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Depending on who you ask, the first-ever Medicare drug negotiations announced yesterday will either mean huge pocketbook relief for seniors or the demise of America's pharmaceutical industry — but the immediate impact will likely be relatively small, experts told Axios. (Owens, 8/30)

Drugmakers unleashed a broadside at the Inflation Reduction Act as Medicare on Tuesday unveiled the first 10 drugs to face price caps under the law, but most affected companies won’t feel the sting for years. In one measure of the law’s projected impact, seven companies that each own at least one of the selected drugs saw their stock prices jump as trading began on Wall Street, and most ended the day in positive territory. Most of the drugs are already expected to face competition from cheaper generic versions within two years of the price caps taking effect in 2026, meaning the law will only slightly quicken the decline of their earnings. (Gilbert, 8/29)

The Biden administration says the 10 medicines selected for the first round of negotiations cost Medicare $50 billion in the last year. The blood thinner Eliquis, made by Bristol Myers Squibb and taken by 3.7 million Medicare enrollees, cost the federal government more than $16 billion between June 2022 and May 2023. (Goldman, 8/30)

A few of the choices announced Tuesday were not foreseen by the projections. Entresto, a heart failure medication made by Novartis that was named by CMS on Tuesday for negotiation, had not shown up in projections. Up until recently, Medicare claims data had not indicated Entresto as being among the highest cost drugs covered by Part D, but use of the drug has risen substantially in recent years according to the company, which allowed it to anticipate CMS’s ultimate decision. (Choi, 8/29)

This announcement essentially places the ball in the manufacturers’ court. Drugmakers will have until Oct. 1 to sign an agreement to negotiate — unless courts grant an injunction that could suspend the law pending decisions in myriad lawsuits. While companies have the option of opting out of negotiations, it’s unlikely many of those who were named Tuesday will forgo signing agreements. This would mean terminating their relationships with Medicare — a sizable source of income for the pharmaceutical industry — for all their medications covered by the program or facing excise tax penalties. (Choi, 8/29)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: 5 Things To Know About The New Drug Pricing Negotiations 

The Biden administration has picked the first 10 high-priced prescription drugs subject to federal price negotiations, taking a swipe at the powerful pharmaceutical industry. It marks a major turning point in a long-fought battle to control ever-rising drug prices for seniors and, eventually, other Americans. Under the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, Congress gave the federal government the power to negotiate prices for certain high-cost drugs under Medicare. The list of drugs selected by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services will grow over time. (Allen, Pradhan and Hilzenrath, 8/30)

President Joe Biden is placing a priority on reducing individual health-care costs as he seeks reelection in a country where medical spending accounts for 18.3% of the nation’s gross domestic product, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. (Kinery, 8/29)

As President Joe Biden touts the first 10 drugs subject to Medicare price talks, Republicans are searching for their own message that would resonate with voters on the downsides of his signature domestic achievement. Piggybacking on the pharmaceutical industry’s strategy, Republicans are working to persuade Americans that the Biden plan will stifle innovation and lead to price controls, several strategists say. (King, 8/29)

The state’s biopharma industry has stayed on the sidelines over the past year as a parade of drug giants based outside Massachusetts joined with the US Chamber of Commerce in filing lawsuits, contending the price negotiations permitted by the new law are unconstitutional. But biopharma leaders in Massachusetts have mounting concern that the Medicare negotiations and other measures to hold down costs have the potential to dampen state drug makers’ ability to raise money for research, expand their product pipelines, and hire workers. (Weisman, 8/29)

On the same day the Biden administration announced plans to negotiate Medicare drug prices for ten medications, U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley visited the Siouxland Community Health Center in Sioux City. Here officials stressed the importance of funding, dental care, and affordable prescriptions for a diverse group of patients. (Brummer, 8/29)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: A Move To Cut Drug Prices Has Patients With Rare Diseases Worried 

For people with cystic fibrosis, like Sabrina Walker, Trikafta has been a life-changer. Before she started taking the drug, she would wind up in the hospital for weeks at a time until antibiotics could eliminate the infections in her lungs. Every day, she would wear a vest that shook her body to loosen the mucus buildup. (Hawryluk, 8/30)

