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Americans can start signing up Friday for health care coverage offered through the Affordable Care Act marketplace for 2025, days before a presidential election that could threaten eligibility and raise costs for millions of those in the program. The future of ‘Obamacare’ has emerged as a key issue in the closing days of the presidential campaign, with a top GOP leader promising this week to overhaul the program should Republican Donald Trump win the presidency. (Seitz, 10/31)

When Camila Bortolleto was 9 years old, her parents brought her from Brazil to the U.S. Bortolleto’s parents are undocumented, but in 2013 she was approved for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which allowed her to get a job and, with it, job-based health insurance. ... DACA recipients have been barred from receiving government-funded health insurance. That changed Friday, when tens of thousands of DACA recipients became able to sign up for health insurance coverage under the Affordable Care Act for the first time. (Lovelace Jr., 11/1)

Republican-led states historically opposed to the Affordable Care Act are seeing an influx of health insurance options for 2025 as insurers see a new market opportunity. Centene, Elevance Health, UnitedHealth Group’s UnitedHealthcare and Oscar Health are among the companies with large businesses selling individual coverage, also known as Obamacare, via the government’s healthcare.gov exchange. The new products from these health insurers will debut Friday, the first day of open enrollment, which runs to December 15 for coverage that starts January 1, 2025. (Japsen, 10/31)

Many people may consider high deductible health insurance plans that offer lower monthly premiums – the amount one pays the insurance company for the policy – but have higher deductibles than traditional HMO and PPO plans. High deductible plans have become more appealing over the last decade as health care costs and premiums have risen, experts say. Nearly 30% of workers with health insurance enrolled in high deductible plans in 2023, compared to 20% in 2013. (Harris Bond, 10/31)

Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris warned voters on Thursday that Republican Donald Trump and his allies would scale back healthcare programs if he wins the White House and said his comments at a Wednesday rally were offensive to women. In a brief press conference, Vice President Harris reminded voters that former President Trump had tried unsuccessfully to repeal the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, during his 2017-2021 presidency. (Mason and Oliphant, 11/1)

Donald Trump said the Affordable Care Act “sucks” but denied that he wanted to end the healthcare law, commonly known as Obamacare. Vice President Kamala Harris has charged that Trump and Republicans want to kill the politically polarizing program, which broadened health coverage for Americans and protected people with pre-existing medical conditions. (Andrews, 11/1)

The Covid pandemic dominated the last years of Donald Trump’s presidency, and the discontent it caused most likely contributed to his loss in 2020. But on the campaign trail this year, Mr. Trump rarely talks in depth about public health, dwelling instead on immigration, the economy and his grievances. Still, Project 2025, the blueprint for a new Republican administration shaped by many former Trump staff members, lays out momentous changes to the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the National Institutes of Health. (Mandavilli, 10/31)

If you’re confused, it’s not an accident. Republicans are trying to have it both ways on health care during the 2024 campaign. They boast that they want to deregulate insurance and massively cut government spending, yet they also claim that they would never do anything to endanger people’s coverage. (Scott, 10/31)

�������ýҕ�l Health News' 'What the Health?' Podcast: The Campaign’s Final Days

It’s the final days of the 2024 campaign, and Republicans are suddenly talking again about making changes to the Affordable Care Act if former President Donald Trump wins. Meanwhile, new reporting uncovers more maternal deaths under state abortion bans — and a case in which a Nevada woman was jailed after a miscarriage. Lauren Weber of The Washington Post, Shefali Luthra of The 19th, and Jessie Hellmann of CQ Roll Call join �������ýҕ�l Health News’ Emmarie Huetteman to discuss these stories and more. Also this week, �������ýҕ�l Health News’ Julie Rovner interviews Irving Washington, a senior vice president at KFF and the executive director of its Health Misinformation and Trust Initiative. (10/31)

Kamala Harris said Thursday that Donald Trump’s comment that he would protect women “whether [they] like it or not” showed that the Republican presidential nominee does not understand women’s “agency, their authority, their right and their ability to make decisions about their own lives, including their own bodies.” “I think it’s offensive to everybody,” the Democratic nominee and vice president said before setting out to campaign in Arizona and Nevada, two swing states. (Weissert and Long, 10/31)

