�������ýҕ�l

Senate Democrats want to boost taxes on some high earners and use the money to extend the solvency of Medicare, the latest step in the party’s election-year attempt to craft a scaled-back version of the economic package that collapsed last year, Democratic aides told The Associated Press. Democrats expect to submit legislative language on their Medicare plan to the Senate’s parliamentarian in the next few days, the aides said. (Fram, 7/7)

The proposal is projected to raise $203 billion over a decade by imposing an additional 3.8 percent tax on income earned from owning a piece of what is known as a pass-through business, such as a law firm or medical practice. The money that would be generated by the change is estimated to be enough to extend the solvency of the Medicare trust fund that pays for hospital care — currently set to begin running out of money in 2028 — until 2031. (Cochrane, Sanger-Katz and Tankersley, 7/7)

Negotiators are still ironing out key details, but Democrats are signaling that as soon as next week they will begin arguing their case to the Senate rules chief on why the package should pass with a simple majority in the chamber. No one is getting their hopes too high in a party still reeling from Manchin’s rejection of Build Back Better, Democrats’ previous version of the legislation. (Everett and Levine, 7/7)

Starting next year, pharmaceutical companies will have to repay Medicare for any unused amount of drugs that come in single-dose vials. On Thursday Medicare implemented this new provision as part of its broader annual rule that updates physician payments for 2023. (Herman, 7/7)

A hospital in West Virginia’s Northern Panhandle has agreed to pay $1.5 million to the federal government to settle allegations that the medical center provided financial incentives to physicians for referring Medicare patients there, U.S. Justice Department officials said Thursday. (7/7)

President Joe Biden will take executive action Friday to protect access to abortion, according to three people familiar with the matter, as he faces mounting pressure from Democrats to be more forceful on the subject after the Supreme Court ended a constitutional right to the procedure two weeks ago. Biden will speak Friday morning “on protecting access to reproductive health care services,” the sources said. The actions he was expected to outline are intended to try to mitigate some potential penalties women seeking abortion may face after the ruling, but are limited in their ability to safeguard access to abortion nationwide. (Kim and Miller, 7/8)

President Joe Biden will sign an executive order Friday morning directing his health department to expand access to abortion pills, beef up enforcement of Obamacare’s birth control coverage mandate and organize a cadre of pro bono lawyers to help defend people criminally charged for seeking or providing the procedure. The administration will also “consider” several additional actions to shore up privacy rights for patients using digital apps like period trackers and those who are now at risk of being reported to law enforcement by a medical provider. They will also “consider” strengthening protections for doctors performing abortions in medical emergencies by updating the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, and plan to stand up another interagency task force that includes the Attorney General. (Miranda Ollstein, 7/8)

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) on Thursday said she supports the Senate removing the procedural filibuster rule in order to codify abortion rights into law. Feinstein said she “certainly would vote” to support a carve-out to the filibuster to pass the Women’s Health Protection Act and codify federal-level abortion protections. (Dress, 7/7)

Indiana House Minority Leader Phil GiaQuinta will meet with Vice President Kamala Harris in Washington D.C. on Friday to discuss how best to safeguard abortion access, along with lawmakers from other states poised to significantly restrict abortion access in the coming weeks. (Lange, 7/8)

Indiana’s abortion laws will likely be tightened even before the Legislature is expected to start debating additional abortion restrictions later this month. Lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana conceded defeat Friday in their fight to block two anti-abortion laws following the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision last month to end constitutional protection for abortion. That led the state attorney general’s office on Wednesday to ask U.S. District Judge Sarah Evans Barker in Indianapolis to sign off on orders that would lift her injunctions that have prevented enforcement of those laws. (Davies, 7/7)

KHN: The Push For Abortion Lawmaking After ‘Dobbs’ Is Unique, Legal And Political Experts Say 

The end of nationwide abortion protections has been met with a wave of calls from lawmakers and governors in at least a dozen states for special legislative sessions that would reshape the state-by-state patchwork of laws that now govern abortion in the U.S. “I haven’t seen so many states focusing their attention so quickly on one issue,” said Thad Kousser, a professor who studies state politics. (Zionts, 7/8)

The U.S. Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage in 2015, but in most states, laws or constitutional amendments would revive the prohibition if the high court decides, as it did with abortion, that such unions are not a constitutionally protected right. Thirty-five states ban same-sex marriage in their constitutions, state law, or both, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures and Stateline research. (Povich, 7/7)

