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A Kentucky judge reinstituted the state’s near-total abortion ban Monday, reversing a lower court’s order from less than two weeks ago that temporarily allowed the procedures to continue in the state. The decision by Kentucky Court of Appeals Judge Larry E. Thompson means that abortions are again illegal in the state, unless the mother is at risk of death or serious permanent injury, with no exceptions for rape or incest. Health-care workers who provide abortion services can face up to five years in prison, though mothers are not subject to criminal liability. (Jeong, 8/2)

A Michigan judge on Monday granted Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s request to temporarily block enforcement of the state’s pre-Roe abortion ban. Hours earlier, an appellate court said in a separate case that county officials were free to bring such prosecutions, concluding that a lower court’s ruling blocking enforcement of the pre-Roe ban only applied to state officials. (Sneed and Cole, 8/1)

Two North Dakota Democratic lawmakers on Monday called for an attorney general’s opinion on the state’s abortion restrictions, saying clarity in needed to ensure care is not denied in or delayed in emergency situations. Reps. Zac Ista, of Grand Forks, and Karla Rose Hanson, of Fargo, said discrepancies in state law could result in victims of rape having to get permission from a spouse to obtain an abortion, or in doctors not treating ectopic pregnancies, which occur when an embryo grows outside the womb and often are life-threatening to the women involved. (8/1)

Unions representing healthcare workers are executing plans to help workers who may run afoul of state abortion laws. In the wake of the Supreme Court ruling last month that ended the federal right to abortion access and cleared the way for restrictive state laws, healthcare workers are anxious that treatment choices they make with patients could put them in legal jeopardy. (Christ, 8/1)

A trial in Minnesota is expected to decide whether a woman’s human rights were violated when a pharmacist denied her request in 2019 to fill a prescription for emergency contraception. Andrea Anderson, a mother of five from McGregor, sued under the Minnesota Human Rights Act after the pharmacist, based on his religious beliefs, refused to accommodate her request. State law prohibits discrimination based on sex, including issues related to pregnancy and childbirth. (8/1)

KHN: Because Of Texas Abortion Law, Her Wanted Pregnancy Became A Medical Nightmare 

New, untested abortion bans have made doctors unsure about treating some pregnancy complications, which has led to life-threatening delays and trapped families in a limbo of grief and helplessness. Elizabeth Weller never dreamed that her hopes for a child would become ensnared in the web of Texas abortion law. (Feibel, 8/2)

The right to an abortion is teetering in Arizona, Kansas and Michigan — all states with primary elections on Aug. 2. In each state, the decision may come down to a different election outcome. (Clark, McLean and Davis-Young, 8/1)

On Tuesday, voters will decide whether to end the state’s constitutional right to an abortion. It comes in the form of a ballot measure that, if it passes, will allow the state’s conservative legislature to enact a near-total ban on abortion, as several neighboring states have done. This fight is the first of its kind post-Roe v. Wade, and analysts say it could go either way. So it’s a bellwether for whether ballot measures will help protect — or end — abortion rights across the country. (Phillips, 8/1)

Kansas is the first state in the nation to put the question of abortion rights directly to voters since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. The final hours of the campaign are a street fight. Working block-by-block, hundreds of canvassers, some flown in from across the country, are knocking on hundreds of thousands of doors to remind people of the stakes in Tuesday’s referendum — not just for Kansas, but for the country. (Ollstein, 8/1)

The number of Americans ranking abortion as the nation’s top issue has reached a new high, according to a Gallup poll published Monday. The polling showed that 8 percent of Americans listed abortion as the most important problem facing the U.S., the highest number of respondents who have said that since Gallup began tracking the issue in 1984. The number puts abortion in fourth place overall, behind the economy, inflation and “dysfunctional government or bad leadership.” (Mueller, 8/1)

When the Rev. Laurie Hafner ministers to her Florida congregants about abortion, she looks to the founding values of the United Church of Christ, her lifelong denomination: religious freedom and freedom of thought. She taps into her reading of Genesis, which says “man became a living being” when God breathed “the breath of life” into Adam. She thinks of Jesus promising believers full and abundant life. “I am pro-choice not in spite of my faith, but because of my faith,” Hafner says. (Boorstein, 8/1)

A bipartisan group of senators on Monday introduced legislation that would codify the right to an abortion into federal law, but it faces an uncertain future. The bill from Sens. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) comes after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the landmark abortion rights case, and left the authority to regulate the procedure to individual states. (Weixel, 8/1)

The new measure emerged from talks between the Maine Republican and Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Virginia, after Collins joined all Republicans and one Democrat in May to block a more sweeping abortion-rights bill advanced by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-New York. (Shepherd, 8/1)

Alaska Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski on Monday joined a bipartisan coalition to introduce a bill that would protect abortion and contraception access. The measure faces an uncertain future in a Senate that failed to pass a broader measure enshrining abortion rights in May. It also comes as Murkowski faces reelection this fall, with abortion emerging as a key issue in that campaign. (Rogerson and Samuels, 8/1)

Still, the bipartisan measure—titled the ‘‘Reproductive Freedom for All Act”—isn’t likely to have the 60 votes needed to pass most bills in the Senate. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) hasn’t yet said whether the chamber would vote on the bill. NARAL Pro-Choice America President Mini Timmaraju in a statement called the bill a “political stunt” and added that “unless these senators are willing to end the filibuster to pass this measure, there’s no reason to take it seriously.” (Lee, 8/2)

