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The action by two of the hardest-hit areas comes after the World Health Organization declared a global emergency this past weekend and as the Biden administration weighs a national emergency declaration. More than 40 percent of the nation’s confirmed 4,907 monkeypox cases have been reported in California and New York. (Nirappil, 7/28)

The country’s monkeypox outbreak can still be stopped, U.S. health officials said Thursday, despite rising case numbers and so far limited vaccine supplies. The Biden administration’s top health official pushed back against criticism about the pace of the response and worries that the U.S. has missed the window to contain the virus, which has been declared a global emergency. (Perrone, 7/28)

Today during a press briefing from Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Secretary Xavier Becerra, JD, said that in the coming weeks, 1.1 million doses of the Jynneos monkeypox vaccine will have been made available to Americans. "They will get into the hands of people who need them over the course of next several weeks," Becerra said. (Soucheray, 7/28)

About 20% of Americans are afraid they'll soon contract monkeypox, but there are still some significant holes in the public's understanding of the virus, according to a new survey from the Annenberg Public Policy Center. (Bettelheim, 7/29)

The United States has the capacity to conduct 60,000-80,000 tests for monkeypox virus per week, Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra said on Thursday. When the monkeypox outbreak began, the U.S. was able to conduct only 6,000 tests per week, Becerra told reporters during a telephone briefing. (7/28)

Mayo Clinic Laboratories, for example, has the capacity to process 1,000 monkeypox samples a week but has received only 45 specimens from doctors since starting monkeypox testing July 11. Another of the labs, Aegis Sciences Corp., can do 5,000 tests per week but has received zero samples over the past two weeks. At Labcorp, one of the largest commercial labs in the US, uptake has been higher but still "extremely low," according to Dr. Brian Caveney, the lab's president of diagnostics. (Cohen, 7/28)

Some public health authorities worry about the continued ability of an exhausted and perennially underfunded public health system to meet multiple threats at once. “Our staff is very professional and dedicated, and they are going to do what needs to be done,” said Patrick McGough, CEO of the health department in Oklahoma City and Oklahoma County. “Right now, our capacity is good, but like anything, if it gets overwhelming, if we have two or three things going on at the same time, it could get dicey.” (Ollove, 7/28)

State health officials diagnosed 36 new cases of monkeypox in the past seven days, according to a Thursday statement by the Massachusetts Department of Public Health. The announcement brings the total number of cases detected in Massachusetts to 115. The cases were discovered in 36 adult men from July 21 to 27. Health officials said they were working to identify close contacts with the infected individuals. (Fonseca, 7/28)

The federal government is sending New York 110,000 new monkeypox vaccine doses, the bulk of which will go to New York City — the largest U.S. hot spot for the virus, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer announced Thursday. Key context: New York City will receive 80,000 vaccine doses — more than 10 percent of 786,000 from Denmark that are now in the national stockpile, according to the New York Democrat’s office. The rest of the state will get 30,000 doses. (Young, 7/28)

Africa still does not have a single dose of the monkeypox vaccine even though it’s the only continent to have documented deaths from the disease that’s newly declared a global emergency, its public health agency announced Thursday. (Anna, 7/28)

The Biden administration on Thursday warned U.S. businesses and health insurance providers that limiting coverage of contraceptives, after a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that overturned the constitutional right to abortion, would violate federal law. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued guidance clarifying that the Affordable Care Act (ACA), commonly known as Obamacare, requires insurance plans to provide free birth control and family-planning counseling to insured individuals and their dependents. (Wiessner, 7/29)

"We have heard troubling reports that plans and issuers are not following the law. We expect them to remove impermissible barriers and ensure individuals have access to the contraceptive coverage they need," Labor Secretary Marty Walsh said in a news release. "If plans and issuers are not complying with the law, we will take enforcement action to ensure that participants receive this coverage." (Kacik, 7/28)