The European Union’s parliament on Thursday overwhelmingly condemned the end of constitutional protections for abortion in the United States and called for such safeguards to be enshrined in the EU’s fundamental rights charter. In a 324-155 vote with 38 abstentions, European Parliament lawmakers adopted a resolution that crystalized the anger seen in many of the EU’s 27 member countries since the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its ruling on June 24. (Casert, 7/7)

Aid Access, an online-only service run by a Dutch physician, Dr. Rebecca Gomperts, began shipping abortion pills to Americans from abroad four years ago. The organization’s team consists of about four doctors supervising about 10 medical staff members, and they’re difficult for U.S. authorities to reach because all are outside the country and they ship pills from a pharmacy in India. (Ingram, 7/7)

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer on Thursday asked the federal government to protect Americans seeking abortions in Canada, but experts say crossing the border for abortion access is out of reach for many Americans. In a letter to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Whitmer requested protection for Americans seeking abortion and medications specific to abortion care in Canada. (Sampson, 7/8)

Red River Women’s Clinic, the only remaining abortion provider in North Dakota, is suing state officials over the state's trigger ban, which is set to take effect later this summer. (Gonzalez, 7/7)

Republican state senators outvoted impassioned Democratic opposition late Thursday to advance a proposal to add language to the Pennsylvania Constitution stating explicitly that the document does not guarantee any rights relating to abortion or public funding of abortions. (Scolforo, 7/7)

With anti-abortion Republicans in firm control of South Carolina’s legislature and executive branch, a new proposal offering something closer to an outright ban seems quite likely, although the details have yet to be hammered out. On Thursday, the exploration of a new abortion law began with a meeting of a 14-member, Republican-dominated House committee. But a bill introduced in the House has been left intentionally vague, with just a few lines of text — including a statement that state law would be changed “so as to prohibit abortions in the state of South Carolina.” (Fausset and Sasani, 7/7)

Attorneys for Mississippi’s only abortion clinic filed papers Thursday asking the state Supreme Court to block a new law that bans most abortions and to let the clinic reopen next week. The clinic, Jackson Women’s Health Organization, is at the center of the recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade and took away women’s constitutional protection for abortion nationwide. (Pettus and Kolpack, 7/7)

Clark County School District Board Trustee Katie Williams donated her $2,000 quarterly board stipend to an anti-abortion pregnancy center Thursday as the organizations have come under increased scrutiny in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade last month. (Longhi, 7/7)

Robin Marty has three months. That’s how long the money will last. The abortion clinic she runs in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, halted abortions following the reversal of Roe v. Wade last month, but it has enough cash reserves to provide other reproductive health services, including birth control, HIV treatment, prenatal care and gender-affirming care through about September. (Carrazana, 7/7)

Google and Yelp appear to have disabled the ability to post reviews for some crisis pregnancy centers listed on the platforms, which some activists say could prevent them from providing accurate information about the centers, which are known for trying to persuade women seeking abortions not to get them. Google appears to have also disabled the ability to post reviews of some abortion providers, like Planned Parenthood. (Rosenblatt, 7/8)

The changing landscape of abortion access across the country has prompted many Americans to turn to the internet for answers, including how to self-manage an unwanted pregnancy at home. Google searches for “DIY abortion” have skyrocketed since the Supreme Court’s decision in June overturning Roe v. Wade, the nearly 50-year landmark ruling that legalized abortion nationwide. (Rodriguez, 7/7)

"When most polls are used to justify support or opposition to abortion, they do not accurately reflect the true state of public opinion about abortion," said professor Andrew Smith, who formerly conducted the Ohio Poll and now is director of the University of New Hampshire's Survey Center. That's not to say that years of accumulated polls haven't established key points of consensus: • Most in the U.S. don't want to end all rights to have an abortion. (Rowland, 7/8)

A majority of Texans disapprove of the state’s trigger law, which will ban almost all abortions, new polling shows. The Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin shows 54% of respondents said they disapprove of the trigger law, and 37% approve. The law will go into effect in the coming weeks. (Wilson, 7/7)

A new poll paid for by a national Republican group found a tight race for control of the Maine Legislature this fall, with cost of living the most important issue for voters, followed by abortion rights. The survey, paid for by the Republican State Leadership Committee, which provided detailed information on the poll to the Bangor Daily News, is the first released publicly this year to provide insight on how Maine voters are thinking about Maine House and Senate races. (Piper, 7/8)