President Joe Biden’s pick to run the National Institutes of Health has agreed to a pair of major ethics demands made by Sen. Elizabeth Warren to help jumpstart her stalled candidacy for the top medical research job. Monica Bertagnolli, who was nominated more than three months ago, pledged to not seek employment or compensation from any of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies for four years after she leaves government, according to a letter sent to the Massachusetts Democrat and obtained by POLITICO. (Cancryn, 8/29)

Democrats Warren, of Massachusetts, and Jayapal, of Washington, wrote Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Robert Califf on Monday urging the agency to do more to stop brand-name drugmakers from keeping lower-cost generic drugs off the market. In their letter, the lawmakers called for changes to rules that “pharmaceutical companies have exploited to rake in billions in profits.” (Edney, 8/29)

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) announced Tuesday that he has a “very treatable” form of blood cancer and has begun treatment that will last the next several months. “After a few days of not feeling like myself this past week, I had some blood work done,” Scalise said in a statement. “The results uncovered some irregularities and after undergoing additional tests, I was diagnosed with Multiple Myeloma, a very treatable blood cancer.” (Wang and McGinley, 8/29)

The Texas Medical Association notched another win in its legal challenges to the No Surprises Act, further complicating the law's implementation. Judge Jeremy D. Kernodle of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas last Friday issued a ruling largely in favor of the association, which argued that flawed methodology compromised the calculated median rate insurers pay for a service in a particular market, also known as the qualified payment amount. (Kacik, 8/29)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: Exclusive: CMS Study Sabotages Efforts To Bolster Nursing Home Staffing, Advocates Say 

The Biden administration last year promised to establish minimum staffing levels for the nation’s roughly 15,000 nursing homes. It was the centerpiece of an agenda to overhaul an industry the government said was rife with substandard care and failures to follow federal quality rules. But a research study the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services commissioned to identify the appropriate level of staffing made no specific recommendations and analyzed only staffing levels lower than what the previous major federal evaluation had considered best, according to a copy of the study reviewed Monday by �鶹Ů�� Health News. Instead, the new study said there was no single staffing level that would guarantee quality care, although the report estimated that higher staffing levels would lead to fewer hospitalizations and emergency room visits, faster care, and fewer failures to provide care. (Rau, 8/29)

A migrant woman died in South Texas after spending less than a day in federal custody, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol announced Tuesday. Border agents encountered the 29-year-old woman and her family in the Rio Grande Valley on Sunday afternoon, according to a statement from the agency. While she was in custody, she experienced a “medical emergency” and was treated by an on-site medical team and then taken to a hospital in Harlingen where she was pronounced dead, the agency said. (8/29)

BA.2.86—dubbed “pirola” by a group of scientists on social media who name notable variants—has been detected in only about a dozen people, but it has surfaced in all corners of the world. What’s troubling about this variant, scientists say, is that it contains more than 30 mutations on the spike protein, which is what helps the virus enter cells and cause an infection. This means it might be able to evade current vaccines and previous infections more easily, and it likely won’t be a great match with the fall booster expected to be approved soon. “It’s drastically different” than the dominant variants circulating now, says Katelyn Jetelina, a scientific adviser to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and author of the “Your Local Epidemiologist” newsletter. (Reddy, 8/28)

Canada has detected its first case of coronavirus infection from the highly mutated BA.2.86 variant of Omicron in a person in British Columbia who had not traveled outside the Pacific province, health officials said on Tuesday. The individual is not hospitalized, and the detection of BA.2.86 virus has not changed the risk to people in British Columbia, the province's top doctor, Bonnie Henry, and Health Minister Adrian Dix said in a joint statement. (8/29)

It’s so new that the World Health Organization hasn’t assigned it an official name, calling it a variant “under surveillance” earlier this month, a level below variants of interest or variants of concern. WHO is encouraging countries to track and report cases of the variant. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said last week that at least two cases of Pirola (or BA. 2.86) have been identified in the U.S. (Cho, 8/29)

At least one expert is urging the country to take COVID more seriously – Dr. Deborah Birx, who served as the White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator under former President Donald Trump. Birx spoke to ABC News’ podcast “START HERE” about why she says the government is living in “a bit of a fantasy world" when it comes to the COVID-19 response. Birx also explains why she believes that the next month's vaccine booster is coming weeks too late and is arguing that seasonal booster shots should be made available more quickly. She also addressed criticism she didn’t combat misinformation from Trump during her time in the White House. (8/29)

