maybe you have already watched the show, “You Are What You Eat: A Twin Experiment.” This new documentary-style Netflix show is based on the Stanford twin nutrition study, a pioneering research study led by Dr. Christopher Gardner. Gardner and his team aimed to compare the cardiometabolic effects of an omnivore diet and a vegan diet. (Weintraub, 1/15)

We know inadequate child care is an economic issue, costing states, families and businesses billions of dollars every year. We know it’s a gender issue that contributes to a widening pay gap. We know it’s a policy issue, made worse by the absences of a federal pre-K program and a federal paid-leave policy. But here is another critical consideration worth pushing for: Our country’s inadequate child care system is also a health care issue. (Molly Dickens and Lucy Hutner, 1/16)

Is anyone really surprised to learn that bottled drinking water is loaded with tiny bits of plastic? The bottles are, after all, plastic. So are the caps. It stands to reason that microscopic bits of the stuff get into the water inside during bottling or packaging, or while sitting in storage. A 2018 study found as much. (1/16)

January marks Cervical Health Awareness Month, an annual reminder that cervical cancer is a very real threat to women around the country. Each year in the U.S., nearly 12,000 new cases of cervical cancer are diagnosed and about 4,000 women die from it. While that number isn't in the millions or tens of millions, late-stage cervical cancer is on the rise, with far too many people missing their screening appointments for one reason or another. (Virginia Templet, 1/12)

Commentators on the right have been crowing over recently unearthed comments from Francis S. Collins, in which the former head of the National Institutes of Health admitted last summer that pandemic-era decisions to close businesses and schools didn’t sufficiently account for the consequences on children’s education or the economy. One columnist even used the opportunity to accuse government scientists of having engaged in “agitprop” during the pandemic. (1/15)

I have Alzheimer’s disease. Of all the diseases I could contract, Alzheimer’s was the one I feared most. It strips you of who you are. Your memories drain away, for some with speed and for others over a longer period of time. (Steve Wessler, 1/16)

If her social media accounts are any indication, model, cookbook author, television personality, and entrepreneur Chrissy Teigen is a wonderful mother. Many parents regard her as a role model. That’s why I found it disappointing to learn that Teigen is a spokesperson for the Cord Blood Registry, which advocates for the collection of umbilical cord blood at birth for future use. Unfortunately, early cord clamping, essential for successful cord-blood banking, can do genuine harm to newborn babies in the name of protecting their health. (Judith S. Mercer, 1/16)

I am getting bent out of shape over surgeons telling patients they cannot get a knee replacement because they are above a certain BMI cutoff. Here’s a familiar scenario: A patient with a high body weight and BMI limps down the hall to my exam room. “How have you been?” I ask. He sighs. “I still can’t get a new knee. The other doc says I have to I lose 50 pounds before I can go under the knife!” So, this guy, a former college athlete, has been told he can’t get surgery until he loses weight, but chronic pain, immobility, and stress all make it much harder to lose weight. (Jody Dushay, 1/16)

Let’s face it. Health insurance is a problem too big for Texas. With nearly 5 million uninsured, we have the largest percentage of any state. Even with the good news that for the first time more than 3 million Texans now have a health plan through the Affordable Care Act, massive numbers remain without basic protection. (1/16)

The impact of the “brain drain” in Tennessee is already being felt. In addition to the inability of the state of Tennessee to expand Medicaid to keep rural hospitals open and to care for those of us with the least access to care, new laws prohibiting health care negatively affect the ability to survive in Tennessee. (Alexis B. Paulson, 1/15)