Vice President Kamala Harris attacked former President Donald J. Trump on Thursday for claiming that he would protect American women “whether the women like it or not.” Later, her campaign pounced on a new Trump remark that his ally Robert F. Kennedy Jr. would “work on women’s health” in his administration. (Rogers, Gold, Browning and Epstein, 10/31)

�������ýҕ�l Health News: Trump Wants Harris To Pay A Political Price For Generous Immigrant Health Policies

Democratic-led states such as Illinois are increasingly opening public insurance programs to immigrants lacking permanent legal status. A dozen had already covered children; even more provided prenatal coverage. But now more states are covering adults living in the country without authorization — and some are phasing in coverage for seniors, who are more expensive and a harder political sell than kids. The expansions recognize the costs that patients living here illegally can otherwise impose on hospitals. But the policies are under harsh attack from former President Donald Trump and other Republicans who seek to make his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, the face of reckless immigration policies. (Kenen, 11/1)

One of former president Donald J. Trump’s final television ads before Election Day reprises an old talking point. The segment, released Oct. 17, declares that Vice President Kamala Harris “wants struggling seniors to pay more Social Security taxes while she gives Medicare and Social Security to illegals.” The first half of the statement is inaccurate. Ms. Harris has not suggested raising Social Security taxes for seniors; instead, she has said she supports eliminating the $168,000 income cap on the taxes workers pay to fund Social Security, a threshold above which income becomes exempt. ... The latter half of the ad’s claim — that Ms. Harris supports giving taxpayer-funded health benefits to illegal immigrants — is a misrepresentation of Ms. Harris’s current proposals. (Baumgaertner and Sanger-Katz, 10/30)

In this election, presidential campaigns are offering proposals on home care and the child tax credit, speaking to parents and caregivers more directly than ever before. But there is one policy proposal that has been conspicuously absent: What would Kamala Harris or Donald Trump do about paid medical and family leave? (Carrazana, 10/30)

�������ýҕ�l Health News: Paid Sick Leave Is Up For A Vote In Three States

Voters in Missouri, Nebraska, and Alaska will soon decide whether workers in those states should be entitled to paid sick leave. If approved, the ballot measures would allow many workers to accrue paid time off, a benefit supporters say means workers — especially those with low-paying jobs — would no longer have to fear losing wages or possibly the jobs themselves for getting sick. Proponents say such policies benefit the broader public, too, allowing workers to stay home when sick or to care for ill family members to stem the spread of infectious diseases. (Liss, 11/1)

The governor’s ties to the Mayo Clinic raise questions about the world-renowned hospital’s potential influence on federal health care reform. (Nesterak and Lussenhop, 10/30)

Trump transition team co-chair Howard Lutnick said during a Wednesday interview on CNN that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wouldn't head the Health and Human Services department if former President Donald Trump wins the election. The comments came after Kennedy told supporters at a virtual event on Monday that Trump had “promised” him control of several health-focused governmental offices, including HHS. (Martinez, 10/31)

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is poised to have significant control over health and food safety in a potential Trump administration, with discussions about some Cabinet and agency officials reporting to him, according to four people familiar with the planning process who spoke on the condition of anonymity to detail private conversations. Kennedy has been privately meeting with Trump transition officials to help draw up an agenda for a new administration, which could involve the longtime anti-vaccine activist taking a role as a White House czar rather than attempting to win Senate confirmation to lead an agency, the people said. (Diamond, Weber, Dawsey, Scherer and Roubein, 10/31)

The co-chair of the Trump-Vance transition team on Wednesday night endorsed vaccine conspiracy theories pushed by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and suggested the activist and Trump ally would be given federal data in order to check vaccines’ safety if former President Donald Trump is elected. Speaking to CNN’s Kaitlan Collins on “The Source,” Howard Lutnick, who said he recently spent two and a half hours with Kennedy, also said Kennedy is “not getting a job for (the Department of Health and Human Services),” which is contrary to a claim the activist made earlier this week in which he said Trump promised to give him “control” of several public health agencies, HHS among them. Lutnick also said tech entrepreneur Elon Musk would “help” rather than serve in the government if Trump wins. (Shelton, 10/31)

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. may be poised to play a key health role in the next administration should Donald Trump get re-elected, according to two people close to the campaign and familiar with the plans. The current thinking is that the role for the former independent candidate would be spearheading what one of the people described as the “Operation Warp Speed for childhood chronic disease,” referring to the title of the Covid vaccine development project during Trump’s first term. Kennedy is well-known for his criticism and skepticism of the Covid vaccine and other immunizations. (Burns and Lovelace Jr., 10/31)

