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Premiums for Medicare drug plans are set to increase sharply next year, due to rising costs, regulatory changes and cutbacks to a subsidy program. The subsidy program, which sent extra federal funds to the private insurers that offer the drug benefit—known as Part D—had largely shielded seniors from rising monthly bills in 2025. (Mathews and Essley Whyte, 7/28)

The trade deal reached between the United States and the European Union on Sunday will impose a 15 percent tariff on imported medicines from Europe. Drugmakers manufacture some of their biggest and best-known blockbusters there, including Botox, the cancer medication Keytruda and popular weight-loss drugs like Ozempic. The tariff rate is much lower than the levies of up to 200 percent that President Trump had threatened. Still, the new import costs stand to add billions of dollars in expenses for the drug industry and could lead to price increases for some medicines. That could translate into higher out-of-pocket costs and higher health insurance premiums for Americans. (Robbins, 7/28)

Continuing to embrace a populist stance, Republican U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley again is partnering with Democratic colleagues on legislation aimed at consumers. The bill, co-sponsored with Democratic U.S. Sens. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Peter Welch of Vermont, takes aim at pharmaceutical companies' practice of securing a series of patents on the same drug. Dubbed "patent thickets" by critics, companies that hold patents on some drugs make minor changes in the drug and then apply for a new patent, which in turn stops other companies from making cheaper, generic versions, Hawley said. (Holleman, 7/28)

A federal judge temporarily blocked on Monday Arkansas’ first-in-the-nation law that would have prohibited pharmacy benefit managers from owning pharmacies in the state. U.S. District Judge Brian Miller issued a preliminary injunction against the law restricting pharmacy benefit managers, who run prescription drug coverage for big clients that include health insurers and employers that provide coverage. Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed the restriction into law earlier this year, and it was set to take effect Aug. 5. CVS and Express Scripts had sued the state over the law. (DeMillo, 7/29)

After months of deliberation, information gathering and public testimony, a state board unanimously agreed Monday that two common medications for type-2 diabetes and other conditions appear to pose an affordability challenge to the state and Marylanders. The state Prescription Drug Affordability Board approved two resolutions saying that prescription drugs Jardiance and Farxiga likely pose an “an affordability challenge for the state health care system” and the state should look for ways to bring down those costs. (Brown, 7/29)

Express Scripts will stop covering weight-loss drugs for workers at Anheuser-Busch, one of the region’s biggest employers, next month. In a letter to an Anheuser-Busch employee dated July 2025 and obtained by the Post-Dispatch, Express Scripts and its parent company, Evernorth Health Services, suggested its existing coverage of the popular drugs had been a mistake. (Barker, 7/28)

As federal scrutiny and legislative proposals continue around the 340B drug pricing program, health systems are stepping up advocacy efforts and preparing for potential disruptions. At St. Louis-based Ascension, one of the nation’s largest Catholic health systems, Chief Pharmacy Officer Michael Wascovich, PharmD, said leaders are monitoring developments that could change the way safety-net hospitals access and use discounted drugs. (Murphy, 7/28)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: Lawfully Present Immigrants Help Stabilize ACA Plans. Why Does The GOP Want Them Out? 

If you want to create a perfect storm at Covered California and other Affordable Care Act marketplaces, all you have to do is make enrollment more time-consuming, ratchet up the toll on consumers’ pocketbooks, and terminate financial aid for some of the youngest and healthiest enrollees. And presto: You’ve got people dropping coverage; rising costs; and a smaller, sicker group of enrollees, which translates to higher premiums. (Wolfson, 7/29)

If the government wants poor children to thrive, it should give their parents money. That simple idea has propelled an avid movement to send low-income families regular payments with no strings attached. Significant but indirect evidence has suggested that unconditional cash aid would help children flourish. But now a rigorous experiment, in a more direct test, found that years of monthly payments did nothing to boost children’s well-being, a result that defied researchers’ predictions and could weaken the case for income guarantees. (DeParle, 7/28)