According to a New York Times analysis, the 24 states that have banned abortion (or probably will) fare worse on a broad range of outcomes than states where abortion will probably remain legal, including child and maternal mortality, teenage birthrates and the share of women and children who are uninsured. The states likely to ban abortion either have laws predating Roe that ban abortion; have recently passed stringent restrictions; or have legislatures that are actively considering new bans. (Badger, Sanger-Katz, and Cain Miller, 7/28)

The research was published Thursday by the Guttmacher Institute, a research and policy organization focused on sexual and reproductive health that supports abortion rights. The closures are concentrated in the South and Midwest, regions that have banned or significantly restricted access to abortion. Guttmacher predicts that the state of abortion access, already "dire," will get even worse as more states ban abortion in the coming weeks and months. (Christensen and Sneed, 7/28)

Appearing bare-shouldered in a TV ad, Connecticut Democrat Dita Bhargava looks directly into the camera and promises, if elected, to “lead the crusade” for abortion rights. Photos of other women flash on the screen, also with no clothes showing. “This is who have freedom over their own bodies stripped away,” Bhargava says in the commercial, referring to the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent ruling overturning the constitutional right to abortion. “This is who the Supreme Court left completely vulnerable.” (Haigh and Carr Smith, 7/29)

Alito spoke July 21 at the Notre Dame Religious Liberty Summit, sponsored by the Religious Liberty Initiative at the university’s law school. It was established in 2020 to promote “religious freedom for people of all faiths through scholarship, events, and the Law School’s Religious Liberty Clinic,” which files briefs at the Supreme Court. (Barnes, 7/28)

In a public hearing for a West Virginia abortion bill that would ban the procedure in almost all cases, a 12-year-old girl supporting abortion rights took to the lectern Wednesday and asked Republican lawmakers whether they care about her or young people like her: “What about my life?”... “If a man decides that I’m an object and does unspeakable and tragic things to me, am I, a child, supposed to birth and carry another child? Am I to put my body through the physical trauma of pregnancy? Am I to suffer the mental implications, a child who had no say in what was being done with my body?” She added, “Some here say they are pro-life. What about my life? Does my life not matter to you?” (Bella, 7/28)

A bill up for a final vote in West Virginia’s Senate could make the state the first to pass new legislation restricting access to abortions after the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling removing its protected status as a constitutional right. Senators are set to meet Friday afternoon for a third reading of the bill, which some complained was not vetted in any of the chamber’s committees. If passed, it would head to the Republican governor, who has signaled he favors a statewide ban. (Raby, 7/29)

Indiana’s Republican-dominated Senate rejected a push by conservative lawmakers Thursday night to strip exceptions for rape and incest victims in a proposal that would ban most abortions in the state. (Davies and Rodgers, 7/29)

Attorney General Keith Ellison said Thursday that he won’t appeal a ruling that struck down most of Minnesota’s restrictions on abortion as unconstitutional, saying the state has already spent enough time and money on the case and is unlikely to win an appeal anyway. Ellison, a Democrat who supports abortion rights, called his decision “in the public interest and ... the right legal decision.” (7/28)

Pennsylvania’s Democratic governor sued the state Legislature on Thursday over a package of proposed constitutional amendments that Republican lawmakers are pursuing, including one that would say the state constitution does not guarantee any rights relating to abortion or public funding of abortions. (Scolforo, 7/29)

A judge’s ruling that will delay the closing of North Dakota’s lone abortion clinic should provide more than enough time to move the business to a neighboring city in Minnesota, the facility’s owner and operator said Thursday. In fact, Red River Women’s Clinic director Tammi Kromenaker said she was prepared to open shop in Moorhead, Minnesota, next week if the North Dakota’s abortion ban had gone into effect Thursday. She said now, though, she’ll have more time to make sure the move from Fargo goes smoothly. (Kolpack, 7/28)

Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron is asking a state appeals court to overturn an injunction issued last week that blocks the state’s abortion ban. The injunction ruling by a judge in Louisville prevents the state’s near-total ban on abortion from taking effect. The state’s two abortion clinics in Louisville have continued providing abortion since the judge first blocked the law last month. (7/28)

