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The White House has begun drafting a new executive order that could further cement President Trump’s ability to control billions of dollars in scientific grants and expand the administration’s pressure campaign against elite universities. Discussed at a highly contentious meeting at the White House on Friday, the order aims to create a new external committee with the power to veto awards in the National Institutes of Health’s vast research portfolio that do not conform to Mr. Trump’s political agenda, according to people with knowledge of the effort. (Johnson, Gay Stolberg, Romm and Bender, 9/20)

President Donald Trump announced Friday that all 50 states will join in on a program set to provide Most Favored Nation pricing to some drugs within the Medicaid program, bringing the net price of selected drugs down to prices paid in certain other countries. The Trump administration claims that Medicaid will save billions on prescription drug costs as a result of the plan, dubbed the Medicaid “GENEROUS” model. Experts say the savings are unclear since the content of the deals isn’t public. (Hussein, 9/19)

The Trump administration’s confidential deals with pharmaceutical companies to lower U.S. drug prices include inducements to raise drug prices overseas and promise protection from President Donald Trump’s tariffs, according to documents shared with The Washington Post. The documents, obtained through Freedom of Information Act lawsuits, detail negotiations between the administration and the pharmaceutical giants Pfizer and Eli Lilly. Both companies agreed to voluntarily cut some U.S. prices last year after negotiating with Department of Health and Human Services officials, and Trump celebrated the deals at the White House. (Diamond and Beggin, 9/19)

The Trump administration is wading into the difficult issue of mental health parity, laying out requirements aimed at making health plans cover behavioral health at the same level as physical health. It's a sign that the administration could steer in a different direction from the Biden administration, which put a focus on compliance reporting that the Trump team is rejecting. (Bettelheim, 9/21)

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is making it easier for Medicare Advantage insurers to swoop in and rescue struggling rivals. The agency last week notified insurance companies that it may allow them to expand where they sell policies midyear if they acquire competitors. Previously, CMS only considered expansion requests during the annual bid cycle in June. (Tepper, 9/18)

The Department of Health and Human Services is releasing a forecast of its demand for personal protective equipment, giving American manufacturers predictability and strengthening supply chains, the department first told Axios. The COVID pandemic exposed America's dependence on other countries for manufactured goods like PPE and prescription drugs, and there's sustained interest in changing that. (Owens, 9/18)

The Pentagon posted new guidance on Thursday for mandatory testosterone deficiency screening among male service members over age 30 in active duty or in the reserves. It comes two weeks after guidelines for mandatory screening were "temporarily rescinded" from a Department of Defense website. The guidelines that were pulled two weeks ago also provided guidance that female service members be asked about fatigue and disrupted menstrual cycles that could be associated ​with hormonal dysregulation. (Martinez and Kekatos, 9/18)

When devotees of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Make America Healthy Again movement meet for a summit Sept. 29 in Washington, titans of American industry will pay the bill. Walmart, America’s biggest retailer and a leading purveyor of the ultraprocessed foods MAHA decries, is among the sponsors. So are two artificial intelligence giants, OpenAI and Anthropic, whose chief executives recently asked Washington to regulate them in order to prevent their tools from wiping out humanity. (Chu, 9/20)

Zach Lahn, a farmer and Republican candidate for Iowa governor, says he won’t forget these moments: visiting a bait-and-tackle shop, bream fishing, and campaigning alongside health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. “RFK Jr.’s story is one that I have long admired,” Lahn wrote on his official campaign page in August, following Kennedy’s visit to Iowa. (Cirruzzo, 9/21)