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A bill to rescind the COVID-19 vaccine mandate for members of the U.S. military and provide nearly $858 billion for national defense passed the House on Thursday as lawmakers scratch off one of the final items on their yearly to-do list. ... The House passed the bill by a vote of 350-80. It now goes to the Senate, where it is expected to pass easily, then to the president to be signed into law. (Freking, 12/8)

By giving in to Republican demands, Democrats acknowledged that the public has moved on, and there’s not much appetite for any sort of virus-fighting rules. “The policy that the Department of Defense implemented in August of 2021 … was absolutely the right policy. It saved lives and it made sure our force was as ready as it possibly could be in the face of the pandemic,” House Armed Services Committee Chairman Adam Smith, (D-Wash.), said during a speech before the House Rules Committee defending the authorization bill. “As we are here in December 2022, does that August 2021 policy still make sense? We don’t believe that it is, and I don’t believe that it is,” Smith said. (Weixel, 12/9)

Deputy Defense Press Secretary Sabrina Singh declined on Wednesday to go into detail about what the Pentagon was preparing for if the mandate was repealed. [But] it’s not just about the US. American troops often have additional vaccine requirements depending on the area of the world to which they are deploying or being rotated through. Under the Pentagon’s current policy, service members who have not gotten the vaccine are considered non-deployable, Singh said Wednesday. (Britzky and Liebermann, 12/8)

Republicans’ main argument centers on staffing: They say the military’s Covid-19 vaccine mandate has pushed out thousands of service members in a time when there are already severe labor shortages. Roughly 8,000 active-duty service members have been discharged because they refused vaccination, per US News, but that represents a small fraction of the military’s more than 1 million active-duty service members. As Politico reported, about 98 percent of the military has been vaccinated. (Zhou, 12/7)

The House passed historic legislation Thursday that would federally protect same-sex and interracial marriage rights in a major win for LGBTQ-rights advocates. ... Lawmakers drafted the bill following the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade in June. Associate Justice Clarence Thomas expressed interest in reconsidering same-sex and interracial marriage rights in a separate concurring opinion that no other justice joined. (Looker and Rossman, 12/8)

Democrats and LGBTQ advocates say the legislation is especially important in Texas, where laws banning same-sex marriage and sodomy remain on the books, where the state GOP has written opposition to same-sex relationships into its party platform, and where Republican lawmakers are expected to push against LGBTQ rights in a significant way in the upcoming legislative session. (Wermund, 12/8)

But even when it is signed, the legality of same-sex marriage will still rest on the the 2015 Supreme Court case Obergefell v. Hodges, which found that same-sex marriage is constitutionally protected. If the Court were to overturn Obergefell, the legality of same-sex marriages would revert to state law — and the majority of states would prohibit it. The Respect for Marriage Act wouldn't change that, but it requires all states to recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states and federally recognizes these marriages. (Radde, 12/8)

Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.) said Friday that she is switching her party affiliation from Democrat to independent, creating a shake-up in the chamber after the midterm elections. ... With the move, Democrats will still control the Senate next year, but their hold could be less secure and give more sway to another moderate in the caucus, Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.). (Wagner and Scott, 12/9)

KHN: KHN’s ‘What The Health?’: Congress Races The Clock 

The lame-duck Congress is making slow progress on its long to-do-before-the-end-of-the-year list. Democrats agreed to lift the covid-19 vaccine mandate for the military as part of the big defense authorization bill, but efforts to ease federal restrictions on marijuana didn’t succeed. Meanwhile, the fight against high drug prices has spread to employers, which are trying a variety of strategies to spend less on prescription drugs while still giving workers access to needed medications. (12/8)

While much has been made about the COVID-19 public health emergency, there's another less-discussed emergency declaration that Republicans could target in the next Congress, bringing changes for employer-sponsored health plans, COBRA and flexible spending accounts. (Knight, 12/9)