North Carolina’s Republican General Assembly leaders have asked a federal judge to reinstate a 20-week abortion ban previously thrown out by courts, despite the Democratic attorney general’s refusal to seek enforcement of the ban after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned nationwide abortion protections. (Schoenbaum, 7/28)

The law office representing Bernard, DeLaney & DeLaney, released a statement on Thursday saying Rokita had forwarded six letters to the doctor on Tuesday informing her that six “consumer complaint” investigations had been started. The law firm asserted that none of individuals involved in the complaints ever had any direct interactions with Bernard. The complaints appear to have come from people living in California, Kentucky, Missouri and Ohio. Only one complaint involved a person from Indiana, where Bernard is based. (Choi, 7/28)

Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz attempted to humiliate a teenage girl after arguing that overweight and unattractive women don't need to worry about getting pregnant or needing abortions. That same girl has since raised over $700,000 for abortion care. (Jones, 7/28)

The Food and Drug Administration is shelving plans to let more younger adults get second COVID-19 boosters this summer. Instead, officials are planning to speed up availability of the next generation of boosters in the fall, three administration officials confirmed to NPR. The new strategy came after a debate within the administration about trying to balance protecting people this summer with keeping people safe next winter, when the country will probably get hit by yet another surge, according to the officials familiar with the discussion. (Stein, 7/28)

In internal deliberations, some senior health officials argued that eligibility for a second booster should be broadened before the reformulated version is ready because coronavirus infections are on the rise again. Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the president’s chief medical adviser, and Dr. Ashish K. Jha, the White House pandemic response coordinator, both advocated that position. (Weiland and LaFraniere, 7/28)

President Joe Biden resumed in-person public events a day after ending his Covid isolation, deviating from federal health guidance that people recovering from the disease wear a mask for 10 days. Biden attended a briefing Thursday afternoon indoors with several aides, including Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, as well as Marriott International CEO Tony Capuano. He entered with a mask but took it off and distanced himself from others in the room. (Wingrove, 7/28)

Los Angeles County dropped a plan to impose a universal indoor mask mandate this week as COVID-19 infections and rates of hospitalizations have stabilized, a top health official said Thursday. (Weber, 7/28)

The coronavirus pandemic walloped rural America last year, precipitating a surge of deaths among white residents as the virus inflamed longstanding health deficits there.But across the small towns and farmlands, new research has found, Covid killed Black and Hispanic people at considerably higher rates than it did their white neighbors. Even at the end of the pandemic’s second year, in February 2022, overstretched health systems, poverty, chronic illnesses and lower vaccination rates were forcing nonwhite people to bear the burden of the virus. (Mueller, 7/28)

The federal government is trying to make it easier for immunocompromised patients to access a treatment that can protect them against COVID-19 by allowing individual health care providers to order small amounts — up to three patient courses at a time, according to a Health and Human Services Department spokesperson. (Stein, 7/28)

Chinese vaccine firm CanSino Biologic's inhalation-based candidate elicited a better antibody response as a booster against the BA.1 Omicron sub-variant than Sinovac's shot, but the antibody level dropped in months, clinical trial data showed. (7/29)

Raccoon dogs, a spaniel-size canine bred and sold in China both for their meat and luxurious fur, are one of the likeliest sources of the last 2½ years of human misery. A new study suggests these furry creatures, native to Asia, may have been the intermediary, catching the SARS-CoV-2 virus from bats and passing it on to people at a Chinese market, leading to the global COVID-19 pandemic. (Weintraub, 7/29)

A deal on Capitol Hill that could cut prescription drug costs for millions of Medicare beneficiaries was cautiously cheered by older Americans and their advocates Thursday even as many worried it might never come to fruition. The health care and climate agreement struck by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin includes landmark provisions that could help senior citizens, including a cap on out-of-pocket Medicare drug costs and a requirement that the government negotiate prices on some high-cost drugs. (Sedensky and Johnson, 7/28)