UnitedHealth Group emerged as a health care colossus over the past decade and a half, earning one of the highest stock market values in the nation. But in the last two years, it has been hit with just about every misfortune that can befall a company: A gargantuan cyberattack. Federal investigations, including a criminal inquiry into one of its most important businesses. The killing of a top executive. A public relations crisis. Disappointing profits. A plummeting stock price. (Abelson, 7/28)

A federal judge on Monday issued a preliminary injunction blocking language in the GOP budget reconciliation law that made Planned Parenthood ineligible for Medicaid reimbursements for one year. (Raman, 7/28)

This week marks one year since a state law went into effect banning abortion when cardiac activity is detected. This can be as early as six weeks of pregnancy. The law includes exceptions for rape, incest, life of the pregnant person and fetal abnormalities, but it has still had drastic effects on abortion care in the state. (Krebs, 7/28)

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is taking legal action against a New York county clerk for refusing to file a judgment and court summons against a doctor who allegedly prescribed and mailed abortion medication to a woman in Texas. Paxton’s office has submitted a petition seeking a writ of mandamus to force Ulster County Clerk Taylor Bruck to enforce the judgment against the doctor and ensure she pays the Texas penalty, according to a statement. (O’Connell-Domenech, 7/28)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: A Brain-Dead Pregnant Woman Was Kept Alive In Georgia. It's Unclear If State Law Required It 

A Georgia woman declared brain-dead and kept on life support for more than three months because she was pregnant was removed from a ventilator in June and died, days after doctors delivered her 1-pound, 13-ounce baby by emergency cesarean section. The baby is in the neonatal intensive care unit. The case has drawn national attention to Georgia’s six-week abortion ban and its impacts on pregnancy care. (Mador, 7/29)

St. Louis residents can now find a morning-after pill on convenience store shelves next to the condoms. California-based Cadence OTC began selling its over-the-counter emergency contraceptives, The Morning After Pill, in convenience stores and gas stations in Missouri this year. Its products are available in 24 locations statewide and 30 in the St. Louis area including Illinois. (Mizelle, 7/28)

After being born at 21 weeks and 0 days gestation, Nash Keen beat the odds and celebrated his first birthday this month, receiving the unique honor of earning the Guinness World Record for the world's most premature baby. The record was previously held by an infant born at 21 weeks and 1 day gestation, which Nash beat by just 1 day, making him 133 days premature. Little Nash, who weighed just 10 oz and measured 24 cm at birth, spent 6 months in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). (Robertson, 7/28)

A new mother from Alabama is warning pregnant patients after she says eating an "everything bagel" for breakfast before giving birth to her second child upended her family last spring. It all stemmed from the unexpected results of one urine drug test -- a routine test given to thousands of maternity patients across the country. It illustrates the findings of a joint investigation between "CBS Sunday Morning" and The Marshall Project that found the percentage of false positive results from urine drug tests to be as high as 50%. (Moriarty, Aviv, Walter and Earl, 7/27)

The National Institutes of Health plans to shrink the share of grant applications it will award for the remaining two months of the fiscal year due to a new Trump administration policy — in some cases, by more than half compared to the previous year. (Chen, Molteni and Oza, 7/29)

House Republican appropriators plan to disregard the White House’s proposed 40 percent cut to the National Institutes of Health budget for fiscal 2026, according to multiple sources with knowledge of the situation. Instead, the funding levels being discussed are similar to what’s currently appropriated, they said. (Cohen, 7/28)

Cuts to the National Institutes of Health’s budget would have sweeping implications for the broader economic and biomedical ecosystems, MIT and Harvard researchers argue. To reach that conclusion, published Friday in JAMA Health Forum, the researchers analyzed potential NIH budget cuts and 37 studies and reports on NIH funding, biomedical innovation and economic impacts, as well as news coverage from January to April 16, 2025, to show the cuts’ effects. They used that data to develop a causal loop diagram, which illustrates how variables in a system are interconnected, to show the effects. (Schumaker, 7/28)

As public school districts prepare for a new school year, there are concerns about dwindling resources stemming from federal funding cuts, with many states sounding the alarm about grants for mental health counselors and social workers.   Andrea Tarsi, one of 19 mental health staffers serving 6,500 students in a rural northwest Connecticut district, may soon be out of a job. "Without that support staff in the building, students are unable to get the mental health services that they need," said Tarsi, who has been working in the district for the last three years. (Hanson, Sherman and Zalani, 7/28)