There is clear evidence that COVID-19 is on the rise in New York City, the U.S., and other places around the world, but the late-summer surge in cases, hospitalizations, and deaths is so far more like an uptick than a wave, and those numbers remain low. There’s also a new highly mutated variant called BA.2.86 on the scene and a newly updated COVID booster shot on the horizon. Below is what to know — and why not to panic — about the state of COVID as we head into the first fall and winter since the official end of the U.S. and global public-health emergencies over the coronavirus. (Danner, 8/29)

Here are the counties with the highest rates of COVID-19 hospital admissions per 100,000 people. (Wolf, 8/29)

Everyone’s risk tolerance varies, Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease specialist at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, said. But particularly if you are 65 or older, have an underlying condition that makes you more vulnerable to severe disease or are pregnant, he recommends wearing a mask whenever you are in a relatively confined, crowded indoor space. That can include stores, offices and public transportation. “Certainly every time you add another person to the room, particularly people who are within three to five feet of you, that increases your chance of getting infected, exponentially,” Dr. Pekosz added. (Blum, 8/29)

Before you rip open a test that has been in your medicine cabinet since 2020, check the expiration date. If the test has expired, you can’t always trust the result. “I don’t think it’s like having an old Ibuprofen or something,” said Dr. Marc Sala, co-director of the Northwestern Medicine Comprehensive Covid-19 Center. “I think you really need to take that seriously.” (Blum, 8/29)

Patients diagnosed as having long COVID and myalgic encephalitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) reported that most symptoms remained severe up to 20 months after SARS-CoV-2 infection, while those with long COVID alone reported improvement, according to a recent observational study in eClinicalMedicine. (Van Beusekom, 8/29)

More than three years after Waylon Bailey faced a felony terrorism charge for making a joke on Facebook, an appeals court ruled that he was arrested wrongfully. (Melnick, 8/30)

ESPN’s lead tennis analyst John McEnroe said he tested positive for the virus that causes Covid-19 and will miss some time covering the US Open tennis championships. “Unfortunately, after feeling a bit under the weather, I tested positive for Covid,” McEnroe said in a statement Tuesday. “I’m watching the US Open from home & can’t wait to get back to work soon.” (Sterling, 8/29)

New Mexico’s Supreme Court will hear oral arguments regarding a request to strike down recent abortion-ban ordinances in several cities and counties. The high court on Tuesday announced it will hear arguments in December and agreed to consider legal briefings filed by an array of advocacy groups. (8/29)

South Carolina's top court on Tuesday declined to reconsider a recent ruling upholding the state's ban on abortion after a fetal heartbeat is detected, which opponents say will prevent women from terminating pregnancies after about six weeks. The South Carolina Supreme Court on a 4-1 vote rejected a request by Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers to reconsider its Aug. 23 ruling, which they said left unanswered what constitutes a "fetal heartbeat" under the Republican-backed law. (Raymond, 8/29)

She had barely opened her town hall to questions when Representative Mariannette Miller-Meeks, a Republican from a competitive district in Iowa, was pressed to defend her opposition to abortion rights. “One of the main functions of the federal government is to protect life,” Ms. Miller-Meeks, who won election in 2020 by just six votes, told a sparse crowd this month in Iowa City, a younger, more progressive part of her district where she rarely campaigns. (Karni, 8/30)

After the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year, Louisiana Republican state Sen. Beth Mizell looked for a way to address her state’s abysmal record on infant and maternal mortality, preterm births and low birth weight. Louisiana has one of the nation’s strictest abortion bans, with no exceptions for rape or incest. Mizell and her colleagues borrowed an idea from neighboring Mississippi: a state tax credit program that sends millions each year to nonprofit pregnancy resource centers, also called crisis pregnancy centers. They’re private anti-abortion organizations, often religiously affiliated, that typically offer free pregnancy tests, parenting classes and baby supplies. They are not usually staffed by doctors or nurses, though some offer limited ultrasounds or testing for sexually transmitted infections. (Vollers, 8/29)