California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) announced on Thursday that his state will be producing its own “low cost” insulin, stating, “People should not go into debt to get lifesaving medication.” Newsom said that the state budget he recently signed includes $100 million for California to “contract and make [its] own insulin at a cheaper price, close to at cost, and to make it available to all.” (Breslin, 7/7)

California is ready to make its own insulin. Included in the recently signed budget package was nearly $101 million to develop and manufacture low-cost biosimilar insulin products. The undertaking is designed to increase the affordability and availability of insulin in California. “In California, we know people should not go into debt to receive life-saving medication,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a video Thursday. (Schallhorn, 7/7)

Five GOP senators are calling on the Senate Finance Committee to hold hearings on bipartisan legislation to lower the cost of insulin. Led by Sens. Pat Toomey (Pa.), and John Barrasso (Wyo.), the Republicans said they were concerned the legislation from Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) will be brought to the Senate floor for a vote without going through the committee first. (Weixel, 7/7)

In a new study, Yale researchers provide much-needed data on Americans who use insulin, whether and how they’re insured, and who is most at risk of extreme financial burden. According to their findings, 14% of people who use insulin in the United States face what are described as a “catastrophic” levels of spending on insulin, meaning they spent at least 40% of their postsubsistence income — what is available after paying for food and housing — on insulin. The findings were published July 5 in Health Affairs. (Locklear, 7/5)

Insulin is considered an essential medicine for people with diabetes, but its price has doubled during the past decade, posing substantial financial barriers to patients in the US. In this article we describe out-of-pocket spending on insulin and consider risk factors that could contribute to the likelihood of a person experiencing catastrophic spending, defined as spending more than 40 percent of their postsubsistence family income on insulin alone. (Bakkila, Basu and Lipska, 7/1)

The Department of Health and Human Services announced Thursday that it will distribute 144,000 doses of the two-shot Jynneos vaccine, which is approved for monkeypox and smallpox, to cities and states starting Monday. That's on top of 56,000 doses the department made available last week, of which 41,000 have been delivered. (Bendix, 7/8)

As his trip to Europe in mid-June was winding down, Justin, a 48-year-old Baltimore man, developed a fever and sore throat. His lymph nodes swelled. “When I started seeing dots on my body I thought, oh, boy, this isn’t anything I’ve experienced before,” he said. (Cohn, 7/7)

KHN: Vaccine And Testing Delays For Monkeypox Echo Failures In Early Covid Response

Andy Stone is one of the lucky ones. The New York City resident saw a tweet from a local AIDS activist saying that monkeypox vaccines would be available that day at a clinic in Manhattan. Stone, 35, and his husband booked appointments online right away and got their shots last month. “I want to do what I can to protect myself and others,” said Stone, a marketing consultant living in Brooklyn, who said his primary care doctor advised him to get the vaccine as soon as possible. (Andrews, 7/8)

Louisiana’s first detected cases of monkeypox have been found in a state resident and a visitor from out of state, the Louisiana Department of Health reported Thursday. “There are likely more undiagnosed human cases of monkeypox existing in Louisiana than have been formally tested and identified to date,” a news release said. (7/7)

Ten more men in Massachusetts have been diagnosed with monkeypox in the past week, bringing the number of cases in the state to 31 since the first infection was announced on May 18, health officials said Thursday, as the state rolled out a vaccination program for those at highest risk. (Fox, 7/7)

Health officials in Oregon said Thursday they have confirmed six cases of monkeypox in the state. The cases — all affecting men — include one in Multnomah County; three in Lane County; and two in Washington County, the Oregon Health Authority said in a statement. There have been no deaths. (7/7)

Dallas County’s health department is warning people who visited an Old East Dallas sauna in late June to monitor themselves for monkeypox symptoms after an out-of-state visitor had sexual encounters there while infected with the disease. (Marfin, 7/7)

Health experts agree that outdoor activities are still much safer than indoors, since viral aerosols don’t have a chance to accumulate in the air. But with the most transmissible variants yet, chances are you have less protection in certain situations. “Being at parks and outdoor sporting events is still what we should turn to,” said Dr. Anne Liu, an infectious disease doctor at Stanford. “But if you are in a dense crowd or in an outdoor space that has been modified to look like an indoor space, then the risk becomes higher.” (Vaziri, 7/7)

The most transmissible variant yet of the coronavirus is threatening a fresh wave of infections in the United States, even among those who have recovered from the virus fairly recently. ... “I think there’s an underappreciation of what it’s going to do to the country, and it already is exerting its effect,” said Eric Topol, a professor of molecular medicine at Scripps Research, who has written about the subvariant. (Leatherby, 7/7)