A program that monitors public and private psychiatric institutions, hospitals and nursing facilities for abuse, punishment, or seclusion of patients with mental illness could see a drastic reduction in its national budget next year. (Thorp, 7/28)

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said Monday he is working to overhaul the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP), which is aimed at compensating people who have been injured by vaccines. “The VICP is broken, and I intend to fix it. I will not allow the VICP to continue to ignore its mandate and fail its mission of quickly and fairly compensating vaccine-injured individuals,” Kennedy wrote in a lengthy post on social platform X. Kennedy has long targeted the VICP, and his X post echoed many of his previous arguments. (Weixel, 7/28)

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is launching an integrated care model to tackle hepatitis C, Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced in a news release Monday. Through the Hepatitis C Elimination Initiative Pilot, the model will address “critical risk factors like substance use, mental health challenges and homelessness head-on,” said RFK Jr. in a statement. (Tong, 7/28)

The Trump administration is set to announce its plans to abolish the US government’s authority to regulate greenhouse gases, threatening to strike a deep blow at Washington’s ability to fight climate change. The Environmental Protection Agency will unveil a proposal as early as Tuesday to scrap a landmark determination that planet-warming gases endanger public health and welfare, according to people familiar with the matter. If finalized, the move would lay the foundation to unwind a host of regulations limiting emissions from power plants, oil wells and automobiles. (Natter and Dlouhy, 7/28)

The nominee to lead the Veterans Health Administration hopes to streamline Veterans Affairs medical care so patients face fewer obstacles when they seek treatment, whether at a VA facility or with a community provider. During his confirmation hearing for VA under secretary for health, Air Force Reserve Maj. Gen. John Bartrum addressed the ongoing debate over the future of VA health care -- the role the federal government has in managing and providing care for veterans, either within VA facilities or by paying private doctors. (Kime, 7/28)

In a sharp reversal, the Food and Drug Administration on Monday said it was clearing the way for Sarepta Therapeutics to resume shipments of its gene therapy for Duchenne muscular dystrophy to some patients. The therapy, called Elevidys, will once again be available for younger Duchenne patients who can walk. (Feuerstein, 7/28)

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services wants to take another crack at creating a national provider directory in an effort to replace insurance company lists that are often riddled with errors. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and CMS Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz touted the idea at a meeting with health information technology executives in June. In a later post on the social media platform X, CMS described its goal as a “dynamic, interoperable directory that connects the data CMS has with what the industry knows, so we all work from the same map.” (Tepper, 7/28)

Stirring speeches filled the tall, fluorescent room on Monday morning as members of the disability community and federal officials celebrated the 35th anniversary of the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act. They spoke at length about how the landmark law birthed critical protections and technologies that have helped disabled people flourish, but many communities still face significant hardships. (Broderick, 7/28)

The police said that a three-page note was found in the wallet of the gunman who opened fire in a Midtown Manhattan office tower on Monday, killing four people. The note carried by the gunman, Shane Tamura, a former high school football player, referred to chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or C.T.E., a brain disease that has afflicted people who play contact sports. The disease can only be definitively diagnosed after death. The note, from which the police released excerpts, also inveighed against the National Football League, which has offices at 345 Park Avenue, where the shooting took place, saying it had concealed the danger of the sport in favor of profits. Mr. Tamura shot himself in the chest, rather than the head. “Study my brain please,” the note said. “I’m sorry.” (Cramer and Marcius, 7/29)

The latest "Best Hospitals" rankings from U.S. News & World Report have been released, with familiar facilities largely comprising the top-performing Honor Roll. However, compared with last year, there are a trio of newcomers to this year's 20-hospital list: AdventHealth in Orlando, Florida; Hackensack University Medical Center at Hackensack Meridian Health in New Jersey; and the University of Michigan Health-Ann Arbor, which was also included on the Honor Roll in 2023. (Henderson, 7/29)