Donald Trump’s embrace of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his fringe health theories is triggering a flurry of outreach in Washington and beyond, with powerful ag interests rushing to defend their industries from Kennedy’s threats. Trade groups representing farmers say they’re pushing the Trump campaign over concerns about Kennedy’s rhetoric on American agriculture. And lobbyists for packaged food companies and other major industry players are rushing to defend their use of additives and other ingredients under fire in the heat of the campaign. (Brown, Yarrow and Gibson, 10/31)

Donald Trump has changed the way scientists engage with presidential elections. After he was voted president in 2016, tens of thousands attended the March for Science around the country the following year. When he was running for reelection against Joe Biden in 2020, several journals, including Nature and The Lancet Oncology, took the historic step of endorsing a candidate in a presidential race for the first time. (Oza, 11/1)

The groups promoting ballot measures to add amendments to the constitutions in nine states that would enshrine a right to abortion have raised more than $160 million. That’s nearly six times what their opponents have brought in, The Associated Press found in an analysis of campaign finance data compiled by the watchdog group Open Secrets and state governments. (Mulvihill, 10/31)

Across the country’s most competitive House races, Republicans have spent months trying to redefine themselves on abortion, going so far as to borrow language that would not feel out of place at a rally of Vice President Kamala Harris. Many Republicans who until recently backed federal abortion restrictions are now saying the issue should be left to the states. At least a half-dozen Republican candidates have put out direct-to-camera ads declaring their opposition to a federal abortion ban. Instead, they say, they support exceptions to existing state laws and back protections for reproductive health care, such as I.V.F. (McCann and Li, 10/31)

That relationship is now in tatters, and the movement to end abortion in America finds itself struggling not to be written off as a political liability by Trump and the Republican Party, which are facing a public backlash to the rollback of abortion access. Antiabortion groups also have lost seven consecutive ballot referendums and appear on track to lose most of the 10 measures to protect abortion rights that are on state ballots in this election, including in conservative states such as Florida and Missouri. (Kusisto, 10/31)

More than 80 percent of abortions in the United States happen before 10 weeks, in the embryonic stage of pregnancy. But in the politics of abortion, the arguments and almost all of the ads focus on the other end, on the much rarer abortions later in pregnancy. This has never been more evident, or consequential, than this year. It’s the first presidential election year since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. Ten states are voting on abortion rights ballot measures, including states that are battlegrounds for the presidency and control of Congress, and polls show that abortion has newly energized Democrats and women. (Zernike, 10/31)

While often overshadowed by Trump’s emphasis on migrants, his broadsides against LGBTQ people have seemed to grow more frequent and ominous in the campaign’s final days, intended both to stir his core supporters and coax votes from more moderate voters who may not mesh with Trump on other matters. It’s part of an overall campaign in which Trump has pushed his own brand of hyper-masculinity, most recently referring several times to CNN anchor Anderson Cooper, who is gay, by a woman’s name, “Allison Cooper.” Harris has largely ignored Trump’s attacks but has pushed back on his characterization of her stances, noting that federal policy giving U.S. military personnel access to gender-affirming medical care and transgender surgery was in place during Trump’s presidency. (Barrow, 11/1)

Senator JD Vance of Ohio criticized what he called “gender transition craziness,” spoke dismissively of women he claimed were “celebrating” their abortions and said that studies “connect testosterone levels in young men with conservative politics” during a three-hour episode of “The Joe Rogan Experience” that was released on Thursday. (Cameron, Levien and Vigdor, 10/31)

As voters in nine states determine whether to enshrine abortion rights in their state constitutions, opponents are using parental rights and anti-transgender messages to try to undermine support for the ballot proposals. (Fernando, 10/31)

Donald Trump is spending more on ads criticizing Kamala Harris’ support for transgender rights than he is on any other subject in the campaign’s closing days — and down-ballot Republicans are following suit, believing the issue can tip close races. But nationwide, the GOP is finding it’s easier to oppose trans rights in theory than in reality — when it means kicking a child off a team or blocking parents from proceeding with medical care recommended by a doctor. Some Republicans are even warning their party’s stance conflicts with conservative values on individual and parental rights. (Payne, 10/31)

