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The number of Americans without health insurance dropped by about a fourth from 2019 to 2023, US health researchers said, as the government tried to bolster coverage during and after the Covid-19 pandemic. In 2023, 25 million Americans of all ages were uninsured, down from 33.2 million in 2019, according to preliminary survey results released Tuesday by the US National Center for Health Statistics. Children without health insurance also declined from 5.1% in 2019 to 3.9% last year. (Nix, 6/18)

Minnesotans with medical debt could see some relief this fall when a new law takes effect designed to boost protections for consumers, so unpaid health care bills don't take a toll on their finances. The "Minnesota Debt Fairness Act," part of a large commerce policy bill at the legislature this year, prohibits reporting to credit bureaus and transferring of medical debt to spouses. (Cummings, 6/17)

For many Hoosiers, the cycle of medical debt is relentless. ... But soon, more than 112,000 people in central Indiana will receive a different letter —one that tells them their debts are paid. United Neighborhood Centers of Indiana and United Way of Central Indiana announced Monday that a staggering $239.6 million for central Indiana residents is canceled. (Spence, 6/18)

Janille Williams wants to buy a house someday — but first, he has to pay down tens of thousands of dollars in medical debt. “I was hospitalized for a blood infection for three months more than ten years ago, and the bill was for more than $300,000,” said Williams, 38, a Fairbanks, Alaska, resident who works as a retail sales manager for AT&T. “I was in the middle of changing jobs, the only time in my life I haven’t had health insurance.” When the bill went to collections, the debt was eventually lowered to about $50,000, he said, an amount that was still not feasible for him to pay. “They don’t give you a choice in the hospital. ‘If you leave, you’ll die,’ they told me. I didn’t feel like dying,” Williams said. “I don’t think anyone should have to go into financial ruin to live.” (Lewis and Sanders, 6/18)

A federal judge on Monday granted the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, as well as employers in two Southern states, temporary relief from complying with a federal rule that would have required them to provide workers with time off and other workplace accommodations for abortions. Judge David Joseph granted the preliminary injunction in two consolidated lawsuits, one brought by the attorneys general of Louisiana and Mississippi, and the other brought by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, Catholic University and two Catholic dioceses. (Olson and Savage, 6/17)

After a Missouri judge rejected an effort to strike down the state’s abortion ban on religious freedom grounds, the possibility of overturning the ban could hinge on a statewide vote in November. St. Louis Circuit Court Judge Jason Sengheiser on Friday ruled against a lawsuit brought by more than a dozen progressive faith leaders who argued that state lawmakers imposed their religious beliefs on Missourians when they passed the ban. (Bayless, 6/17)

An anti-abortion group in South Dakota has sued to block an abortion rights measure from the November ballot. In its complaint filed Thursday, Life Defense Fund alleged various wrongdoing by the measure’s supporters, as well as invalid signatures and fraud. The group seeks to disqualify or invalidate the initiative. (Dura, 6/17)

Women are still being charged for contraception even though federal law dictates it should be free. The chair of the Senate health committee wants a government watchdog to investigate why. Under the Affordable Care Act, health plans are required to provide birth control to patients as a preventive service. Repeated probes have found that plans flout the law and patients are asked to pay, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said in a letter being sent Monday to the Government Accountability Office and shared with The Washington Post. (Diamond, 6/17)

A bill to prevent stillbirths is headed to President Biden's desk after passing the U.S. Senate. If signed into law, The Maternal and Child Health Stillbirth Prevention Act would allocate millions of federal dollars to prevent stillbirths, defined by the Centers for Disease Control as the loss of a baby after 20 weeks of pregnancy. Every year in the United States, more than 20,000 pregnancies end in a stillbirth, and experts say a quarter of those could be prevented. (Cobb and Crann, 6/17)

Some studies have raised concerns about a potential link between the widely used type 2 diabetes drug metformin and an increased risk of conceiving a baby with birth defects. But new research now suggests that the use of the medication among men planning to conceive or women in early pregnancy does not appear to be linked with an increased risk of major birth defects for their children. (Howard, 6/17)

Early results from North Carolina and New York show that genome sequencing is catching conditions not found through traditional newborn screening. (Johnson, 6/17)

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said on Monday it plans to close the advance payments program it started to help some Medicare providers and suppliers affected by disruptions at UnitedHealth's Change Healthcare technology unit. It launched the payments program in March after a hack at Change Healthcare on Feb. 21 by a group called ALPHV, also known as "BlackCat", disrupted medical insurance payments across the United States. (6/17)