Weiss Memorial Hospital may no longer participate in Medicare starting next month — one of the most serious sanctions a hospital can face, according to the federal government. The federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services issued a public notice late last week that Weiss Memorial Hospital in Uptown would be terminated from the Medicare program Aug. 9. (Schencker, 7/28)

Rush University Medical Center experienced a temporary loss of air conditioning Monday morning, spokesperson Tobin Klinger said. As a result, the hospital’s emergency room was put on bypass, meaning that ambulances in the area were instructed to take patients to other hospitals, and many operating room procedures were canceled. (Weaver, 7/28)

Two ambulance services have closed in New Hampshire this year. Berlin EMS closed this April, taken over by their fire department, and most recently, the Warren-Wentworth Ambulance Service shut down earlier this month. (Liu and Furukawa, 7/28)

The University of California San Diego Health and Palomar Health are in discussions to form a jointly governed entity that would oversee Palomar’s operations. The two health systems said Monday they signed a letter of intent to negotiate a joint powers authority. It could be formalized by late 2025, a spokesperson for UC San Diego Health said. (DeSilva, 7/28)

With the anticipation of additional days of hot temperatures, more than 100 health organizations are calling on state leaders to take more action on extreme heat. The Colorado Academy of Family Physicians, Healthy Climate New Mexico, Idaho Clinicians for Climate and Health, the Arizona Public Health Association and Nevada Clinicians for Climate Action are among the groups urging states to protect the public from worsening extreme heat, one of the leading causes of weather-related deaths. (Cohen, 7/28)

As extreme heat is forecast across much of the U.S. this week, health departments across the country are warning people to take steps to survive the potentially deadly weather. Extreme heat is the deadliest weather-related hazard in the U.S., claiming roughly 2,000 people annually, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). But experts note the official heat-related death toll may be undercounted due to heat sometimes not being considered as a factor in someone's death. (Benadjaoud and Hutchinson, 7/28)

Health officials plan to announce measures Tuesday to crack down on an opioid-like substance found in tablets, gummies and drinkable shots commonly sold in convenience stores. The Department of Health and Human Services said in an advisory that it is targeting potentially dangerous products made of 7-OH, a potent substance synthesized from a compound in the kratom leaf, which grows on trees native to Southeast Asia. The Food and Drug Administration, researchers and kratom companies have grown increasingly alarmed by the rise of 7-OH products they say are distinct from all-natural plant teas and powders. (Ovalle, 7/29)

President Trump is threatening to withhold funds from supervised drug consumption sites and potentially pursue criminal penalties against them, offering his clearest stance yet against the philosophy of harm reduction and marking a significant escalation of his rhetoric on substance use and addiction. (Facher, 7/25)

Beginning in August 2023, drug overdose deaths declined for 15 consecutive months, according to research published in JAMA. Using data from the National Center for Health Statistics and the Census Bureau, the analysis of drug overdose death rates was conducted from January 2015 to October 2024. Over 800,000 United States residents — 68 percent of them male with a median age of 42 — died of a drug overdose during the study period. (McMahan, 7/28)

Some wise counsel in advance can reduce the amount of opioid painkillers a patient takes after orthopedic surgery, new clinic trial results show. Knee surgery patients were much less likely to take oxycodone if they were counseled to pop the pills as a "last resort" if pain becomes unbearable, researchers report in the Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery. (Thompson, 7/28)

Nicotine vaping has increased slightly over the past few years in the U.S., while binge drinking and heavy alcohol use were both slightly down, according to a report from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). The percentage of people ages 12 years and older who said they had vaped nicotine in the past month increased from 8.3% in 2022 to 9.6% in 2024, according to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH). (Frieden, 7/28)

Older adults who took medications for high blood pressure, high cholesterol and diabetes had slower rates of cognitive decline over a nine-year period than others, according to an observational study of 4,651 older adults. The median age of participants was 77. “Persons who were on two or three medication classes performed as if they were cognitively three years younger,” says Roshni Biswas, a research scientist at the Rush Alzheimer’s Disease Center, who presented the study July 27 at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference in Toronto. “The cognitive change in someone who was 80 and on three medication classes was similar to the cognitive change in someone who was 77 and on none of the studied medication classes.” (Szabo, 7/28)