Voters across Maryland will decide if the right to reproductive freedom should be protected in the state's constitution. State ballot question one asks if the ability to prevent, continue or end a pregnancy should be protected. Even though abortion is already legal in Maryland, this question would cement the freedoms in the state. If it is approved by the voters, the state general assembly wouldn't be able to restrict access to reproductive freedoms. "It's just one step further of protection of reproductive rights," Michael Spivey, senior lecturer at the University of Maryland in the department of government and politics, said. (Lynch, 10/31)

A number of states will vote on ballot measures related to substance use, insurance and other health-related issues on Nov. 5 — in addition to the 11 abortion-related measures before voters. The health-related initiatives cover a range of topics. California, South Dakota and Illinois voters will be asked about changes to insurance programs, while New Mexico, Nevada and Washington state will weigh changes related to care facilities. (Hellmann and Cohen, 10/31)

California’s zealous commitment to direct democracy often enlists voters to weigh in on proposals that commit funding to certain priorities. But rarely have they been invited to do what this year’s Proposition 35 asks: decide some of the nitty-gritty line items in the state’s vast Medicaid budget, work that typically takes lawmakers months of tortuous negotiating and debating each year. If Prop 35 passes, voters will hand over the keys to billions of dollars locked into a spending plan first hashed out in private by the state’s most powerful health care interests. Elected officials would have a much harder time adjusting the formula, allowing for only narrow changes passed by a three-fourths majority. (Bluth, 10/31)

The presidential election is already stressful for most Americans – and these stressors can trickle down into relationships. A new poll from the American Psychological Association (APA) found that 77% of Americans believe the future of our nation is a "significant source of stress," along with the economy (73%) and the upcoming election (69%). The "Stress in America" online survey, which polled 3,000 U.S. adults of different political affiliations in August 2024, analyzed potential fallout from election results, including in people's relationships. (Stabile, 10/31)

Louisiana’s new law categorizing two widely used abortion drugs as “controlled dangerous substances” was challenged in a state court lawsuit Thursday by a physician, a pharmacist and others who say the legislation sets up needless, dangerous delays in treatment during medical emergencies. Although there already was a near-total abortion ban in Louisiana, including by medication, the reclassification of the drugs — mifepristone and misoprostol, which have other critical reproductive health care uses — went into effect earlier this month. (Cline and McGill, 10/31)

A group of health care providers and two Louisiana women who were denied abortion care are suing state officials to block a new law that makes common pregnancy medications controlled dangerous substances, arguing the law is discriminatory and unconstitutional. The plaintiffs include Birthmark Doula Collective in New Orleans, Dr. Emily Holt, a New Orleans family medicine physician, Shreveport pharmacist Kaylee Self, who is pregnant, and Nancy Davis and Kaitlyn Joshua, two Baton Rouge women who were denied abortion care in 2022 after Louisiana’s near-total ban took effect. (Westwood, 10/31)

It often starts with suspicion: Why didn’t she call for an ambulance when the bleeding started? What if she didn’t want the baby? Maybe she took something — or inquired about abortion pills? How a person handles a pregnancy loss — and where it occurs — can mean the difference between a private medical issue and a criminal charge for abuse of a corpse, child neglect or even murder. (Aspinwall, 10/31)

Candace Fails screamed for someone in the Texas hospital to help her pregnant daughter. “Do something,” she pleaded, on the morning of Oct. 29, 2023. Nevaeh Crain was crying in pain, too weak to walk, blood staining her thighs. Feverish and vomiting the day of her baby shower, the 18-year-old had gone to two different emergency rooms within 12 hours, returning home each time worse than before. (Presser and Surana, 11/1)

California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta blasted the city of Beverly Hills in a news conference Thursday, accusing city officials of colluding to keep out a third-trimester abortion clinic last year. Bonta opened an investigation after DuPont Clinic accused Beverly Hills of conspiring with antiabortion activists and pressuring its landlord to back out of a lease that would’ve allowed the reproductive healthcare provider to open an abortion clinic on Wilshire Boulevard. The battle thrust the city into the national spotlight, testing California’s reputation as a haven for reproductive rights. (Flemming, 10/31)