In the first test of the Texas law that empowers private citizens to sue for a minimum of $10,000 in damages over any illegal abortion they discover, a state judge Thursday dismissed a case against a San Antonio abortion provider, finding that the state constitution requires proof of injury as grounds to file a suit. (Goldenstein, 12/8)

A judge in San Antonio has thrown out a lawsuit filed against a Texas abortion provider who intentionally violated a controversial state abortion law. The law, known as Senate Bill 8, allows anyone to bring a lawsuit against someone who “aids or abets” in an abortion after about six weeks of pregnancy. On Thursday, state District Judge Aaron Haas in Bexar County said people who have no connection to the prohibited abortion and have not been harmed by it do not have standing to bring these lawsuits. (Klibanoff, 12/8)

Caitlin Bernard, the OB-GYN who provided an abortion on a 10-year-old girl from Ohio who was raped, dropped her lawsuit Thursday against Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita. Court filings show Bernard voluntarily dismissed the suit, which was intended to stop the attorney general from investigating her, just over a month after it was filed. (Habeshian, 12/8)

A bill introduced Thursday by Wisconsin U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin seeks to establish a four-year, $350 million annual government grant program that would help support women in Wisconsin and across the country who have to travel long distances to get an abortion. (Shastri, 12/8)

A group of Oklahoma residents has withdrawn a petition that sought to put a state question on the ballot that would protect the right to an abortion. Records show the proponents of the citizen-led initiative petition notified the Secretary of State’s office on Wednesday of their plans to withdraw. (12/8)

“I think it makes a lot of sense for that ballot initiative to go to voters and give them the opportunity to weigh in,” said state Sen. Lauren Arthur, a Kansas City Democrat.But one of the biggest challenges is crafting what that initiative would like and what Missouri voters would support. Abortion rights groups will likely weigh several options that range from enshrining all forms of abortion in the state constitution to returning Missouri to its standards set under Roe v. Wade. (Bayless, 12/8)

More than five months after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, New Jersey issued guidance Wednesday on abortion rights in the Garden State, state Attorney General Matthew Platkin announced. The so-called “Attorney General’s Reproductive Rights Strike Force” and the state Division of Consumer Affairs issued three documents that explain that state’s protections for access to abortions, for health care providers and for safeguarding patients’ privacy. (Fernandes, 12/7)

Only a small minority of Wyoming residents support a total ban on abortion, but most residents support at least some restrictions. That's according to a new statewide survey from the University of Wyoming conducted this fall. (Victor, 12/8)

An Evangelical minister and former longtime anti-abortion activist told members of Congress that he helped recruit wealthy conservative donors to serve as “stealth missionaries” at the US Supreme Court, where they developed friendships with conservative justices that aligned with the group’s “social and religious” views. (Woodward, 12/8)

A federal judge has blocked a U.S. Food and Drug Administration rule requiring graphic health warnings on cigarette packages and in cigarette advertisements that had been challenged by cigarette companies. U.S. District Judge J. Campbell Barker in Tyler, Texas, on Wednesday found that the rule, which was to take effect next October, violated the companies' rights under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution by compelling speech. (Pierson, 12/8)

America’s big tobacco companies will now be required to produce and display signage in stores explaining the risks of smoking, the Justice Department announced Tuesday. The order was the last of a set of corrective remedies mandated by a 1999 Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) lawsuit filed by the government. (Matthews, 12/8)

A proposed U.S. federal ban on menthol cigarettes doesn't go far enough and needs to include other menthol products, from pipe tobacco to cigarette tubes, researchers say. New evidence shows both the appeal and the addiction potential of these substitutes in adults who smoke menthol cigarettes, said scientists from Rutgers University Center for Tobacco Studies in New Brunswick, N.J., and Ohio State University. (Murez, 12/8)

Babies born to mothers who vape during pregnancy are at greater risk of developing pulmonary dysfunction, according to a new mouse study from The Ohio State University (OSU). Researchers also found the risk of pulmonary diseases, such as asthma, continued into adulthood. The findings are published ahead of print in the American Journal of Physiology-Lung Cellular and Molecular Physiology, and the study has been chosen as an APSselect article for December. (Henderson, 12/8)