Thirty states reported more cases in the latest week than in the week before, according to a USA TODAY analysis of Johns Hopkins University data. That has also led to a rise in hospitalizations, with hospitals in 18 states reporting more COVID-19 patients than a week earlier. Twenty-three states had more patients in intensive care beds, and 15 states reported more deaths than a week earlier. (Rodriguez, 7/8)

Harris County this week officially surpassed one million confirmed COVID-19 cases, according to state health department data, but medical experts say the true number is likely much higher. The continuing surge of infections has been attributed to BA.5, the newest sub-variant. BA.5 accounts for 53.6% of new cases, making it the dominant COVID strain in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control. (Dozier, 7/7)

Fourteen more Utahns died of COVID-19 in the past week, as the state continues to experience a surge in coronavirus infections — although it’s impossible to measure the number of positive cases. (Pierce, 7/7)

Masks will be required for people using federal buildings or riding buses inside Denali National Park and Preserve because of high COVID-19 levels in the broader community, officials said Thursday. The mask mandate takes effect Friday, a statement from the park said. (7/7)

Physicians caution, however, that rest is an important part of weathering a COVID-19 infection. Plugging away from home is better than putting others at risk of getting infected, but it can still strain the immune system, worsening the toll of a COVID infection, experts say. (Alpert Reyes, 7/7)

Although farm and food production workers were considered essential workers during the pandemic, many of California’s food employers endangered those workers, violating Cal/OSHA’s COVID-19 guidelines more often than most industries, a new report said. The California Institute for Rural Studies’ report said farm and food production employers routinely failed to provide workers with face masks, nor did they enforce physical distancing or notify workers when there were COVID outbreaks at worksites. (Kalish, 7/7)

A new far-reaching report finds that Black Alaskans suffer higher rates of infant and maternal mortality, certain types of cancer, kidney failure and more severe illness from COVID-19 than residents of other races. (Berman, 7/7)

By the end of Thursday, roughly 300,000 children under the age of 5 years old will have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, a senior Biden administration official told ABC News. The 300,000 shots in arms so far for kids under 5 is about 1.5% of the roughly 19.5 million U.S. children 4 years old and younger. (Pezenik, 7/7)

U.S. officials had long predicted that the pace of vaccinating the youngest kids would be slower than for older groups. They expect most shots to take place at pediatricians’ offices. ... More than 5 million pediatric doses have been shipped to more than 15,000 locations, the White House said, ready for parents and kids to come in. (Miller and Johnson, 7/7)

In June, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended children as young as 6 months be vaccinated against COVID-19, and shortly after the Wisconsin Department of Health Services followed suit. However, there has been little updated guidance specific to the newly approved vaccines as they relate to child care and early education settings. (Lammert, 7/7)

A modeling study led by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) researchers estimates that COVID-19 vaccination averted 27 million infections, 1.6 million hospitalizations, and 235,000 deaths among US adults from December 2020 to September 2021. The study [was] published yesterday in JAMA Network Open. (Van Beusekom, 7/7)

Dr. Ashish Jha has a theory about why, after two years and counting, the Covid-19 pandemic still isn’t over. “We got the biological science right, but we didn’t get the social science right,” Jha said. (Onque, 7/7)

As the coronavirus pandemic entered its third year, the American public had lost much of its trust both in public health experts and in government leaders, and was less worried than before about Covid-19, according to a survey conducted in early May and released Thursday by the Pew Research Center. (Chung and Olson, 7/8)

A federal jury convicted Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, the former top lieutenant to Theranos Inc. founder Elizabeth Holmes, on all 12 charges that he helped perpetuate a yearslong fraud scheme at the blood-testing startup. The verdict is the second conviction against Theranos leadership and comes six months after a jury found Ms. Holmes guilty of fraud; it secures another major victory for the U.S. government, which brought the case against the pair in 2018. (Somerville and Bobrowsky, 7/7)

A whistleblower physician who was forced into retirement after raising concerns about anesthesia staffing practices during surgeries at a Los Angeles Veterans Affairs hospital has gotten his old job back, federal officials said Thursday. (7/7)

KHN: KHN’s ‘What The Health?’: A Chat With The Surgeon General On Health Worker Burnout

The pandemic has taken a toll on everyone, but those who work in health care have suffered disproportionately, according to a new report from the office of U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy. And it’s not just the workers who are at risk. “If not addressed, the health worker burnout crisis will make it harder for patients to get care when they need it, cause health costs to rise, hinder our ability to prepare for the next public health emergency, and worsen health disparities,” according to the report. (7/7)