Baxter International's largest facility has restarted its highest-throughput manufacturing line for IV solutions in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene. Before hurricane-related damage led to the September shutdown of the company's facility in Marion, North Carolina, the plant produced 60% of the IV solutions used daily in the U.S. It is still uncertain when it will fully reopen, the company said in a Thursday website update. (DeSilva, 10/31)

Beginning Nov. 1, CMS will require hospitals to report admission information related to respiratory illnesses, including capacity, to the CDC. The new rule reinstates some pandemic-era requirements that have been voluntary since May 1. (Gregerson, 10/31)

Federal and state regulators' push for more information on potential cross-market hospital mergers is setting up a showdown that could slow or potentially scuttle the increasingly common combinations. Regulators are asking for more information from insurers and employers that work with organizations pursuing transactions between hospitals that are at least 50 miles apart, merger and acquisition advisers said. In many cases, the Federal Trade Commission has worked with state regulators to suss out the potential effects of cross-market hospital consolidation, the advisers added. (Kacik, 10/31)

Steward Health Care completed the $245 million sale of its physician group, Stewardship Health, to private equity-owned Rural Healthcare Group. As part of the transaction, Kinderhook Industries, the private equity firm that owns Rural Healthcare Group, plans to rebrand the combined company as Revere Medical, Kinderhook said Thursday in a news release. The acquisition adds about 5,000 employed and affiliated Stewardship physicians across nine states to Revere’s network of 17 primary care clinics in Tennessee and North Carolina. (Kacik, 10/31)

The sale of the Stewardship Health doctors group — the last piece of Steward Health Care’s once extensive holdings in Massachusetts — was completed Thursday, ending the company’s 14-year run in the state. Kinderhook Industries Inc., a New York-based private equity firm, said it had consummated its $245 million buyout of Stewardship. The physicians network includes about 5,000 employed and affiliated doctors in 10 states, about half of them in Massachusetts. (Weisman, 10/31)

University of Chicago Medicine has received a $75 million donation from the AbbVie Foundation to help it build its massive new cancer hospital on the city’s South Side. The money will go toward construction of UChicago Medicine’s new freestanding hospital — a 575,000-square-foot project that is expected to cost $815 million. The building will be named the AbbVie Foundation Cancer Pavilion, and is slated to open in 2027. (Schencker, 10/31)

Whether its lead from old buildings, arsenic from contaminated food or strontium fallout from a nuclear explosion, heavy metals that enter the body pose a serious health threat. With chemical properties exceedingly similar to typical nutrients like iron and calcium, toxic metals look virtually the same to the body. So, it starts incorporating the toxic elements into the skeleton, liver and brain. (Haggerty, 10/31)

Private equity firm Francisco Partners said Wednesday it planned to acquire medical software company AdvancedMD from payment technology company Global Payments. Francisco Partners is acquiring AdvancedMD for $1.12 billion, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing from Global Payments. Global Payments acquired AdvancedMD for $700 million in September 2018 from investment firm Marlin Equity Partners. (Turner, 10/31)

Oracle previewed a new electronic health record flush with artificial intelligence tools Tuesday as it tries to win back market share lost to its largest competitor, Epic Systems. The company said the EHR will be built around conversational AI and can summarize a patient’s medical history to provide tailored recommendations for clinicians. The preview came on the first day of a two-day event for Oracle customers and others. (Turner, 10/30)

A pharmaceutical scientist was accused of making $617,000 in illegal profits from trading on a secret tip he got from his domestic partner about plans by drug store chain CVS Health Corp. to buy Oak Street Health Inc., where she was a senior executive. Carlos Sacanell, 58, was charged with insider trading and lying to federal investigators in an indictment unsealed in Philadelphia federal court. His domestic partner, who wasn’t identified, was described as serving on the executive committee of Oak Street, a Chicago-based primary care provider. (Van Voris, 10/31)

Of 104 reports of supply chain issues with dozens of drugs, meaningful shortages were 40% less likely to occur in Canada than in the U.S., a new study found, and the difference was largely attributed to the approach taken by the Canadian government to the problem. (Silverman, 10/31)

The Biden administration this week is hosting a first-of-its-kind international summit about the use of artificial intelligence in the life sciences as governments and private industry increasingly push the boundaries of biotechnology. The convergence of the life sciences and advanced AI could reveal the underpinnings of diseases, help identify new cures or produce more resistant crops. But there are barriers and bottlenecks — and potential risks — to combining the technologies. (Snyder, 10/31)