Penn State researchers co-led a large genetic study that identified more than 2,300 genes predicting alcohol and tobacco use after analyzing data from more than 3.4 million people. They said a majority of these genes were similar among people with European, African, American and Asian ancestries. (Henderson, 12/8)

The Food and Drug Administration signed off on the vaccine change Thursday morning. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was expected to quickly follow suit. The change applies to third doses of both the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, called Comirnaty, and Moderna's vaccine, named Spikevax, though there are slight differences in age and dose between the two. (Weintraub, 12/8)

The agency’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices was slated to meet Friday, however the meeting — which did not have an agenda disclosed — has been postponed, according to the committee’s website. CDC Director Rochelle Walensky is expected to endorse the FDA emergency use authorization. (Lim and Gardner, 12/8)

Dr. Peter Marks, the Food and Drug Administration's vaccine chief, said he is well aware that COVID-19 booster uptake might be low for the latest shot, authorized by the government on Thursday morning for young children over 6 months old, but he told ABC News that he's hopeful increased access may also lead to some kids getting greater protection against the virus ahead of the winter, when infections can be more likely. (Haslett, 12/9)

Vaccination rates in children under the age of 5 are the lowest for any age group in the country. Only 10% of kids under the age of 5 have received even a single dose of Covid vaccine. With the amended EUA, children 6 months to 5 years of age who received the Moderna vaccine for their primary series can get a bivalent booster, so long as at least two months have elapsed since they completed the two-shot primary series. (Branswell, 12/8)

The Omicron BQ.1.1 and XBB SARS-CoV-2 subvariants evade the monoclonal antibodies imdevimab, casirivimab, tixagevimab, cilgavimab, bebtelovimab, and S309—but not the antiviral drugs remdesivir, molnupiravir, and nirmatrelvir (Paxlovid), according to a research letter published yesterday in the New England Journal of Medicine. (Van Beusekom, 12/8)

Hospitals are more full than they’ve been throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, according to a CNN analysis of data from the US Department of Health and Human Services. But as respiratory virus season surges across the US, it’s much more than Covid that’s filling beds this year. More than 80% of hospital beds are in use nationwide, jumping 8 percentage points in the past two weeks. (McPhillips, 12/9)

KHN: Hospital Financial Decisions Play A Role In The Critical Shortage Of Pediatric Beds For RSV Patients

The dire shortage of pediatric hospital beds plaguing the nation this fall is a byproduct of financial decisions made by hospitals over the past decade, as they shuttered children’s wards, which often operate in the red, and expanded the number of beds available for more profitable endeavors like joint replacements and cancer care. To cope with the flood of young patients sickened by a sweeping convergence of nasty bugs — especially respiratory syncytial virus, influenza, and coronavirus — medical centers nationwide have deployed triage tents, delayed elective surgeries, and transferred critically ill children out of state. (Szabo, 12/9)

Of all the groups still threatened by Covid-19 — including the elderly and the immunocompromised — it is pregnant women who seem the most unaware of the risks. Covid can kill pregnant women and can result in miscarriage, preterm births and stillbirths even when the women have asymptomatic or mild illness. The infection may also affect the baby’s brain development. (Mandavilli, 12/8)

Patients admitted to hospital with severe breathing difficulties due to COVID-19 are less likely to need a breathing tube (endotracheal intubation) if they lie face down in a prone position, but the position's effect on mortality or other outcomes is inconclusive, suggests an in-depth analysis of the latest evidence published by The BMJ. (Soucheray, 12/8)

The emergence of Covid-19 exposed the limitations of the American public health system — particularly its ability to collect and share data quickly. As daily cases rose to hundreds of thousands nationwide, information about who was being hit hardest — and later, who was getting vaccinated — was scattered across local health systems, causing confusion and hampering efforts for a swift, equitable national response. (Poon, 12/8)