An antiabortion activist who kept fetuses in a Capitol Hill home was convicted Tuesday of illegally blockading a reproductive health clinic in D.C. Lauren Handy was on trial with four others who were charged with violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, a 1994 law that prohibits threats to and obstruction of a person seeking reproductive health services or providers. A U.S. District Court jury in D.C. found Handy and all four of her co-defendants guilty on all counts. (Alexander, 8/29)

At 9 months old, Tinslee Lewis had been on a respirator for much of her life. The Fort Worth toddler was born with Ebstein’s anomaly, a rare and often life-threatening heart condition. Lewis had been at the intensive care unit at Cook Children’s Medical Center since birth when doctors scheduled to remove her off life support in November 2019. It started a public court battle, where her mother fought the hospital to keep her alive. She drew the support of Gov. Greg Abbott, Attorney General Ken Paxton and staunch anti-abortion group Texas Right To Life. Her legal fight renewed the push to change legislation over when and how hospitals withdraw life support. (Dey, 8/30)

A sweeping series of data breaches involving the file transfer software product MOVEit has affected at least 88 provider organizations. ... “This isn't simply people's logins, passwords or even social security numbers,” said Brett Callow, a threat analyst at Emsisoft. “It’s a mix of health records, legal records stolen from law firms, information stolen from government, information stolen from banks, so it really is cross sector and a huge variety of data.” (Turner, 8/29)

Google Cloud, the big tech’s company’s cloud arm, is adding more organizations to test its large language model for healthcare, the company said Tuesday. The model, named Med-PaLM 2, will be made available as a preview to an unspecified number of additional Google Cloud healthcare and life sciences customers. (Perna, 8/29)

Health insurers with big exchange marketplace operations such as Centene and Oscar Health are partnering with newly formed companies to take a bite out of the lucrative employer health benefits market through a relatively new form of coverage. These exchange carriers are betting big premium increases will push more employers to adopt individual coverage health reimbursement arrangements, or ICHRAs, as an alternative to group coverage. (Tepper, 8/29)

AdventHealth is refocusing on its core operations. The system sold 10 skilled nursing facilities this year: one in Texas and one Kansas in March, each to CareTrust REIT, and eight in Florida in June to Infinite Care for a combined $161.17 million, according to financial documents released Monday. (Hudson, 8/29)

The medical school at Brown University is withdrawing from the U.S. News & World Report education rankings, joining a long list of universities this year that said they would no longer provide data to the publication. Officials at The Warren Alpert Medical School at Brown said Tuesday the rankings “do not align” with the university’s values, including Brown’s measures of what constitutes quality preparation for medical students. (Gagosz, 8/29)

A Long Island judge has ordered former pediatrician Stuart Copperman to pay $22 million in compensatory and punitive damages to a 42-year-old woman who claimed he had sexually abused her from the time she was a toddler until she turned 18.The ruling was the first to be handed down against Mr. Copperman, who has been accused of abusing scores of patients over decades. More than 100 other civil claims against him by former patients are pending. (Rabin, 8/29)

Where Laurel Braitman is sitting is rather apt. Braitman, whose first book, “Animal Madness,” won her fans and TED Talk acclaim, is unmistakable in a fringed, cream-colored jacket and thick, square glasses, perched on a tall chair near the back of Zibby’s Bookshop. It’s a small, airy paperback oasis along a bougie stretch of cafés and day spas. But it used to be a dry cleaners. For the last few years, Braitman has been performing a kind of emotional dry cleaning for health care workers — accepting their dirty laundry without judgment, and then helping wash, press and fold it into something crisp and worthy of being worn out into the world. (Cueto, 8/30)   

�鶹Ů�� Health News: Listen To The Latest ‘�鶹Ů�� Health News Minute’ 

This week on the �鶹Ů�� Health News Minute: A gas station company is the latest retailer looking to cash in on the urgent care boom, and the U.S. pediatric mental health system’s shortcomings are affecting the health of parents and caregivers. (8/29)

Walmart is asking some of its 16,000 pharmacists across the U.S. to voluntarily take pay cuts by reducing their working hours in a bid to lower costs, a person familiar with the matter told Reuters. The cuts, which haven't been previously reported and are aimed at pharmacists in higher wage brackets, highlight the new pressures at Walmart pharmacies, where shoppers are lining up to buy weight-loss drugs that drag on profits, despite their high price. (Cavale, 8/29)