At least 60% of liver cancers globally could be prevented with control of certain risk factors, including viral hepatitis, alcohol use, and metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD), according to an analysis from the Lancet Commission. In order to reverse the trend of a rising liver cancer burden, an annual reduction of at least 2% in the age-standardized incidence rate is required, while a 5% reduction could prevent up to 17.3 million new cases and save up to 15.1 million lives over the next 25 years, the commission reported. (Bassett, 7/28)

You can actually die of a broken heart after the death of a loved one, especially if the grief is overwhelming, new research shows. Bereaved relatives who experienced “high levels” of grief symptoms were more likely to die in the 10 years following their bereavement than those who experienced “low levels” of grief, a study published Friday in the journal Frontiers in Public Health found. (Ronald, 7/28)

Catching cancer in its earliest stages is one of the most important factors in surviving it. Nipping a tumor in stage 1, before it’s had time to claw its way through the body, is often the best way to give patients a chance at a cure. That’s why dozens of companies have dived into blood-based screening technologies, with the hope of detecting multiple cancers by analyzing free-floating bits of tumor DNA. (Chen and Russo, 7/29)

A wearable sensor could make tracking medication levels much easier for people living with bipolar disorder, eliminating the need for blood draws and lab analyses. The first-of-its-kind device could vastly improve treatment, convenience and drug safety for millions of patients who take lithium—a type of mood stabilizer—for bipolar disorder. (Millington, 7/28)

Shining germicidal UV lights toward the ceiling in common areas of long-term elder care facilities didn't reduce acute respiratory infections for residents, a randomized clinical trial showed. ... However, pooling acute respiratory infections (ARIs) across all cycles of the study in a posteriori secondary analysis, UV appliance use had 0.32 fewer infections per week over the extended assessment period from 28 to 110 weeks. The causal effect was estimated at approximately 9% reduction in infections, they stated in JAMA Internal Medicine. (Phend, 7/28)

Among a cohort of men who have sex with men (MSM) at an Italian hospital, a significant reduction in all antibiotics used to treat bacterial sexually transmitted infections (bSTIs) was observed after the introduction of doxycycline post-exposure prophylaxis (doxyPEP), researchers reported late last week in the Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy. (Dall, 7/28)

For most of my colleagues and me, the C.D.C. and the N.I.H. were the medical Mount Olympus, the towering pillars of medical authority. Contrary to right-wing portrayals, these were not dictatorial authorities. These were earned authorities, comprising our best, brightest and most dedicated peers. (Danielle Ofri, 7/28)

Ever wonder why so many of the recent drug commercials are for injectable medicines, including life-saving drugs for cancer and diabetes? What happened to the much-simpler-to-take pills? Part of the problem is the “pill penalty” that was written into the federal Inflation Reduction Act. (Paul Pescatello, 7/29)

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration was slammed recently for overhyping its disclosure of a set of rejection notices it had sent to drug companies. As reporters quickly discovered, most of the “released” 200 complete response letters (CRLs) had been in the public domain for years, and the FDA had merely put them into a single downloadable folder. (Frank David, 7/29)

The American Academy of Pediatrics strongly advocates for food security in all households. They emphasize that “food insecurity manifests itself in…biopsychosocial outcomes, including health, education and economic prosperity.”  Children do not simply feel hungry when missing a meal. The United States Department of Agriculture reports that 13 million children in the United States (almost one in five, and one in six in Connecticut) live in food insecure households. (Caroline Brauner MD, 7/29)

As the geopolitical competition between the United States and China accelerates, national security is increasingly defined not just by missile silos or aircraft carriers — but by molecules, data, and the pace of biomedical innovation. (Andrew Barnhill and Abraham Sinay-Smith, 7/29)

My older brother has schizophrenia. He’s never believed he’s sick, refuses treatment, and has spent years bouncing between emergency rooms, jail cells, and the streets of Los Angeles. To the system, he’s “unhoused” and “noncompliant.” We doctors call it anosognosic, pathologically unable to recognize his own illness. That isn’t defiance. It’s brain disease. (Shaheen E. Lakhan, 7/29)