Weeks after Charlotte Hultquist got Covid-19 in November 2020, she developed a severe pain in her right ear. “It felt like someone was sticking a knife in [it],” said Hultquist, a single mother of five who lives in Hartford, Vermont. For about a year, Hultquist was among those long Covid patients sidelined from the workforce. (Iacurci, 12/8)

People who received one or two doses of mpox vaccine contracted the infection at substantially lower rates than unvaccinated people, a study published Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggested. (Branswell, 12/8)

In the first study, researcher show mpox cases were 9.6 times higher among unvaccinated men compared to those who had received two vaccine doses, and 7.4 times higher than in those who had received only the first dose. ... In the second study, safety monitoring of the Jynneos vaccine was gathered after 1 million doses in the United States, administered from May 22 to Oct 21. Only 14 reports were classified as serious. (Soucheray, 12/8)

A new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows how infectious mpox can be and how important vaccination was in reducing the outbreak over the summer. ... The study, published Thursday, looked at cases by vaccination status among men ages 18-49 between July 31 and Oct. 1 in the U.S. (Kekatos, 12/8)

A sharp ding rings through the loudspeaker at Crawford County Memorial Hospital in Denison, Iowa. On this early afternoon in September, the sound elicits cheers from nearby nurses. Don Luensmann, the hospital’s marketing manager, is quick to explain with a big smile. “Baby just got born,” he said. (Krebs, 12/8)

It was 3 a.m. at the 10-bed hospital near the River of No Return, and by every measure, Ella Wenrich should have been dead. Gastrointestinal bleeding had sent her hemoglobin level — typically above 12 — down to 3.3, and she needed an enormous blood transfusion at a larger medical center. But amid a surge in Covid cases, every major facility within 400 miles refused to take her. The smallest hospital in Idaho was, once again, on its own. (Baumgaertner, 12/9)

Hospitals in some non-Medicaid expansion states are pitching expansion as a way to help solve the rural health crisis. But the industry is hardly speaking with one voice. Facilities with fewer commercially insured patients that treat a large number of uninsured people see expansion as a potential lifeline in tough economic times. (Dreher, 12/8)

The final day to enroll for health insurance coverage through the Affordable Care Act marketplace is next Thursday, Dec. 15.Health care "navigators" at the University of South Florida have received thousands of calls in need of help sorting through the complexities of the market, and leaders expect those calls to increase as the deadline looms closer. (Pedersen, 12/8)

KHN: ‘An Arm And A Leg’: He Made A Video About Health Insurance Terminology That Went Viral 

A 30-minute video about health insurance terminology has racked up more than a million views. Host Dan Weissmann spoke with Brian David Gilbert, the person behind the video. (Weissmann, 12/9)

Stanford University has hired an outside law firm to lead the investigation of its president over allegations of research misconduct, a decision that comes in the wake of criticisms over potential conflicts of interest in the school’s internal review process. (Garde, 12/8)

A former Cape Cod Hospital cardiologist says he was dismissed and defamed after raising concerns about botched surgeries and poor ethical practices at the hospital. In a lawsuit filed in Barnstable Superior Court on Tuesday against the hospital and its CEO, Dr. Richard Zelman alleged that the hospital prioritized profits over patient safety and public health. (Bartlett, 12/8)

University of Michigan's Michigan Medicine is expected to approve on Thursday a deal that will allow the university hospital to acquire the state's seventh largest health system, Lansing-based Sparrow Health, Crain's learned from a UM official close to the deal. Terms of the transaction were not immediately known, but it's expected to be a member-swap agreement. (Walsh and Eggert, 12/8)

Tech giant Canon Inc. is gearing up to make Cleveland the home of a U.S.-based medical imaging unit that would significantly expand the company's research and development efforts in the country. (Suttell, 12/8)

Disparities along racial and socioeconomic lines have long persisted in health care. But it’s only somewhat recently that the health care industry’s often glitzy gatherings have started grappling with health equity, as the pandemic both widened health inequities and also demonstrated the potential of technology to tackle them. (Ravindranath, 12/9)