The first Alzheimer’s therapy to clearly slow cognitive decline, approved in the United States last month, lifted the hope of patients and their families. But creating access to the program is a painfully slow process, even in Massachusetts, where large hospital systems have been preparing for months to administer the much-anticipated medicine. Thousands of patients are stuck on waiting lists across the state and nationally as hospitals struggle to ramp up infusion centers and monitoring processes for the drug, called Leqembi, while neurologists grapple with workforce and capacity constraints. (Weisman, 8/30)

Diving headfirst into the generative artificial intelligence market, Ginkgo Bioworks said on Tuesday it plans to develop its own AI models for drug development and other synthetic biology applications. Creating an AI model like the one underlying ChatGPT, but specialized for drug discovery, will require a vast amount of computing power. So, Boston-based Ginkgo also announced a five-year deal with Google for access to the search giant’s cloud computing and AI modeling resources. (Pressman, 8/29)

3M is on the verge of ending the largest mass tort litigation in U.S. history, but it’s still facing other expensive legal headaches. The company said Tuesday that it settled with roughly 250,000 plaintiffs in a $6.01 billion deal. Military veterans and service members alleged 3M manufactured defective earplugs that resulted in hearing loss. (Mody, 8/29)

KRAS, one of the most common genetic mutations in cancer, has been one of the most tantalizing oncogenic targets for drug developers since its discovery four decades ago. An altered KRAS gene can drive cells to divide uncontrollably, propelling them down the path towards malignancy. But for most of the last four decades, any attempt to target KRAS failed, leading many researchers to doom the protein as “undruggable.” (Chen and Iskandar, 8/30)

Roberto Weinmann, 81, formerly of Wynnewood, pioneering molecular biologist, cancer researcher, and associate professor at the Wistar Institute and the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Medicine, retired chief operating officer at PharmaMar USA, and former director of Oncology Discovery at Bristol Myers Squibb, died Wednesday, Aug. 23, of metastatic esophageal cancer at Community Medical Center in Toms River, N.J. (Miles, 8/29)

Air pollution is more dangerous to the health of the average person on planet Earth than smoking or alcohol, with the threat worsening in its global epicenter South Asia even as China quickly improves, a benchmark study showed Tuesday. Yet the level of funding set aside to confront the challenge is a fraction of the amount earmarked for fighting infectious diseases, said the research from the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago, known as EPIC. (8/29)

Two Massachusetts residents have contracted the mosquito-born West Nile virus in the state's first human cases of the year. The Massachusetts Department of Public Health (DPH) announced Tuesday, August 29 that one woman in her 70s was exposed to the virus in another area of the country and a man in his 40s was exposed in Middlesex County in Massachusetts. (Rumpf-Whitten, 8/29)

Health officials are investigating an outbreak of E. coli food poisoning among students at the University of Arkansas, with dozens reporting symptoms and five people needing treatment in the hospital. Among those affected are two 19-year-old sorority members who developed a serious complication that can lead to kidney failure after being infected with the E. coli strain O157:H7. That’s according to Bill Marler, a Seattle food safety lawyer who said he reviewed the patients’ medical records after being contacted by the families. (Aleccia, 8/29)

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) yesterday issued its second malaria alert of the season, which includes new information about locally acquired infections, including one in Maryland that was caused by the mosquito-borne parasite linked to the most severe form of the disease. (Schnirring, 8/29)

The boy came home from school weakened by fever, his ears burning-hot. Over the next few days, the 7-year-old got sicker — vomiting and complaining of abdominal pain, his mother recalled. Then, the telltale red spots appeared on his hands. But none of the doctors in this rural community along Mexico’s Pacific coast recognized the warning sign for one of the most lethal infectious diseases in the Americas — Rocky Mountain spotted fever. A week later, the boy was dead. The following year, in 2020, the disease killed a 5-year-old boy in a nearby house. Then last October, a few blocks away, another 7-year-old succumbed to the same scourge. (Sun, 8/29)

Georgina and Madison Pinckney share an unusual mother-daughter bond. ... The condition has ensnared tens of thousands of Americans but still has no definitive diagnostic test, let alone agreed-upon effective treatments. It’s why the Pinckneys recently enrolled in new studies by Massachusetts scientists who have been awarded millions of dollars by the National Institutes of Health to help unlock some of long Lyme’s mysteries. (Lazar, 8/29)