Medicare Advantage insurers that receive higher revised star ratings for this year stand to gain additional quality bonus payments that one analysis estimates could exceed $1 billion. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services announced Thursday that it has redone 2024 quality scores for Medicare Advantage plans after years of complaints and a pair of losses in lawsuits challenging how it modified the ratings formula. Medicare Advantage contracts that earn new scores of at least 3.5 of 5 stars will get higher bonus payments this year and have more time to submit bids for 2025. (Tepper, 6/17)

The chair of the Senate Finance Committee on Monday released a bill that would increase federal financial support to hospitals in hopes of stemming the tide of labor and delivery unit closures in rural and underserved areas. Nearly a quarter of rural hospitals stopped providing obstetric services between 2011 and 2021, according to Chartis, a health care consulting firm. Analysts blame the closures on low Medicaid reimbursement rates and declining birth rates in rural communities. The combination, they said, makes it financially challenging to keep labor and delivery units staffed. (Hellmann, 6/17)

CalOptima Health's board approved a $526.2 million pay bump for providers who are part of the insurer's Medicaid managed care network in Orange County, California, the county-run health insurer announced Monday. The funds will be distributed from July 2024 to December 2026 to hospitals, physicians, community clinics, behavioral health practitioners and other safety-net providers in Southern California, CalOptima said in a news release. (Kacik, 6/17)

Missouri’s delays in processing Medicaid applications — among the worst in the nation — have the attention of federal regulators, who will conduct a “focused review” of the problem, according to a letter obtained by The Independent. (Bates, 6/18)

Medicaid is about to change for tens of thousands of North Carolinians who have complex health care needs. For most of the state’s 2 million-plus Medicaid beneficiaries, nothing will happen. The state plans to move about 160,000 enrollees, many of them people with intellectual or developmental disabilities, onto specialized Medicaid plans beginning July 1. These “tailored” plans are geared toward beneficiaries who require more extensive care and support than typical Medicaid participants. (Baxley, 6/18)

Doubling the number of Medicaid enrollees receiving hepatitis C treatments would avoid about $7 billion in health care costs over a decade, according to a new Congressional Budget Office report on the burden the liver disease places on medical care and safety net programs. (Bettelheim, 6/18)

The Rocky Mountain Regional VA Medical Center in Aurora still cannot identify the residue that has forced the hospital to postpone or move hundreds of surgeries since April. Initial testing of the substance came back as inconclusive, said Janelle Beswick, a regional spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. Another lab found that a sample from a sterilizer filter was plastic and not biological material. (Tabachnik, 6/17)

Nurses at one of the nation’s largest hospital-at-home programs have unionized, a move they hope could influence the future of in-home acute care and encourage more people working in home healthcare to join unions. The union vote at Boston’s Mass General Brigham comes as hospitals push aggressively to expand care outside of their walls, while a worker shortage and increased demand for healthcare contribute to rising labor strife among caregivers. (Eastabrook, 6/18)

Sonya Borrero didn’t learn about forced sterilization in medical school. She learned about it from a novel. She’s a historical fiction nut, and during her year as chief resident, she happened to pick up a book depicting the horrors of India’s population control program of 1975, when poor people were literally beaten up and dragged off the street into surgery. (Boodman, 6/18)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: ¿Cómo Se Dice? California Loops In AI To Translate Health Care Information

Tener gripe, tener gripa, engriparse, agriparse, estar agripado, estar griposo, agarrar la gripe, coger la influenza. In Spanish, there are at least a dozen ways to say someone has the flu — depending on the country. Translating “cardiac arrest” into Spanish is also tricky because “arresto” means getting detained by the police. Likewise, “intoxicado” means you have food poisoning, not that you’re drunk. The examples of how translation could go awry in any language are endless. (Andalo, 6/18)

The former CEO of Stimwave, a company that sold pain-relief devices with dummy pieces of plastic, was sentenced Monday by a New York judge to six years in prison. (Lawrence, 6/17)

The former head of the once-prominent startup Outcome Health should serve 15 years in prison, and two other former executives should serve 10 years, after the three were convicted of fraud, government prosecutors told a federal judge Friday. (Schencker, 6/17)

The complication called ARIA has nothing to do with music. It is a term adopted by an influential group of pharmaceutical executives and academic scientists to describe potentially fatal bleeding and swelling in the brain caused by drugs like Leqembi. (Petersen, 6/17)