KHN: Digital Mental Health Companies Draw Scrutiny And Growing Concerns

When Pat Paulson’s son told her he was feeling anxious and depressed at college, Paulson went through her Blue Cross Blue Shield provider directory and started calling mental health therapists. No providers in the Wisconsin city where her son’s university is located had openings. So she bought a monthly subscription to BetterHelp, a Mountain View, California, company that links people to therapists online. (Meyer, 7/8)

State and national groups representing hospitals and doctors are trying to help sway the Florida Supreme Court in a dispute about whether a medical malpractice lawsuit should have been allowed to move forward. (Saunders, 7/7)

A 4-foot-tall droid named Pepper — preprogrammed with hundreds of jokes — is one of two robots now working at a nursing home in Roseville, Minnesota, entertaining residents and helping monitor their health. (Kingson, 7/8)

Younger Black leukemia patients were likelier to die early or not go into complete remission than their white peers when receiving the same intensive treatment, according to a new study in Blood Advances. (Dreher, 7/7)

People with Down syndrome are highly sought after for Alzheimer's research studies because many develop the disease in their 40s and 50s, and most will get it if they live long enough. The elevated risk for Alzheimer's comes from the extra copy of chromosome 21 carried by people with Down syndrome. (Hamilton, 7/7)

On a chilly October evening a decade ago, physician Michael Cohen arrived at Boston’s Logan International Airport lugging a hefty contraption, built like a tiny tank, that immediately drew the attention of airport security officers. It was a device to detect ear problems, and he and a colleague were hauling it around the globe. (Chen, 7/8)

"If you don't get the treatment, you're usually going to die from this," says Dr. Fabiana Alves, director of the leishmaniasis cluster at the Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative. VL is even more devastating for a patient whose immune system has been compromised by HIV, simply because the existing VL treatments don't work as well. And in parts of the world where VL is rampant, like eastern Africa and Southeast Asia, a significant percentage of patients are HIV positive. (Barnhart, 7/7)

If you are someone who gets angry if you haven't eaten, also known as "hangry," a new study says you aren't being irrational. The findings, published in the peer-reviewed journal Plos One on Wednesday, come from one of the first studies to examine the relationship of hunger and anger, Viren Swami, lead author and social psychology professor at Anglia Ruskin University in the U.K., told USA TODAY via email. (Mendoza, 7/7)

The third heat wave of the still-early summer is scorching the US South, and "it will get worse ... before it gets better," warns the National Weather Service. Over 65 million people across 16 states are under heat alerts Thursday, with triple-digit heat indexes -- or "feels like" temperatures -- expected in cities including Dallas; St. Louis; Memphis, Tennessee; Little Rock, Arkansas; Birmingham, Alabama; Atlanta; and Raleigh, North Carolina. (Major, Ward and Garrett, 7/7)

Nightfall will bring little relief, with temperatures remaining in the upper 70s and low 80s.“These multiday heat waves can become more dangerous, because the body is unable to cool off at night,” said Zack Taylor, a Weather Service meteorologist. “And it’s just repeating, day after day after day of high heat and humidity.” (Paz, 7/6)

“Heat kills more people than any other weather-related event,” explained Ashley Ward, a policy associate at the Duke Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions. Part of the reason heat is so deadly, she said, is because you can’t see it. (Donnelly-DeRoven, 7/8)

The Oklahoma City metro area's largest emergency medical service provider has issued its third medical heat advisory of the year, with temperatures across the state expected to continue climbing to the triple digits through Monday. Emergency Medical Services Authority (EMSA) said in a release Thursday that personnel had responded to six calls that were suspected of being caused by heat-related illness Wednesday. (Williams, 7/7)

A Little Rock advocacy group is working to keep unsheltered Arkansans safe from the extreme temperatures this week. Aaron Reddin is the Executive Director of The Van, a group that does outreach work for the homeless community in central Arkansas. He spent Thursday delivering ice to six camps in the city. (Epperson, 7/7)

With a new state law addressing the clean-up of chemical compounds that have been widely used by industries, a Florida International University study says the substances have been found in oysters in Biscayne Bay, the Marco Island area and Tampa Bay. (7/7)

The reappearance of an invasive snail species forced state officials to enact a quarantine order two weeks ago for residents of Florida's Pasco County, an area north of Tampa along the gulf coast. As of Thursday, more than 1,000 snails had been captured, said agriculture commissioner Nikki Fried, with the vast majority of them found alive. (Mae Czachor, 7/7)