Anniversaries of trauma-causing events, like catastrophic hurricanes, have a way of resurfacing difficult emotions and throwing us off kilter, according to NOLA Ready, the city's emergency preparedness team. The phenomenon is called the "anniversary effect." It can make you feel restless, on edge and depressed. It can also cause trouble sleeping. (Wells, 8/29)

"Prescribing" fruits and vegetables to adults and children is associated with increased consumption of these foods and multiple health benefits, according to a new study. The analysis, published in the American Heart Association's peer-reviewed journal Circulation, looked at people at increased risk for cardiovascular disease who participated in produce prescription programs for an average of six months, and found they increased their consumption of fruits and vegetables. This shift was associated with improved body mass index, blood sugar and blood pressure levels, researchers found, as well as a decrease in food insecurity. (Moniuszko, 8/29)

More than one-fifth of people who use cannabis struggle with dependency or problematic use, according to a study published on Tuesday in The Journal of the American Medical Association Network Open. The research found that 21 percent of people in the study had some degree of cannabis use disorder, which clinicians characterize broadly as problematic use of cannabis that leads to a variety of symptoms, such as recurrent social and occupational problems, indicating impairment and distress. In the study, 6.5 percent of users suffered moderate to severe disorder. (Richtel, 8/29)

"[Fentanyl's] infiltration into schools is certainly something that cannot be ignored," says Alberto Carvalho, the superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District. LAUSD is one of the largest districts to stock naloxone, a medicine that reverses opioid overdoses, throughout its schools. "We cannot close our eyes. We cannot look the other way," he says. (Nadworny and Gaines, 8/30)

Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts is taking another step to combat the opioid crisis by covering the cost of the overdose reversal medication Narcan for over-the-counter use, the company said Tuesday. ... “Naloxone has become the standard treatment for opioid overdose, and making it available more widely is a key strategy in controlling the overdose crisis,” Dr. Sandhya Rao, Blue Cross’s chief medical officer, said in the statement. (Fox and Bartlett, 8/29)

On Tuesday, the International Journal of Drug Policy published a new study on San Francisco’s controversial Tenderloin Center, a drop-in hub for social services that included a place for people to use drugs. During the 46 weeks it was open last year, 333 overdoses were reversed, and no one died on site. (Bishari, 8/29)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: Artificial Intelligence May Influence Whether You Can Get Pain Medication

Elizabeth Amirault had never heard of a Narx Score. But she said she learned last year the tool had been used to track her medication use. During an August 2022 visit to a hospital in Fort Wayne, Indiana, Amirault told a nurse practitioner she was in severe pain, she said. She received a puzzling response. “Your Narx Score is so high, I can’t give you any narcotics,” she recalled the man saying, as she waited for an MRI before a hip replacement. (Miller and Whitehead, 8/30)

Hospitals' financial performance worsened in July due to a summertime drop in outpatient business and ongoing Medicaid redeterminations in more than 30 states, the consultancy Kaufman Hall said in its latest industry report. While there was some improvement in operating margins compared to last year, bad debt and charity care as a percentage of hospitals' gross operating revenue rose 7% from June to July. (Bettelheim, 8/29)

Adults who are eligible for Medicaid but not enrolled in the program are more likely to delay care due to costs, according to an analysis published Tuesday by the Urban Institute. The survey found 21.4 percent of non-Medicaid enrolled individuals delay medical care due to the cost, compared to only 7.3 percent of enrollees and 9.5 percent of Medicaid-eligible individuals with private insurance. (Nazzaro, 8/29)

Police reports about deaths and other incidents in public hospitals cannot be kept secret, the Connecticut Supreme Court ruled Tuesday, citing the importance of government transparency and the public’s right to know what happened. A majority of the justices rejected an attempt by state officials to prevent the release of a police report about a patient who reportedly choked to death on food in 2016 while being restrained by staff members at Connecticut’s only maximum-security psychiatric hospital for the criminally insane. (Collins, 8/29)