With nearly seven million Americans currently living with Alzheimer’s disease — and 13 million projected to have the illness by 2050 — early diagnosis and treatment are more urgent than ever. To help address this, Mayo Clinic has announced a new, non-invasive blood test that detects a protein in the brain that signals Alzheimer’s. The goal, doctors say, is for this test to offer a convenient, less invasive alternative to traditional diagnostic methods. (Rudy, 6/17)

U.S. pharmaceutical giant Cencora has been affected by a data breach. The company is notifying affected individuals that their personal and highly sensitive medical information was stolen during a cyberattack and data breach earlier this year. This includes patient names, postal addresses, dates of birth as well as information about their health diagnoses and medications. (Knutsson, 6/17)

The maker of Zyn nicotine pouches suspended nationwide sales on its U.S. website as local officials in Washington, D.C., investigate the company’s compliance with the district’s ban on the sale of flavored products. Philip Morris International PM on Monday said that its Swedish Match North America unit has received a subpoena from the attorney general of the District of Columbia and is currently conducting a full review of its sales and supply-chain arrangements in the district and other U.S. localities where the bans might apply. (Ojea, 6/17)

Antibiotics found in the top oceanic surface layer can contribute to antimicrobial resistance and have negative ecologic effects, according to research presented late last week at the annual meeting of the American Society for Microbiology (ASM) in Atlanta. Scientists evaluated the susceptibility and resistance of marine bacteria to the antibiotics ofloxacin, clindamycin, clarithromycin, and novobiocin on bacterial diversity in the sea surface microlayer in Jade Bay in the southern North Sea in Germany, the ASM press release said. (Van Beusekom, 6/17)

The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health announced on Monday that there was a "concerning increase" of mpox, or monkeypox, cases that have been reported in the last two weeks. Officials say that 10 new cases have been reported, which is a troubling jump from the countywide average of less than two cases per week in recent months. (6/17)

The American population has little to no pre-existing immunity to the H5N1 avian flu virus circulating on dairy and poultry farms, according to preliminary findings from ongoing testing by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). In other developments, outbreaks in dairy herds continue to be reported at a steady pace, along with sporadic detections in poultry flocks. (Schnirring, 6/17)

The state of Kansas filed a lawsuit on Monday against pharmaceutical company Pfizer, alleging the company made “misleading claims” about the effectiveness of the COVID-19 vaccine and the risks associated with the shot. The suit, filed by Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach (R) in the District Court of Thomas County, claims Pfizer misled Kansas residents about the risks of the company’s COVID-19 shot when it claimed it was safe and allegedly hid evidence of the shot’s link to myocarditis and pregnancy issues. (Nazzaro, 6/17)

The Food and Drug Administration on Monday approved Merck’s new vaccine designed to protect adults from a bacteria known as pneumococcus that can cause serious illnesses and a lung infection called pneumonia, the drugmaker said. (Constantino, 6/17)

Dozens of environmental, labor and health care groups banded together on Monday to file a petition to push the Federal Emergency Management Agency to declare extreme heat and wildfire smoke as “major disasters,” like floods and tornadoes. The petition is a major push to get the federal government to help states and local communities that are straining under the growing costs of climate change. If accepted, the petition could unlock FEMA funds to help localities prepare for heat waves and wildfire smoke by building cooling centers or installing air filtration systems in schools. (Andreoni, 6/17)

A federal judge on Monday temporarily blocked a Biden administration rule expanding federal nondiscrimination protections for LGBTQ students. The decision by U.S. District Judge Danny C. Reeves halts enforcement of changes to Title IX — the federal civil rights law preventing sex discrimination in schools and education programs that receive government funding — that were finalized in April by the Education Department in Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia. (Migdon, 6/17)

Chrissi Bates became the first patient to receive a gender-affirming vaginoplasty, or bottom surgery, at UMass Memorial Hospital in Worcester, the first known procedure at a Massachusetts hospital outside of Boston. Transgender healthcare is still limited, particularly outside of major city centers. More than a quarter of transgender patients in rural areas, including parts of Massachusetts, reported that they had no access to gender-affirming primary care. (Bedford, 6/17)

Houston doctors have implemented a new testing program that, if widely adopted, could help address the nationwide epidemic of babies born with syphilis. “We’re on the cutting edge,” said Dr. Irene Stafford, a maternal-fetal specialist and associate professor at UTHealth Houston’s McGovern Medical School. Stafford was referring to Memorial Hermann and UTHealth Houston’s Preg-Out program, which provides rapid testing for all pregnant patients admitted to the emergency department at the hospital’s medical center campus. (Gill, 6/17) 