The Federal Trade Commission has appealed a federal court ruling blocking its ban on most noncompete agreements. The FTC filed a notice to appeal on Oct. 18, taking the case to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit. Attorneys ultimately expect the Supreme Court to review the issue as several other similar lawsuits over the ban wind their way through the courts. (Kacik, 10/31)

U.S. drugmakers and biotechs have come to rely on Chinese partners for manufacturing, research and ingredients. Now, some of them are looking for alternatives as geopolitical tensions rise. From big pharmaceutical companies such as AstraZeneca to small biotechnology firms like Amicus Therapeutics of New Jersey, which is looking for a non-Chinese company to supply raw materials for its rare-disease treatment, the companies say it is time to reduce China risk. (Hopkins and Leong, 11/1)

Two generic drugmakers, Apotex and Heritage Pharmaceuticals, have agreed to pay a combined $49 million to settle allegations they fixed prices on numerous medicines, the first such agreements since state attorneys general began probing price-fixing in the generics industry a decade ago. (Silverman, 10/31)

Some people who took a new schizophrenia drug for a year improved with only a few side effects, but many dropped out of the research, the company announced Thursday. The results underscore the difficulties in treating schizophrenia, a severe mental illness that can cause people to hear voices, feel paranoid and withdraw from others. High dropout rates are typical in schizophrenia drug studies. (Johnson, 10/31)

Barely 12 years after the publication of the first papers unveiling CRISPR-Cas9, a powerful enzyme for editing DNA, sickle cell patients are now receiving the first approved CRISPR-based medicine, Casgevy. Hundreds of patients with other inherited diseases, cancers, and chronic bacterial and viral infections are enrolled in clinical trials testing other CRISPR treatments. And tens of thousands of papers have been published detailing discoveries of new CRISPR enzymes, new ways to deliver them, and a mountain of preclinical data. (Molteni, 10/31)

When the murder of George Floyd in 2020 ignited calls for racial equity across the U.S., the field of medicine confronted its own thorny questions about race. James Diao, then a medical student at Harvard Medical School, was among the many people who zeroed in on one particular issue: If race is a social construct, why was it a factor in clinical tools used to determine a patient’s risk of disease? (Palmer, 10/31)

Abbott Laboratories and a unit of Reckitt Benckiser Group Plc were cleared by a jury over claims they hid risks their premature-infant formulas can cause a bowel disease that severely sickened a baby boy. It was the companies’ first trial win in litigation over the products. Jurors in state court in St. Louis reached the verdict Thursday, ending the latest trial of more than 1,000 lawsuits alleging the formulas can cause necrotizing enterocolitis, or NEC, a bowel ailment that has been linked to deaths and brain damage. (Feeley, 11/1)

Tuberculosis (TB) is once again the infectious disease responsible for the most deaths worldwide, according to a Tuesday announcement from the World Health Organization (WHO). The contagious disease was responsible for 1.25 million global deaths in 2023, WHO reported, including 161,000 people with HIV. COVID-19 had overtaken TB as the world’s leading infectious killer for the previous three years. (Rudy, 10/31)

A student sick with tuberculosis could have exposed hundreds at a Georgia high school, amid an alarming global spread of the disease. Local public health officials identified the infected student at Walton High School, in Marietta, the Cobb County School District told USA TODAY in an email. (Cuevas, 10/31)

Bird flu has infected three more people from Washington state after they were exposed to poultry that tested positive for the virus, according to health authorities in Washington and in Oregon, where the human cases were identified. A total of 39 people have tested positive in the U.S. this year, including nine from Washington, as the virus has infected poultry flocks and spread to more than 400 dairy herds, federal data show. All of the cases were farm workers who had known contact with infected animals, except for one person in Missouri. (Polansek, 10/31)

Walking pneumonia cases in the United States, especially among children, are on the rise and have been since early spring, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Infections from Mycoplasma pneumoniae, the bacteria that can cause walking pneumonia, are common, with about 2 million cases in the United States every year; they typically affect youths age 5 to 17. But from March to October this year, the CDC found that the largest increase in cases was among children age 2 to 4, whose emergency visits related to the bacteria went up from 1 to 7.2 percent. (Ortega and Nirappil, 10/31)

At least 90 people have been infected with E. coli in a multistate outbreak that health officials say likely stems from onions served on McDonald’s Quarter Pounders and could see the fast food chain taken to court. (Harter, 10/31)