“EMS is dying,” said Heather Sharar, the executive director of the Ambulance Association of Pennsylvania, which represents 220 EMS agencies. “How long can you exist if no one is paying you the cost for your service?” The funding shortfall has led a number of EMS agencies to close, with three in Pennsylvania closing in the last three months — leaving a ripple effect that will require other agencies in the region to pick up the need. (McGoldrick, 8/30)

During a community meeting in July, residents of four unincorporated communities south of the Texas Panhandle held mason jars filled with brown, cloudy water — visual evidence of the water quality issues that have for decades plagued the more than 300 residents of these rural West Texas communities. Situated in the outskirts of Lubbock and Shallowater, residents of the four developments have received regular notices of water quality violations from the Texas Commission of Environmental Quality, the state’s environmental agency. Elevated levels of fluoride, arsenic, perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl chemicals have made the water undrinkable for nearly two decades, according to TCEQ records, leaving residents to rely on bottled water. (Salhotra, 8/30)

Ron Sachs spent his career creating narratives, first as a journalist, then a gubernatorial spokesman, then a public relations strategist. Now, he’s trying to create a new narrative -- as a grieving father. Sachs lost his middle daughter, 38-year-old Aimee Sachs, on May 31. One stroke did a little damage, then another soon after was catastrophic. In the end, the most she could do was blink her wishes -- to be removed from life support and donate her organs. (Jordan, 8/29)

DataHaven’s new Health Equity in Connecticut 2023 report found that inequities resulted in 14,000 excess deaths among Connecticut’s Black population compared to its white demographic. The report includes data between 2017 and 2022 from statewide and national mortality records, the DataHaven Community Wellbeing Survey of randomly-selected adults throughout Connecticut, and census data. (Srinivasan, 8/29)

Canada has updated its travel advisory for the United States to warn LGBTQ travelers that they are at risk of being affected by state and local laws, amid a recent surge in state-level legislation targeting the community. (Li, 8/30)

Danaher, a Washington, D.C.-based life sciences conglomerate, agreed to buy Abcam, a British provider of biological reagents for $5.7 billion in cash (including debt assumption). Abcam is often called the "Amazon of antibodies," and will allow Danaher to provide its lab equipment customers with a broad range of consumables. (Primack, 8/29)

Britain's state-run national health service will be the first in the world to offer an injection that treats cancer to hundreds of patients in England which could cut treatment times by up to three quarters. ... "It takes approximately seven minutes, compared with 30 to 60 minutes for the current method of an intravenous infusion," Marius Scholtz, Medical Director at Roche Products Limited said. (8/29)

Uruguay is tackling its staggering suicide rates by offering free antidepressants and establishing youth social and mental health centers as part of a national plan to promote wellbeing. The country's average suicide rate last year was more than double that in all of Latin America. There were 23 suicides per 100,000 people in 2022, up from 20 in 2019. The regional average last year was 9 per 100,000 people. (Franco, 8/29)

A pediatric hospital system wasted 58,607 antibiotic doses worth more than $230,000, including drugs in limited US supply, in 2 years, finds a study today in Infection Control & Hospital Epidemiology. (Van Beusekom, 8/29)

A potential new Alzheimer's drug represses the harmful inflammatory response of the brain's immune cells, reducing disease pathology, preserving neurons and improving cognition in preclinical tests. (Picower Institute at MIT, 8/29)

The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) and the University of Oxford have committed $80 million to the development of a vaccine targeting "Disease X," or unknown pathogens with the potential to cause pandemics. (Soucheray, 8/29)

After months of speculation, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (known as CMS) has finally released the list of medicines that will be subject to the agency’s new price-negotiating powers. (Lisa Jarvis, 8/29)

A major health plan is overhauling the convoluted system it uses to pay for prescription drugs. If it succeeds, and that’s a big if, the result could prove transformative for the US health-care system. (8/25)

America’s pharmaceutical giants are now suing to block the federal government’s first effort at drug price regulation. Last year’s Inflation Reduction Act included what on its face seems a modest proposal: The federal government would for the first time be empowered to negotiate prices Medicare pays for drugs — but only for 10 very expensive medicines beginning in 2026 (an additional 15 in 2027 and 2028, with more added in later years). Another provision would require manufacturers to pay rebates to Medicare for drug prices that increased faster than inflation. (Elisabeth Rosenthal, 8/23)