Four young adults participating in a swim practice were sickened at the Cohasset Swim Center on Wednesday after the facility opened prematurely and a broken pipe caused a leak in its largest pool, town officials said. The center, which is not owned or operated by the town, opened to the public without its finalized building permit or pool health inspection permit, according to a statement Thursday from the office of Cohasset Town Manager Christopher G. Senior. (Fox, 7/7)

In a weekly update, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) yesterday reported 12 more unexplained pediatric hepatitis cases in children, raising the national total to 332. The number of affected states held steady, at 42. (7/7)

North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper signed 11 bills on his desk into law Thursday, including legislation that addresses sexual assault, domestic violence and alcohol sales. ... One signed measure makes clear that hospitals or medical offices can’t attempt to bill victims of sexual assault or their insurance companies for forensic medical examinations, leaving it to a special state fund that’s already been in place to cover the payment. (Robertson, 7/7)

Health care advocates in Ohio want Congress to extend temporary federal health insurance premium subsidies that expire at the end of the current plan year. They warn that failing to extend the subsidies would jeopardize health insurance coverage for thousands of Ohioans who would otherwise have difficulty paying their premiums. (Eaton, 7/7)

An Oregon Health Authority analysis released Thursday has found that drug overdose deaths in Oregon more than doubled between 2019 and 2021, driven largely by misuse of the powerful synthetic opioid fentanyl. (7/8)

Colorado policymakers had big ambitions to help children in the juvenile justice, foster care and mental health systems this year. Some of those big-idea reforms for children were pushed to the side or relegated to task force conversations, though Colorado approved “once-in-a-generation” funding for children’s psychiatric care. (Brown, 7/7)

As a fashion statement they’re not much. But these rubber bracelets could make a big difference with police officers interacting with individuals suffering from mental illness and alter the results of an encounter from a trip to jail to referral to treatment. ... The bracelets, which say CIT (Critical Intervention Training) on one side and Mental Health Alert on the other, can let police know how to better handle a situation when they encounter someone who is wearing one. (Mauldin, 7/6)

KHN: The Search For Scarce Formula Is Worse For Rural Families On WIC 

Two months after giving birth, Jennifer Magee noticed a change in her baby’s feeding routine that scared her: She was starting to drink more formula, almost every hour. Increased appetite is normal for growing infants, including Magee’s daughter, Aubrey. But amid the national formula shortage, Magee, 25, had only one container left, barely enough to last three days. (Saint Louis, 7/8)

The fatal shooting of former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe at a campaign event Friday has shocked a country that has some of the world’s strictest laws on gun ownership, with political assassinations rare in the past few decades. ... In 2020, there were nearly 192,000 licensed firearms, largely shotguns and hunting rifles, according to the National Police Agency, in a country with a population estimated at around 125 million. “Gun violence is very, very rare,” according to Satona Suzuki, a lecturer in Japanese history at SOAS University of London. (Francis and Inuma, 7/8)

Nancy Snow, Japan director of the International Security Industrial Council, told CNN that Friday's shooting will change the country "forever." "It's not only rare, but it's really culturally unfathomable," Snow said. "The Japanese people can't imagine having a gun culture like we have in the United States. This is a speechless moment." (Regan and Ogura, 7/8)

Japan has close to zero tolerance of gun ownership and one of the lowest rates of gun violence in the world, making the attack on Shinzo Abe a particularly extraordinary act of violence. A 1958 postwar law on the possession of swords and firearms states: “No one shall possess a firearm or firearms or a sword or swords.” The pathway to gun ownership in Japan takes 13 steps. First, potential gun owners need to join a hunting or shooting club, they then have to take a firearm class and pass a written exam, before getting a doctor to state they are mentally fit and have no history of drug dependency. (Kelly and McCurry, 7/8)

The spate of shooting attacks in communities such as Highland Park, Ill.; Uvalde, Tex.; and Buffalo has riveted attention on America’s staggering number of public mass killings. But the rising number of gun deaths in the United States extends beyond such high-profile episodes, emerging nearly every day inside homes, outside bars and on the streets of many cities, according to federal data. (Berman, Bernstein, Keating, Tran and Galocha, 7/8)

The New York City Police Department said Thursday that murders and shootings are down in the city, despite three people being killed within an hour the night before. In June, murders were down 12% compared to the same period last year and shootings decreased by 13% last month compared to June 2021, the department said. (Grant and Katersky, 7/7)