After winning the support of Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.), Senate Democrats say they will pass a sweeping bill as early as next week that, along with climate and deficit-reduction measures, would give Medicare powers to negotiate prices on select numbers of the costliest drugs for the first time since Congress passed the prescription drug benefit for seniors in 2003. (Rowland, 7/28)

The bill includes the largest investment in fighting climate change in U.S. history, aiming to boost clean-energy technology even as it delivers some of the support Manchin sought for fossil fuels. It also aims to lower health-care costs, particularly through changes to Medicare that could reduce some prescription drug prices for seniors. Speaking to reporters later Thursday, Schumer announced that Democrats plan to add other elements that target the price of insulin. (Romm, DeBonis and Sotomayor, 7/28)

The move to include insulin measures in the party-line package, which is set to get a vote as soon as next week, comes as a separate bipartisan insulin bill has hit obstacles.  Potential measures to be included are: A $35-per-month cap on what patients have to pay out-of-pocket for the drug. Allowing Medicare to negotiate lower prices for insulin. (Sullivan, Weixel and Choi, 7/28)

KHN: KHN’s ‘What The Health?’: Manchin Makes A Deal

The Democrats’ on-again, off-again budget bill is apparently on again, and it’s bigger than expected. In a surprise move, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer announced an agreement with Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) to expand the scope of the limited health bill that was headed to the Senate floor to also include climate change and some tax increases for corporations and certain wealthy Americans. (7/28)

Veterans’ advocacy groups lashed out on Thursday after Senate Republicans blocked a much-anticipated bill aimed at expanding care for veterans who were exposed to toxins during military service. The Sgt. First Class Heath Robinson Honoring Our PACT Act was the product of a year of negotiations between the House and the Senate, and Wednesday’s vote was largely expected to be a victory for veterans in need of care. (Williams, 7/28)

Comedian Jon Stewart, an outspoken advocate for military veterans, erupted in anger on Thursday after U.S. Senate Republicans blocked a bill to provide healthcare for veterans exposed to toxic burn pits while serving abroad. "I'm used to the lies, I'm used to the hypocrisy, I'm used to the cowardice, I'm used to all of it, but I am not used to the cruelty," Stewart told reporters outside the Senate during a news conference called by the bill's advocates. (Warburton and Horowitch, 7/28)

Illinois Sens. Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) have sent Illinois-based Walgreens a letter asking  for the revision of its nationwide policy regarding pharmacists' religious objections when fulfilling prescriptions. In the letter, the senators have asked Walgreens CEO Roz Brewer to ensure customers' privacy is respected and that customers have a clear notice as to whether they will have full access to contraceptives at Walgreens stores. (Edwards, 7/28)

Several lobbyists representing pharmaceutical interests spoke to POLITICO about the mood on K Street about the lobbying effort, and most were granted anonymity to speak freely about their work. The stakes are high for Democrats to follow through on key promises to rein in the cost of health care before the midterm elections in November, and represent a major victory in the party’s 20-year goal of allowing Medicare to negotiate the price of medicine. (Wilson, 7/28)

Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.), the chair of the Senate Appropriations Agriculture-FDA Subcommittee, said legislators found “common ground on the need to increase investments for the Food Safety Inspection Service and the Food and Drug Administration,” and “worked across party lines to increase our investments in rural development and conservation that support the long-term health of our working lands.” (Downs, 7/28)

Senate Democrats on Thursday unveiled a measure to provide $21 billion in emergency funding to fight COVID-19, but immediately ran into roadblocks from Republicans. The measure would provide funding for research on improved vaccines that can better combat new variants and allow for the purchasing of additional vaccines, tests and treatments. (Sullivan, Weixel and Choi, 7/28)

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has failed to recoup hundreds of millions of dollars in Medicare overpayments, an independent federal watchdog reported Monday. The Office of Inspector General at the Department of Health and Human Services conducted an audit and found that CMS has only recovered $272 million of the $498 million in overpayments the OIG identified 2018, but the inspector general located proper documentation for just $120 million of it, the report says. (Hartnett, 7/28)