The WHO made no such admission. The COVID-19 vaccines cannot cause mpox, and the claim originated with a website that has repeatedly shared misinformation. (Trela, 10/31)

Dawn Shedrick is matter-of-fact about the heartbreaks of caregiving. She is clear and calm when she describes its hardships and grief. She has looked after her mother, who has multiple sclerosis, for more than 30 years. ... Her situation is all too common. The latest estimate is that 106 million people do some kind of unpaid care for an adult in this country. But because family caregiving is not a public conversation, many of them — of us — feel invisible. Nearly half say they are lonely, more than twice the U.S. rate of 22%. (McGowan, 10/31)

We’ve all heard that sitting too long is bad for you. We’re not evolved to do it, it can undermine our exercise gains, it causes dead butt syndrome. Sitting might not quite be “the new smoking,” but too much of it can still shorten your life. “Sitting is actually aging you faster,” said Katy Bowman, a biomechanist and author of “My Perfect Movement Plan.” Whether it’s bone or joint health, muscle mass or energy level, she added, “a lot of what you perceive as aging is going to be heavily influenced by your sitting time.” (Murphy, 10/31)

People who lost a significant amount of weight with semaglutide saw major improvements in osteoarthritis knee pain, research published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine finds. In the phase 3 clinical trial, people with osteoarthritis who dieted, exercised and took semaglutide — the blockbuster drug sold by Novo Nordisk as Ozempic and Wegovy — lost more weight and reported a greater reduction in knee pain than those who lost weight with just diet and exercise. (Sullivan, 10/30)

Men seem to be emerging as the most vocal and visible customers of Zyn. The product sits in a cultural nexus of frat life, hard partying and a dubious wellness space populated by figures like Andrew Huberman and Joe Rogan, who has made misleading statements about the product’s supposed health benefits. (The long-term effects of Zyn are not clear, but nicotine can raise blood pressure and spike a user’s heart rate, and at least some doctors are concerned about addiction to nicotine pouches.) (Brown, 10/31)

Britain’s hardships during World War II famously included weeks of bombing during the Blitz, the mass evacuation of children, and food rationing. That rationing, researchers report, holds cautionary lessons for today on the health impact of consuming sugar early in life. (Cooney, 10/31)

It’s a myth. Our hair and nails do not continue to grow after we die. The notion isn’t unreasonable, however. After death, a decomposing body can create that illusion. (Beyer, 10/31)

�������ýҕ�l Health News: Dentists Are Pulling ‘Healthy’ And Treatable Teeth To Profit From Implants, Experts Warn

Americans are getting dental implants more than ever — and at costs reaching tens of thousands of dollars. Experts worry some dentists have lost sight of the soul of dentistry: preserving and fixing teeth. (Kelman and Werner, 11/1)

Texas hospitals must ask patients starting Friday whether they are in the U.S. legally and track the cost of treating people without legal status following an order by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott that expands the state’s clash with the Biden administration over immigration. Critics fear the change could scare people away from hospitals in Texas, even though patients are not required to answer the questions to receive medical care. (11/1)

County facilities reported their highest detainee death count in decades in 2022, including multiple suicides that reveal deep institutional problems.‌ (Damien, 10/31)

Three Dade Correctional Institution prisoners, represented by the Florida Justice Institute, said in the class-action suit that the state facility’s heat index surpasses 100 degrees in the summer. Prisoners are “routinely treated” in the infirmary for heat rashes, heat exhaustion and related illnesses, the lawsuit said, before they are returned to the “dangerously hot conditions” that sickened them. Florida Justice Institute attorney Andrew Udelsman told USA TODAY the nonprofit law firm has received a rising number of prison heat complaints over the last decade. (Arshad, 10/31)

Covid was Andrew Cuomo’s calling card. Now it threatens to upend his political comeback. A criminal reckoning awaits the former New York governor over his alleged lies to Congress, stemming from his administration’s reporting of critical nursing home data during the pandemic. (Resiman, 10/31)

The number of people who died of drug overdoses in Ohio was 4,452 in 2023, a 9% decrease from the previous year, according to the state’s latest unintentional drug overdose report. This was the second consecutive year of a decrease in deaths. In 2022, overdose deaths declined by 5%, Gov. Mike DeWine and other state officials said during a Wednesday media event to announce the report. (Hancock, 10/30)