No new counseling resources were announced this week on this city’s impoverished South Side, even after a man was shot to death in broad daylight, feet from a playground, days before July Fourth. There are no crowdsourced charity drives raising millions for victims’ families in Chicago, where the holiday weekend death toll reached at least 10 with 62 injured — numbers that exceed the toll from a July Fourth parade shooting in nearby Highland Park, Ill. In that affluent lakeside suburb, the violence was an anomaly. Here, it is a grimly regular occurrence. (Klemko, 7/7)

For Jane Stefan, the nationwide formula shortage didn’t just mean the inconvenience of seeking an alternative brand for an infant. It triggered something much more dire: She had to have her 6-year-old daughter, Vivienne Pereira, admitted to the hospital for IV nutrition. (Said, 7/5)

To improve abortion access, a bunch of local and national organizations known as "abortion funds" have formed over the years to help people pay for the procedure. In post-Roe America, money is now even more determinative of who can get an abortion and who can't, and abortion funds are emerging as an even more crucial mechanism to provide poor women in red states the opportunity to access care if they want or need it. (Rosalsky, 7/5)

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), engineers developed a new liver tissue model to help reveal the stages of liver regeneration in hopes to help those individuals with liver disease, according to a new study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The researchers said by finding an effective way to stimulate the liver to regenerate on its own, some liver transplants could potentially be avoided and it may help a donated liver grow after being transplanted, according to a media release from MIT. (McGorry, 7/2)

When the time comes near to choose a nursing home for a loved one, the ideal path is to visit one or more facilities and talk with administrators, staff, and residents, according to people familiar with this transition. But for many families, the need for a nursing home is an urgent one, precipitated by a fall or a catastrophic illness that has suddenly rendered a loved one unable to cope at home. (Goldsmith, 7/5)

To slow down the rapid spread of tick-borne illnesses, the ideal public health strategy would be to predict where the pests are likely to be concentrated—and immediately getting this information to medical professionals and the public. That’s why researchers are trying to develop an accurate way of forecasting where dangerous ticks might be. Such a program could ideally be used like a weather map to anticipate danger areas. (Eschner, 7/7)

Lisa Ward's son Jace has been gone for exactly a year now. But his impact on the care of children with brain cancer continues. Lisa is making sure of that. Jace, of Wamego, Kansas, was 20 and a sophomore at Kansas State University when he was diagnosed with diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma, DIPG, a particularly aggressive form of brain cancer that usually strikes younger children. Affecting about 300 Americans a year, DIPG spreads its tentacles through the brainstem where functions like breathing and movement are controlled. (Weintraub, 7/3)

For 13-year-old Reagan Bischoff, who lives in Potomac Falls, the simple tasks that other people accomplish with ease were often the hardest and most frustrating for her: buttoning her jeans or brushing her hair. Since early childhood, she’s had to deal with the mental and physical challenges of cerebral palsy and partial paralysis on the left side of her body after brain surgery. But her determination, drive and willingness to learn and teach other kids ways to tackle those challenges recently won her an award from Brain Injury Services, a nonprofit that provides services to people with brain injuries in Northern Virginia. (Hedgpeth, 7/3)

Falling and hitting your head can be scary. In the moment, it can be difficult to figure out how serious your injury is, what you should do next and what symptoms might signal a possible emergency. A blow to the head can cause a traumatic brain injury (TBI), bleeding in the brain, a concussion or a contusion (a bruise on the brain). But quick action can help mitigate some of the most serious potential outcomes. Here is how to assess your personal risk level after a severe head injury, and when you need to call for immediate help. (Abramson, 7/4)

Bruce Murray remembers every micro detail from the 1990 World Cup: scoring a goal, assisting on another and, with a band of former college stars leading the U.S. national team, helping put a mighty scare into Italy. ... In recent years, though, Murray has forgotten to turn off the ignition of his car before entering his Potomac townhouse. He has had to remind himself that his two young children were in the back seat. A light drinker, he has gone on benders. He has checked himself in at a hotel for no apparent reason. He lost his balance on a run along the C&O Canal, tumbling into a tree and rolling into the water. At 56, Murray is among the former athletes likely to have chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, a degenerative brain disease found in people with a history of repetitive brain trauma. (Goff, 7/5)