A cluster of 23 infants in Tennessee were diagnosed with a potentially severe childhood virus within a six-week span this spring — an unusually short amount of time for such a large number of cases, doctors reported Thursday. (Edwards, 7/28)

So far, at least 21 of the babies have recovered. One child is expected to face "severe developmental delay" after "persistent seizures." The findings from doctors at Vanderbilt University Medical Center and Tennessee's health department were published on Thursday in the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. Fever, fussiness, and a low appetite were the most common symptoms among babies admitted in the study. (Tin, 7/28)

“Liver failure always appropriately sounds horrific and should never happen, but it does happen, and it does happen without us often knowing the cause in children,” said Saul Karpen, a gastroenterology professor at the Emory University School of Medicine. “We do all the right studies. We can’t figure it out.” (Bendix, 7/29)

The report sets "nanogram" levels of concern and encourages clinicians to conduct blood tests on patients who are worried about exposure or who are at high risk. (A nanogram is equivalent to one billionth of a gram.) People in "vulnerable life stages" -- such as during fetal development in pregnancy, early childhood and old age -- are at high risk, the report said. So are firefighters, workers in fluorochemical manufacturing plants and those who live near commercial airports, military bases, landfills, incinerators, wastewater treatment plants and farms where contaminated sewage sludge is used. (LaMotte, 7/28)

One in four LGBTQ young people experiencing high levels of trauma said they had attempted suicide in 2021, according to a survey from The Trevor Project released Thursday. The big picture: Over 300 anti-LGBTQ laws have been introduced this year and at least 25 have passed. Medical experts say the rancor surrounding such policies can weigh heavily on LGBTQ young people's mental health. (Gonzalez, 7/28)

The investigation into a multistate Salmonella Seftenberg outbreak linked to peanut butter is over, with five more cases reported, bringing the total to 21 from 17 states, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said yesterday. The latest illness onset was May 24. Of 13 people with available information, 4 were hospitalized. No deaths were reported. (7/28)

KHN: What The Polio Case In New York Tells Us About The End Of Polio

No one studying polio knew more than Albert Sabin, the Polish-American scientist whose vaccine against the crippling disease has been used worldwide since 1959. Sabin’s oral vaccine provides lifelong immunity. It has one drawback, which Sabin, who died in 1993, fiercely disputed: In rare cases, the weakened live poliovirus in the vaccine can mutate, regain virulence, and cause polio. Those rare mutations — one of which appears to have paralyzed a young man in Rockland County, New York, who belongs to a vaccine-resistant Hasidic Jewish community, officials there reported July 21 — have taken center stage in the global campaign to eradicate polio, the largest international public health effort in history. (Allen, 7/29)

This knowledge is often a vital part of the fight against illness and disease. For instance, bacteria resist antibiotics by expressing certain proteins. If scientists can understand how these proteins operate, they can begin to counter antibiotic resistance. Previously, pinpointing the shape of a protein required extensive experimentation involving X-rays, microscopes and other tools on a lab bench. Now, given the string of chemical compounds that make up a protein, AlphaFold can predict its shape. (Metz, 7/28)

San Diego-based biotechnology company Cidara Therapeutics announced yesterday that it has submitted a New Drug Application (NDA) to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for its novel antifungal candidate rezafungin. The company submitted the NDA for rezafungin—an echinocandin antifungal—for the treatment of candidemia and invasive candidiasis based on positive results from the phase 3 ReSTORE and phase 2 STRIVE trial. In both trials, a once-weekly dose of rezafungin demonstrated statistical non-inferiority to once-daily caspafungin, meeting the primary endpoints for the FDA and the European Medicines Agency. (7/28)