Dr. Shoshana Ungerleider knew what her father’s pancreatic cancer diagnosis meant for his future. She didn’t realize what it meant for her own cancer risk. Steven Ungerleider’s doctors ordered genetic testing in 2022 to see if his cancer might respond to a new treatment. They found he had a mutation in the BRCA2 gene, which raises risks for cancers including pancreatic, breast and ovarian—and can be passed from parents to children. Ungerleider and her sister got tested and discovered they had the same mutation. (Abbott, 8/28)

Scientists obsessed with aging are sketching a road map of how our bodies change as we grow old in the hopes that it will lead to treatments that could help us live longer, healthier lives. They call this road map the “hallmarks of aging”—a set of biological features and mechanisms linked to our inexorable march toward death. Over the past decade, the hallmarks have helped guide the development of drugs that clear away cells that have stopped dividing and gene therapies that appear to restore cells to a more youthful state. (Mosbergen, 8/26)

Dylan Stone-Miller took a 9,000-mile road trip this summer to see some of his 96 children. Emotionally, logistically, in all ways, it is complicated for the kids, their families and for Stone-Miller, a prolific 32-year-old sperm donor. His road trip is part of a larger odyssey—to figure out how he fits in the lives of the boys and girls he fathered in absentia. It began three years ago, when he first saw a photo of one of his biological children, a toddler named Harper who had his blue eyes and his sister’s blond curls. He got tears, he recalled, and unexpected feelings of kinship. (Marcus, 8/27)

For generations, mothers have shouldered the weight of an illusory ideal, the daunting societal standards that shape our perception of what motherhood should be. This pressure is particularly acute for millennial moms who arrived at parenthood in the age of social media, with a deluge of imagery and information constantly at their fingertips. There are parenting forums and TikTok stars and experts and influencers, discussing what the latest study reveals about screen time, how you should respond when your child has an emotional outburst, why the colors you choose to decorate a child’s bedroom might affect their mental health. There are friends and fellow parents, posting carefully curated snapshots of their family lives. (Gibson, 8/28)

Under Tennessee law, courts set up conservatorships to protect a person “with a disability who lacks capacity to make decisions in one or more important areas.” Conservators are often relatives or caretakers. But the Tuohys never said Michael Oher was disabled and couldn’t make his own decisions. Indeed, their petition stated that he had been examined by a physician and had “no known physical or psychological disabilities.” They didn’t specify a reason for the conservatorship, only that Oher had no assets and wanted to live with them, and that they had the means to take care of him. (Nerkar, 8/24)

More and more public-health officials are dusting off their old face masks and encouraging Americans to do the same for the new BA.2.86 variant of COVID-19, he explained. Hearing that, Meghan McCain went to social media and spoke for an entire nation: “Uh no, we ain’t starting this s--- again.” (Phil Boas, 8/30)

“You have cancer. ”Ask anyone who has been told this: It’s terrifying. That’s one reason we need to rethink what we call cancer. Despite amazing advances in our understanding of the disease, we have neglected to update how we define what has been called “the emperor of all maladies.” (Laura Esserman and Scott Eggener, 8/30)

A new study is offering data to back one of the core assumptions about the spread of Covid: The intensity of exposure to the virus matters, and vaccines and prior infections can only help so much — but they do indeed help. (Lisa Jarvis, 8/29)

Undoubtedly, people do look much younger now than they did in previous decades. The standard-bearers may be unrealistic: 50-year-old Gwyneth Paltrow with her abs, or Martha Stewart in her sultry SI swimsuit cover. But a look back at stars from films in the 1950s, ’60s or ’70s — and even into the early 2000s — shows how health and our own standards of physical maintenance have improved. Developments in sunscreen, the introduction of retinol and prescription Retin-A, and the decline in hazardous habits such as smoking cigarettes, mean that people look younger. (Rachel Tashjian, 8/29)

In inpatient child psychology, we treat children in crisis deemed at imminent risk of harm to themselves or others. I am grateful for the opportunity to try and help — but it is daunting. A study published earlier this year found an overwhelming spike in mental illness-related crises in the past decade. This is particularly true for youth, for whom mental health-related emergency room visits have doubled, with a five-fold increase in the proportion of those visits that are for suicide-related symptoms. (Sharmila B. Mehta, 8/30)