KHN: To Attract In-Home Caregivers, California Offers Paid Training — And Self-Care

One November afternoon, Chris Espedal asked a group of caregivers — all of whom work with people who have cognitive impairments, behavioral health issues, or complex physical needs — to describe what happens when their work becomes too much to bear. The participants, 13 caregivers from all over California, who had gathered in a Zoom room, said they experienced nausea, anxiety, shortness of breath, elevated heart rates, and other telltale signs of stress. “I want to scream!” one called out. “I feel exhausted,” said another. (Udesky, 12/9)

Medicare is willing to reevaluate its coverage of Alzheimer’s drugs in light of a new therapy, called lecanemab, that has shown potentially more promising patient data than its controversial predecessor, Aduhelm, according to the official who oversees the program. (Herman, 12/8)

High levels of drug resistance in bacteria that often cause bloodstream infections in hospitals emerged in the first year of the pandemic, a World Health Organization report based on data from 87 countries in 2020 has found. (Grover, 12/9)

Young women diagnosed with breast cancer often must delay pregnancy for years while they take hormone-blocking pills. A reassuring new study finds they can take a two-year break from these drugs to get pregnant without raising their short-term risk of cancer coming back. “This is really good news for young women and their doctors and their families,” said Dr. Ann Partridge of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, who led the study. Results were being discussed Thursday at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium. (Johnson, 12/8)

The Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Co. and the Purchaser Business Group on Health's EmansaRx are partnering to provide discounted prescription drugs to self-insured employers. (Kacik, 12/8)

Over the past few years, the biopharmaceutical industry has revved up efforts to diversify clinical trials. But clinical trials for rare diseases are still too often homogeneous. Rare disease experts at the Milken Institute Future of Health Summit on Tuesday had words of warning for biopharma: Don’t let equity efforts peter out. (Castillo, 12/8)

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Thursday approved Elanco Animal Health Inc's drug for cats with a type of diabetes, making it the first oral drug to be approved for the disease in animals. Bexacat helps improve glycemic control in otherwise healthy cats with diabetes mellitus not previously treated with insulin. (Roy, 12/8)

Just one to two minutes of such activity three to four times daily, the results showed, was associated with an up to 40% lower risk of death over the course of seven years, relative to the people who did not engage in any vigorous activity. The risk of dying from heart disease was reduced even further: up to 49%. (Bendix, 12/8)

It’s not easy being a sports fan. Major sporting events often are linked with heart attacks, high stress, over-drinking and unhealthy eating habits. ... During the 2006 World Cup in Germany, researchers studied the relationships between emotional stress and cardiovascular events. ... They found that, overall, viewing a stressful soccer match more than doubles the risk of an acute cardiovascular event. The risk was greater for men, who were 3.3 times as likely to have a heart event on a match day than at other times. For women’s sports fans, the risk was 1.82 times higher. (Parker-Pope, 12/8)

A 12-year-old boy from Richmond Heights died Tuesday after trying a dangerous game from social media that has gone viral, his family says. Tristan Casson died attempting the “blackout challenge” on TikTok, one of the world’s most popular apps, the boy’s mother, Taylor Davis said. As part of it, participants are challenged to hold their breath or asphyxiate themselves until they pass out. (Walsh, 12/8)

A total of 1,377 inmates have been put to death with a lethal injection in the past 40 years, according to the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC). In those four decades, experts told Newsweek that at least 100 inmates have endured botched procedures. (Rahman, 12/8)

According to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, stiff-person syndrome, otherwise known as Moersch-Woltman syndrome, is a "rare neurological disorder with features of an autoimmune disease." The illness causes the body to become rigid and more sensitive to noise, touch and emotional distress. That heightened sensitivity can cause muscle spasms, as well as "hunched over and stiffened" postures," according to the institute. (Cohen, 12/8)