The SARS-CoV-2 spike protein interacts with other proteins in cardiac myocytes to cause inflammation, researchers said on Wednesday in a presentation at the American Heart Association's Basic Cardiovascular Sciences Scientific Sessions 2022. In experiments with mice hearts, comparing the effects of SARS-CoV2 spike proteins and spike proteins from a different, relatively harmless coronavirus, the researchers found that only the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein caused heart dysfunction, enlargement, and inflammation. (Lapid, 7/28)

Compared with the earlier Omicron BA.2 subvariant, currently dominant Omicron BA.5 is linked with higher odds of causing a second SARS-COV-2 infection regardless of vaccination status, a study from Portugal suggests. (Lapid, 7/28)

COVID-19 vaccines were less likely to be distributed to US healthcare facilities if they were in counties with a high proportion of Black residents, and racial differences in vaccine uptake may be mainly due to anti-vaccine beliefs among Black adults, according to two new studies highlighting racial disparities in vaccine availability and coverage early in the country's rollout. (Van Beusekom, 7/28)

A key issue is that a generic version will not become available for perhaps as long as four years. A long-acting injectable is more complex to manufacture and some companies that agree to a license may require capital investment, according to ViiV. In the meantime, ViiV has agreed to supply its shot at a non-profit price in low-income nations and all sub-Saharan African countries. (Silverman, 7/28)

British drugmaker GSK (GSK.L) has struck a deal to allow low-cost generic versions of its long-acting HIV preventive medicine to be used in the developing world, including sub-Saharan Africa where the virus remains a leading cause of death. (Grover, 7/29)

Rite Aid Corp. pharmacies are no longer filling prescriptions for controlled substances like Adderall from clinicians working with mental telehealth startups Cerebral Inc. and Done. The retail pharmacy chain, which has over 2,350 locations across the US, adopted the policy earlier this year, Rite Aid spokesperson Catherine Carter said in an email Thursday. (Swetlitz, 7/28)

OneTouchPoint, a vendor that offers printing and mailing services to insurers and providers, experienced a data breach in April that exposed patient information from 38 healthcare organizations, the company disclosed Wednesday. Humana, Kaiser Permanente, CareSource, Geisinger, HealthPartners and a few Blue Cross Blue Shield companies are among those the breach affected, OneTouchPoint said in a news release. (Berryman, 7/28)

Sales of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine and treatment in the second quarter propelled the pharmaceutical giant to the largest quarterly sales in its history. The coronavirus vaccine Comirnaty brought in $8.85 billion in sales, and the treatment Paxlovid added another $8.12 billion as company revenue totaled $27.74 billion. (Murphy and Chapman, 7/28)

Drug price growth will slow next year as biosimilars are expected to curb the price of the world's best-selling drug, a report found. Pharmaceutical prices are projected to increase 3.26% in 2023, marking a steep decline from the 6% price hike in 2017, according to the group purchasing organization Vizient, which forecasts what its member hospitals and health systems might pay for drugs after discounts and rebates. Vizient predicted a 3.3% increase last year; the actual price change was 2.8%. The 2017 spike was the highest in the last five years. (Kacik, 7/28)

New York on Thursday sued CVS Health Corp (CVS.N) for allegedly forcing hospitals that serve low-income patients to pay millions of dollars to access discounted prescription drugs, violating state antitrust law. (Pierson and Mishra, 7/28)

Amedisys saw its net income drop 63% to $29.6 million during the second quarter, which followed a 36% loss in prior three months, the company disclosed Wednesday. During an earnings call Thursday, President and CEO Chris Gerard attributed the negative results to fewer discharges to home health from hospitals, staffing shortages and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. (Christ, 7/28)

“The challenge that we’re seeing is in these times of economic uncertainty, all purchases are just getting a significantly higher level of scrutiny,” CEO Jason Gorevic said in an earnings call Wednesday. Gorevic also noted that declining yield on advertising suggests that individual patients may start spending less on direct-to-consumer services like BetterHelp, the company’s mental health care offering. Those hurdles aren’t unique to Teladoc. Competitors like Amwell and Talkspace could also have to grapple with cutbacks. (Ravindranath, 7/28)