The state of Texas manages a waiting list of residents with intellectual and developmental disabilities seeking services that currently has close to 130,000 people on it. Many wait for a decade or longer to get into a group home or day program. That’s in part because the agencies that provide those services are facing a critical shortage of caregivers to work with them. (Hamilton, 6/17)

San Francisco Supervisors Matt Dorsey and Rafael Mandelman on Monday announced a new plan to prioritize drug-free housing options for formerly homeless people “whenever funding allows for it.” The goal is to have a drug-free housing account for at least one in four supportive housing sites for formerly homeless San Franciscans, though it would take years to reach that target. (Angst, 6/17)

There’s a crack of light shining through the dark clouds of America’s battle with poor nutrition and subsequent health issues, according to a new study that analyzed two decades of nutritional data. “There is good news. Americans are starting to hear the message about nutrition, and some companies and restaurants are starting to make healthier products. It’s a little bit of an improvement,” said senior study author and cardiologist Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, director of the Food is Medicine Institute at Tufts University in Boston. (LaMotte, 6/17)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: Older Women Are Different Than Older Men. Their Health Is Woefully Understudied

Medical research has shortchanged women for decades. This is particularly true of older women, leaving physicians without critically important information about how to best manage their health. Late last year, the Biden administration promised to address this problem with a new effort called the White House Initiative on Women’s Health Research. That inspires a compelling question: What priorities should be on the initiative’s list when it comes to older women? (Graham, 6/18)

Sedentary coffee drinkers had a 24 percent reduced risk of mortality compared with those who sat for more than six hours and didn’t drink coffee, according to the lead author of a study published recently in the journal BMC Public Health. The finding, which was not part of the original article, was calculated at The Washington Post’s request and provided by Huimin Zhou, a researcher at the Medical College of Soochow University’s School of Public Health in China and the lead author of the study on coffee and health. (McMahan, 6/17)

The Department of Veterans Affairs has added three rare cancers to its list of illnesses presumed to be caused by exposure to burn pits and other environmental toxins during the Persian Gulf War and post-9/11 combat operations. The VA announced Monday in the Federal Register that it has designated male breast cancer, urethral cancer and cancer of the paraurethral glands as presumptive diseases under the PACT Act, allowing affected veterans to file for expedited disability compensation and health care benefits. (Kime, 6/17)

OpenAI is working with startup Color Health to expand the use of artificial intelligence in healthcare by applying its AI models to cancer screening and treatment. Color Health, which was founded as a genetic testing company in 2013, has developed an AI assistant or “copilot” using OpenAI’s GPT-4o model. The copilot helps doctors create cancer screening plans, as well as pretreatment plans for people who have been diagnosed with cancer. (Lin, 6/17)

I have spent my career studying infectious diseases that fall under the heading of neglected tropical diseases. Now I have a neglected disease — long Covid — an incurable (for now and for me) disease. As a medical anthropologist working in global health, I thought I understood the despair of poor health. I didn’t. (Rachel Hall-Clifford, 6/18)

In a publication in BMJ Public Health on June 3, Saskia Mostert, MD, PhD, and colleagues discuss excess mortality during the COVID-19 pandemic, and this paper has already led to much debate and confusion on both traditional and social media and has been used as fodder for anti-vaccine advocates. The paper's results have been taken to mean that vaccines are dangerous, and this has led to critical commentaries from other researchers as well as some of the authors who felt their work was not cited correctly. We give a brief summary of some of this criticism, add some additional concerns about the paper, and make the case for retraction of the paper.  (Lone Simonsen and Rasmus Kristoffer Pedersen, 6/17)

I remember the hollowing sensation I felt on June 24, 2022, the day that the Supreme Court deemed that abortion was not a protected right under the U.S. Constitution. Everyone — on both sides of this debate — knew that women’s lives across the country were going to be drastically transformed. Since then, a lot of attention has been paid to the most heart-wrenching cases, but this decision affects all women’s bodily autonomy across the country. (Lynne Sachs, 6/18)

The Food and Drug Administration has done a generally exemplary job of executing its mandate throughout its 118-year modern history. But the federal rescheduling of cannabis, which President Biden recently confirmed is moving forward, will pose unique challenges to FDA regulators. (Deb Tharp, 6/18)