Intrepid and iron-stomached researchers from the University of Colorado Boulder are using laser light and green dye to show the cloud of aerosols that erupts when you flush a high-powered public toilet. It’s almost beautiful. But it’s definitely not pretty. Toilet plumes emit a cloud at once putrid and pathogenic. (Booth, 12/9)

A Colorado doctor and a pharmacist set off on a mission about a year ago to change hospital policy statewide, a monumental effort to save people from dying in the escalating opioid crisis that took 1,258 lives in 2021. It took some educating, and a few changes in state law, but every single hospital emergency department in Colorado — all 108 of them — agreed to offer take-home doses of naloxone to any patient treated for an overdose. Now, in its second year, the Colorado Naloxone Project is focusing its efforts on distributing the life-saving opioid antidote to another part of the hospital: labor and delivery units. (Brown, 12/8)

A Kentucky hospital system will pay a $4.4 million civil penalty for faulty recordkeeping that enabled a pharmacy technician to divert 60,000 doses of opioids, federal prosecutors announced. ... Prosecutors said a failure to maintain accurate and complete inventories and dispensing records enabled Kayla Nicole White Perry, then a pharmacy technician at the hospital, to divert more than 60,000 doses of oxycodone, hydrocodone and methadone from the hospital system’s narcotics vault and Pyxis MedStations from January 2016 through early September 2018. (12/8)

With two weeks to go in the year, Alec Burlakoff dashed off an urgent email to sales representative Daniel Tondre. Tondre was assigned to a pain specialist in Sarasota, Florida, who was one of the most prolific prescribers of the potent fentanyl spray called Subsys. And Insys Therapeutics sales executive Burlakoff wanted the doctor, Steven Chun, to prescribe more of the addictive and potentially deadly drug to meet his company’s goal. (Alltucker, 12/8)

Franciscan Children’s hospital is restricting the use of tap water after discovering another occurrence of a potentially harmful bacteria that it first detected in 2019. Since Nov. 22, the Brighton hospital has not allowed anyone located in two areas of the pediatric rehab facility to consume tap water, after detecting the presence of the bacteria in two water sources. On Monday, it allowed staff to resume using water from now-filtered taps to bathe children. (Bartlett, 12/8)

Texas health officials on Thursday ordered a recall of oysters harvested from a fishery in Galveston Bay after linking those oysters to dozens of illnesses across the area in recent weeks. Public health officials closed the TX 1 harvest area on Wednesday amid reports the oysters may have caused consumers stomach issues. (González Kelly, 12/8)

Andrew Do was afraid to play sports his last two years of high school. “I didn’t want to walk home alone after practices and be harassed, and beat up, and strangled,” he said in an interview with CNN. After law school, while out running for exercise, he said motorists would throw bottles and batteries at him. His constant fear: violent racism, “extreme hostility,” and physical assault. (Campbell, 12/8)

Important allies are cool to an idea Gov. Ned Lamont unexpectedly floated during a campaign debate and intends to pursue: Repealing the exemption that allows residents to possess AR-15 rifles purchased before the ban on sales in Connecticut. (Pazniokas, 12/9)

Bodybuilders around the world are risking their lives and sometimes dying for the sport they love because of extreme measures that are encouraged by coaches, rewarded by judges and ignored by leaders of the industry, according to interviews with dozens of bodybuilders, coaches, judges, promoters, medical professionals and relatives of deceased athletes. (Abelson, Jones and Bauerova, 12/7)

"It’s time for your daily check-in,” a pop-up notification prods me. I click on my phone’s Mental Fitness app, which offers up the text prompt “How are you feeling today?” After I speak into the mic for 30 seconds, rambling about whatever comes to mind, the app churns out my well-being score on a 1-to-100 scale: “51: Pay Attention.” (Svoboda, 12/8)

The bathroom consisted of a tarp tied between two trees. When Katelyn Haruko Schmisseur used it, she made eye contact with a staff member. She squatted, they stared. A requirement of her wilderness therapy program, they told her. Because of her eating disorder, a staff member was with her at all times almost the entire length of her stay in the Utah desert. A bucket lined with a biohazard bag acted as a receptacle for solid waste. As the weather got warmer, the smell got stronger. The flies were incessant. (Moniuszko, 12/8)