Travis Barker, an American musician and drummer for the rock band Blink-182, was hospitalized on June 28 with pancreatitis, TMZ first reported. ... It was initially reported that Barker recently had a colonoscopy, leading many to wonder if the two events were linked. A colonoscopy is a type of endoscopy procedure that is used to examine the inside of the gastrointestinal tract. Barker later clarified in a tweet that he had an endoscopy with a polyp removal that “damaged a critical pancreatic drainage tube.” Here’s what you need to know. (Pasricha, 7/5)

The actor Brad Pitt said in a recent interview that he has prosopagnosia, a rare neurological disorder commonly referred to as face blindness. While Mr. Pitt, 58, has never been formally diagnosed with the condition, he said in an interview with GQ that he had struggled for years to recognize people’s faces. In 2013, he told Esquire that his inability to recognize people’s faces had become so severe that he often wanted to isolate himself as a result. “That’s why I stay home,” he said. (Blum, 7/6)

It is time for the global public health community to recognize a growing reality: Monkeypox is now a pandemic. And unless we declare an emergency and act quickly to combat it, we risk repeating the same mistakes we made with our covid-19 battle. (Eric Feigl-Ding, Kavita Patel and Yaneer Bar-Yam, 7/7)

The pandemic is a relentless race against Mother Nature. Waves of infection took millions of lives, and only highly effective vaccines prevented even more deaths. Now, the coronavirus is speeding up once again, mutating, evading immunity and still on the march. The arrival of subvariant BA.5 should be a reminder that the finish line in this race is nowhere to be seen. (7/7)

For the first time since the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention introduced its three-level risk system in March 2022, on June 30 its community level map of Covid-19 cases had the dubious distinction of more counties classified as medium risk or high risk (55%) than those at low risk. (Sheldon H. Jacobson, 7/7)

India’s humidity rises before the heat recedes in the buildup to the monsoon in mid-June. It’s at this critical intersection that the danger to human health is greatest. Conditions in Bhubaneswar reached 37 degrees and close to 80% humidity in the week Bloomberg visited last month. If both maximums occur at the same time, that’s equivalent to a wet-bulb temperature of nearly 34C. (David Fickling and Ruth Pollard, 7/7)

The Food and Drug Administration wants to prevent smoking-related deaths by making cigarettes less appealing. Toward that end, the FDA plans to ban menthol cigarettes and limit nicotine content to “reduce the addictiveness of cigarettes.” (Jacob Sullum, 7/7)

For decades, the most pressing aspect of any presidential election for many voters has been the candidate’s stance on abortion and his or her ability to appoint Supreme Court justices who share the candidate’s views. The Supreme Court, for its part, regularly resisted attempts at politicization, insisting on stare decisis. The court also regularly reminded litigants, and the world, that the legislature is where the legality of abortion should be decided. (Tamara Kay and Susan Ostermann, 7/7)

In the aftermath of Roe’s being overturned, supporters of the move want to pretend that abortion access can be surgically extracted from women’s health care decision-making as a whole. Nothing could be further from the truth. (Jamie Abrams, 7/7)

In the shock and outrage of response to the overturning of Roe v. Wade, a lot of outdated, incomplete and false ideas about abortion have come to dominate public discourse. Some are afraid that the end of Roe means a return to the days of the coat hanger. Some are stocking up on the abortion pill, which, while far from ideal, is at least not lethal. While it is true that the end of Roe will cause needless suffering and grave complications for people with wanted and unwanted pregnancies, it’s also true that we now have more options than we think. The rallying feminist slogan “Knowledge is Power” has never felt more urgent. (Jennifer Block and Elisa Albert, 7/7)

The 5-4 Supreme Court majority that overturned Roe v. Wade said it was returning decision-making to the states. But conservatives are making a play to block interstate travel for abortions. If they succeed, there might as well be a federal ban. (Jill Lawrence, 7/5)

A Dispatch reader say immaculate conception is not involved in unwanted pregnancies. She questioned why accountability for men is not being discussed. Columbus Conversation: The Future of Abortion in Ohio. (7/8)

The Supreme Court’s decision to overturn federal protection for abortion changed in an instant how many people think about pregnancy. But it is also changing how health systems need to think about their current and future sharing and monetization efforts for real-world evidence. (Eric D. Perakslis, 7/8)

The key concepts every person should know. (7/7)

In the midst of the apocalyptic hysteria surrounding the Dobbs v. Jackson decision overruling Roe v. Wade, impassioned advocates largely ignore some significant points of consensus on the always-explosive issue of abortion. There is at least one long-term development that all sides could celebrate as positive and promising. (Michael Medved, 7/8)