Laboratory Corp. of America Holdings LH 1.17%▲ plans to spin off its unit focused on clinical drug trials, a move that will create a new stand-alone company in the fast-growing contract-research sector. Burlington, N.C.-based Labcorp unveiled the plan to separate its clinical-development business Thursday alongside its second-quarter results. Labcorp will continue its focus on its core diagnostic-testing business and will also retain two related pieces of its drug-development unit. (Lombardo, 7/28)

Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Mississippi on Thursday said it was suing three employees of the University of Mississippi Medical Center for allegedly spreading false information. The lawsuit is the latest development in a dispute between the state’s largest health insurance provider and the hospital that surfaced in March when the two sides failed to reach an agreement over how much the insurer would pay for patient care. (7/28)

KHN: Hospices Have Become Big Business For Private Equity Firms, Raising Concerns About End-Of-Life Care

Hospice care, once provided primarily by nonprofit agencies, has seen a remarkable shift over the past decade, with more than two-thirds of hospices nationwide now operating as for-profit entities. The ability to turn a quick profit in caring for people in their last days of life is attracting a new breed of hospice owners: private equity firms. That rapid growth has many hospice veterans worried that the original hospice vision may be fading, as those capital investment companies’ demand for return on investment and the debt load they force hospices to bear are hurting patients and their families. (Hawryluk, 7/29)

In a widely distributed memo, Education Commissioner Manny Diaz Jr. told school leaders that the federal policies are “not-binding” in Florida and “should not be treated as governing law.” Diaz, who was appointed by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, warned that complying with the U.S. Department of Education could spell legal trouble under state law. (Atterbury, 7/28)

A Florida school district is responding to a law signed by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, allowing students who want to be identified by their preferred pronouns and names to fill out a Gender Support Plan that will require notification of the student's parent or guardian. (Lee, 7/28)

A Florida boy is said to have been hospitalized for contracting brain-eating amoeba otherwise known as, Naegleria fowleri – a potentially deadly parasite that attacks brain tissue – after he swam at a local beach. Caleb Ziegelbauer, 13, had visited Port Charlotte Beach Park with his family in early July, according to a GoFundMe his aunts – Katie Chiet and Elizabeth Ziegelbaur – recently launched. (Moore, 7/27)

Philip Morris USA, R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. and more than a dozen other tobacco companies were sued by Iowa’s attorney general for allegedly failing to pay the state $133 million due under a 1998 settlement intended to avoid future health-related lawsuits. The companies withheld a portion of their annual payments to Iowa in bad faith and “through a scheme of false claims and feigned ignorance,” Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller, a Democrat, said in a statement Thursday. (Larson, 7/28)

The Miami-Dade County School Board reversed itself yet again on Thursday, voting to approve health and sex education textbooks for middle and high school students that have moved to the forefront of Florida’s battle over what is taught in schools. (Traub, 7/28)

Chicago public health officials are advising Lollapalooza goers to test their drugs before partaking to make sure they are not laced with fentanyl. The Chicago Department of Public Health put out a warning a day before the four-day music festival was set to begin in Grant Park. (Betz, 7/28)

The Houston market has also been identified as a place that may benefit from these services, according to the 2022 Health Care Insights Study by CVS Health this month. In Houston, 53 percent of respondents said the mental health of a loved one was a “high to moderate stressor,” compared with 42 percent nationally. (Carballo, 7/28)

As people flock to beaches, parks, pools, and other outdoor places this summer, a group of eight communities north of Boston is working to ensure they are protected from the harmful effects of the sun. Through a state-funded initiative that began in early July, more than 100 sunscreen dispensers have been installed at 70 locations for free public use in Beverly, Danvers, Lynn, Marblehead, Nahant, Peabody, Salem, and Swampscott. (Laidler, 7/28)