Durham resident Midori Brooks is fighting a decades-long battle to free her family from lead exposure. The 55-year-old’s struggle with this environmental issue traces back to the mid-1990s when she and her family lived in a rental house in west Durham. It was there that her three children came into contact with lead-contaminated dust. (Atwater and Blythe, 11/1)

The presidential candidate’s mother, Shyamala Gopalan Harris, was a breast cancer researcher whose egalitarian politics often bucked a patriarchal lab culture. (Mueller, 10/28)

Here’s the paradox: The most influential set of rules for the foods we eat are the ones most of us ignore. But they still matter for millions of Americans. The Dietary Guidelines for Americans, reviewed and issued by the federal government every five years, have broad impact on what goes into federal nutritional assistance programs, from WIC for women and young children to school lunches to meals for veterans or seniors. Yet 63% to 90% of people in the United States, depending on the nutrient, exceed recommended levels for added sugar, saturated fats, and sodium; 75% fall below standards set for vegetables, fruits, and dairy. (Cooney, 10/27)

Kinnon MacKinnon leads the world’s largest study on people who stop or reverse their gender transitions, a group embroiled in intense political fights. (Ghorayshi, 10/26)

At Ebenezer Child Development Center in Austin, Texas, one of the infant rooms has been closed for a year. The cribs and highchairs are still there, just no kids. A separate room that was previously a prekindergarten classroom is now a gym. That is not for lack of demand. The wait lists are long. But the preschool’s director, Jordan Maclay, says a big problem is that she can’t find enough teachers who can work at the wages she’s able to offer. (Torry, 10/29)

Another urgent conflict in the Middle East is playing out on the border between Syria and Jordan: a war against captagon, an amphetamine-like drug that’s taken off across the region. The drug cuts across social class and borders. It’s used by taxi drivers handling late-night shifts, militia fighters looking to induce courage, students studying for exams, and high-powered executives wanting to work, or party, long hours. (Rasmussen, 10/27)

A few weeks after Matthew Perry was discovered floating facedown in a hot tub, the woman who prosecutors say supplied the ketamine that killed the actor was indulging in afternoon tea at a five-star hotel in Japan and taking mirror selfies while modeling a kimono. Several months later, she posted highlights from a trip to Mexico, where she enjoyed caviar at the airport, sitting poolside at the beach and admiring a drink within a coconut. The woman, Jasveen Sangha, liked to share images of a glamorous life on social media, of herself rubbing elbows with celebrities and traveling around the world to Spain, China and Dubai. (Stevens, 10/28)

In the summer of 2018, off the coast of British Columbia, an orca named Tahlequah gave birth. When the calf died after just half an hour, Tahlequah refused to let go. For more than two weeks, she carried her calf’s body around, often balancing it on her nose as she swam. The story went viral, which came as no surprise to Susana Monsó, a philosopher of animal minds at the National Distance Education University in Madrid. Despite the vast chasm that seems to separate humans and killer whales, this orca mother was behaving in a way that was profoundly relatable. (Anthes, 10/29)

If you’re in pain and have to go to the emergency room, it’s good to be a white man. A new study finds that women who go to the ER for treatment of pain are less likely to get the needed pain medication, regardless of their age or ethnicity or even the sex of the medical professional — female doctors and nurses were as unlikely to provide the relief as male ones. And nurses are less likely to record how much pain a woman is experiencing. (10/31)

If you are a doctor, the odds are that your patients think or do things you don’t agree with. Nearly half of Americans believe at least one health-related conspiracy theory, people routinely lie to their doctors about how much they drink, and many act on health information they find on social media without checking with their doctor first. In fact, most adults report hiding information from their doctors. (Samantha Kleinberg, 11/1)

It’s been 13 years since the term “precision medicine” was coined, and its promise — the ability to treat the right patient with the right medicine in the right dose at the right time — remains as compelling as ever. But we haven’t yet fulfilled this promise. Why? (Amit Agrawal, 11/1)

Before I got diagnosed with cancer, I understood it in a couple of simplistic ways. There was a good stage of basic-bitch cancer, which is when your body grows a pebbly glob and pretty much keeps on keeping on. And there was a bad stage, which is when your body gradually stops being your body and becomes a pebbly glob factory. (Rachel Manteuffel, 10/30)