The change was gradual. At first, Riana Alexander was always tired. Then she began missing classes. She had been an honors student at her Arizona high school, just outside Phoenix. But last winter, after the isolation of remote learning, then the overload of a full-on return to school, her grades were slipping. She wasn’t eating a lot. She avoided friends. Her worried mother searched for mental health treatment. Finally, in the spring, a three-day-a-week intensive program for depression helped the teenager steady herself and “want to get better,” Alexander said. Then, as she was finding her way, a girl at her school took her own life. Then a teen elsewhere in the district did the same. Then another. (St. George and Strauss, 12/5)

As the rest of the world ages, South Koreans are getting younger. South Korea’s parliament passed laws Thursday abolishing the traditional method of determining ages, which will officially make everyone in the country a year or two younger starting in June 2023. Unlike in most of the world, people in South Korea turn 1 as soon as they are born and gain another year every New Year’s Day. In everyday life, South Koreans typically cite their “Korean age,” which is also reflected on many government documents. (Yoon, 12/9)

When LaTunja Caster started working at the Olin Corp. chemical plant outside of McIntosh, Alabama, she had no idea that asbestos was used in the production process. But when she became a union safety representative around 2007, she started to pay attention. In certain parts of the plant, “you would see it all the time,” she said. “You definitely breathed it in.” (McGrory, 12/7)

A pandemic outbreak has erupted across the globe this year. It’s not COVID-19, monkeypox, or measles. It’s cholera, a diarrheal disease that has killed millions since it emerged from the Ganges delta in the 19th century. The current cholera pandemic, the world’s seventh, began in 1961. “More people are infected now on a yearly basis than at any other point,” said Edward Ryan, Director of Global Infectious Diseases at Massachusetts General Hospital. Floods, armed conflict, and other emergencies have contributed to unprecedented outbreaks in 29 countries, including Haiti, Lebanon, and Malawi. (Bajaj, 12/7)

Americans received their first Covid-19 vaccine doses in December 2020, which means we are now approaching the beginning of the third year of the pandemic’s vaccine phase. And yet hundreds of Americans are still dying each day. Who are they? The data offers a straightforward answer: older adults. (David Wallace Wells, 12/7)

I believe that no financial award could come close to equivalency for the irreparable harm the Theranos debacle has done to individual patients, the health care system in general, and support for innovation in the field of diagnostics. (Steve Brozak, 12/8)

Every winter is the worst winter for the UK’s National Health Service. But that doesn’t mean we’ve seen it all before. New data show NHS backlogs have hit a record 7.2 million, emergency departments are leaving patients waiting longer for care, ambulances are taking longer and then are kept waiting outside hospitals for lack of space in emergency wards. (Therese Raphael, 12/9)

First, the good news: No one on the local, state or federal level appears ready to impose mask mandates or lockdowns anytime soon, despite a leap in COVID hospitalizations, which are up 49% in Maryland to 551 from a 6-month low of 369 just three weeks ago on Nov. 18, pre-Thanksgiving celebrations. (12/8)

A new study on masking is making waves by suggesting that N95 masks are no more effective in protecting against covid-19 than surgical masks. This is the wrong conclusion to draw — and can have dangerous consequences. (Leana S. Wen, 12/8)

There’s been significant investment in companies creating artificial intelligence (AI) applications for health and health care over the last decade. But while there have been successes, notably in the area of medical imaging, the industry is known more for not yet living up to its potential — think IBM Watson. (Michael Elashoff, 12/9)

To date, 39 states and the District of Columbia have chosen to expand Medicaid, covering individuals up to 138% of the Federal Poverty Level (that’s an income of $17,774 for an individual – the equivalent of up to $8.55 per hour - in 2021). (Michael Burcham, 12/8)