Gov. Andy Beshear (D) called the event “one of the worst, most devastating flooding events in Kentucky’s history,” saying officials expect “double-digit deaths” and describing how rescuers were finding people stranded on rooftops. “I do believe it will end up being one of the most significant deadly floods that we have had in Kentucky in at least a very long time,” he said. (Childress, Livingston, Beachum and Samenow, 7/28)

It felt like half the country doubted the case existed. The Indianapolis Star had published a story July 1 about a 10-year-old rape victim from Ohio who was forced to travel to Indiana for an abortion because of new restrictions in her home state. An indignant President Biden cited the story a week later as an example of extreme abortion laws, and his political opponents pounced. They suggested it was a lie or a hoax. A national newspaper’s editorial board concluded it was “too good to confirm.” Even Ohio’s attorney general called it a “fabrication.” (Izadi, 7/28)

Nonprofit hospitals get billions of dollars in tax breaks in exchange for providing support to their communities. A Wall Street Journal analysis shows they are often not particularly generous. These charitable organizations, which comprise the majority of hospitals in the U.S., wrote off in aggregate 2.3% of their patient revenue on financial aid for patients’ medical bills. Their for-profit competitors, a category including publicly traded giants such as HCA Healthcare Inc., wrote off 3.4%, the Journal found in an analysis of the most-recent annual reports hospitals file with the federal government. (Wilde Matthews, McGinty and Evans, 7/25)

In the U.S., a rare disease is defined as any condition that afflicts 200,000 people or fewer. There are an estimated 7,000 such diseases, according to the FDA. But there is no legal or regulatory bright line to distinguish ultra-rare diseases, other than an informal rule of thumb that such diseases affect one patient per 50,000 people, or fewer than 20 patients in a population of 1 million people. That arbitrary definition works out to about 6,000 patients in the U.S. (Silverman, 7/26)

The vast majority of people find it almost impossible to lose substantial weight and keep it off. Medicine no longer sees this as a personal failing. In recent years, faced with reams of scientific evidence, the medical community has begun to stop blaming patients for not losing excess pounds. (Weintraub, 7/26)

The U.S. Public Health Service called it “The Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male.” The world would soon come to know it simply as the “Tuskegee Study” — one of the biggest medical scandals in U.S. history, an atrocity that continues to fuel mistrust of government and health care among Black Americans. (Breed, 7/25)

The usual way of understanding obesity is simple: If you consume more calories than you need to fuel yourself, the surplus is deposited into body fat, and you gain weight. Because, according to this approach, all calories are alike to the body, the only way to lose weight is to eat fewer of them or burn more off with exercise. (David S. Ludwig, 7/28)

New antibiotic-resistant strains are on the rise, fueling outbreaks across the world and making up a greater percentage of the yearly toll of 10 to 20 million cases and 100,000 deaths. And now science is fighting back by ramping up vaccine campaigns and figuring out more efficient ways to find cases of typhoid. (Max Barnhart, 7/28)

Knowledge is power — but only if you use it. We know about viruses and how they reproduce. We know about evolution through gene mutation and natural selection winnowing resulting variants. (Steve Rissing, 7/28)

Most people know of some of the tools that help us fight pandemics: safe and effective vaccines, antiviral and antibody treatments, and for respiratory infections such as COVID, public-health measures such as masks. But they have overlooked one tool that might help us prevent the next pandemic: zombie viral genomes. (John Yin, 7/29)

Since Roe v. Wade was overturned last month, there’s been a steady barrage of horror stories, including several of women refused abortions for life-threatening pregnancy complications. Rakhi Dimino, a doctor in Texas, where most abortions have been illegal since last year, told PBS that more patients are coming to her with sepsis or hemorrhaging “than I’ve ever seen before.” (Michelle Goldberg, 7/29)

Women and doctors have long faced excruciating decisions when pregnancy outcomes threatened the health of the mother. Up until recently however, these decisions had been, by and large, up to just those two people. Following the Supreme Court decision striking down the federal right to abortion, and triggering a wave of legislation criminalizing abortion in many states, doctors are having to parse legal text and weigh criminal penalties before offering potentially life-or-death care. (7/28)