Democratic lawmakers are piling pressure on data brokers to stop collecting information on pregnant people in order to protect those seeking abortions. They’re not having much luck. For years, brokers have sold datasets on millions of expectant parents from their trimester status to their preferred birth methods. Now that the Supreme Court has overturned Roe v. Wade, that same data is becoming a political issue, with abortion-rights groups warning that states with abortion bans are likely to weaponize it. (Ng, 8/1)

They’re planning to challenge many of the provisions in the 725-page, $433 billion bill using the so-called Byrd Rule, which sharply limits the ability to pass legislation with a simple majority, a process known as reconciliation. (Natter, 8/2)

Democrats are racing to muscle the package — packed with hundreds of billions of dollars in climate and energy proposals, a major drug price reduction initiative, tax increases and health care subsidies — through the evenly divided Senate over united Republican opposition. They are doing so under a process known as budget reconciliation, which allows certain tax and spending bills to move quickly and avoid a filibuster but also is subject to strict rules that limit what can be included. ... Here are the hurdles that remain before President Biden can sign the package into law. (Cochrane, 8/1)

KHN: Watch: Explaining The Nitty-Gritty Of Medicare Drug Price Negotiations — And Patients’ Potential Savings

Julie Rovner, KHN’s chief Washington correspondent, joined PBS NewsHour’s Laura Barrón-López on Friday to discuss Senate Democrats’ proposals to let Medicare negotiate some drug prices, cap out-of-pocket drug costs for seniors and continue funding for enhanced premium subsidies for people buying health insurance on the Affordable Care Act’s marketplaces. (8/1)

Among big drugmakers, Eli Lilly, AstraZeneca, AbbVie and Johnson & Johnson are particularly exposed to the current Medicare negotiation proposal, analysts with SVB Securities wrote in a Friday note to clients. The companies sell a mix of lucrative oncology and diabetes medicines in Medicare. (Sagonowsky, 8/1)

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) announced on Monday that he had tested positive for COVID-19, which could further complicate the math of floor votes for Republicans and Democrats at the start of a busy week for the Senate. “After dodging it for 2+ years I’ve tested positive for COVID-19,” Cornyn wrote on Twitter. (Schonfeld, 8/1)

Republicans’ turnabout has stunned proponents in Congress and veterans groups who had seen the burn pits legislation, a top priority of President Biden, as a done deal. (Lai, 8/1)

The protest by 60 veterans groups — along with comedian Jon Stewart — has put Senate Republicans on the defensive as they’ve struggled for days to explain why they are holding up legislation that would provide much-needed health care for millions of veterans exposed to things like burn pit smoke, Agent Orange and radiation. (Wong, Vitali and Thorp V., 8/1)

KHN: The Debt Crisis That Sick Americans Can’t Avoid 

President Joe Biden’s campaign promise to cancel student debt for the first $10,000 owed on federal college loans has raised debate about the fairness of such lending programs. While just over half of Americans surveyed in a June poll supported forgiving that much debt incurred for higher education, 82% said that making college more affordable was their preferred approach. (Rosenthal, 8/2)

When Ryan Naylor hurt his ankle during kickball practice in May, he did what many would do: He Googled it. Ice and an Epsom salts bath didn’t work. Turns out there is no surefire home remedy for a ruptured Achilles tendon. Naylor, 26, didn’t have health insurance. So he stayed home for 36 hours until he couldn’t take the pain anymore. (O'Donnell, 8/2)

Medicare payments for hospital inpatient services will rise 4.3% in fiscal 2023 under a final rule the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services published Monday. That amounts to (A) pay increase of about $2.6 billion and is higher than the 3.2% rate hike CMS proposed in April. (Goldman, 8/1)

Hospitals secured significantly larger payments from Medicare for 2023, after months of lobbying centered around arguments that inflation and the pandemic have crippled hospitals’ finances. (Herman, 8/1)

Researchers at the University of Southern California found three large Medicare Advantage insurers paid 127% of fee-for-service Medicare costs for dialysis treatment in 2016 and 2017. If the number of dialysis patients enrolling in Medicare Advantage continues to grow following recent policy changes, insurers could be forced to cut back on other benefits to pay for dialysis treatments. (Goldman, 8/1)

The CMS is asking for public feedback on how to make the Medicare Advantage program more affordable, sustainable and equitable for enrollees, while driving better health outcomes. The agency on Friday published a request for information to aid in future rulemaking and policy development. (Kelly, 8/1)

The White House is planning to name Robert J. Fenton Jr. as coordinator of the nation’s monkeypox response amid a surging epidemic that has prompted three states to declare health emergencies, according to four people with direct knowledge of the plans who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment about the pending announcement. (Diamond, 8/1)

A trio of House Democrats on Monday requested that the Government Accountability Office (GAO) review the “adequacy of the Federal response to the monkeypox outbreak.” In a letter addressed to U.S. Comptroller General Gene Dodaro, Democratic Reps. Bennie Thompson (Miss.), Richie Torres (N.Y.) and Val Demings (Fla.) asked that the government watchdog agency conduct a review in order to “make recommendations for ongoing and future preparedness and response efforts.” (Choi, 8/1)

Less than a decade ago, the United States had some 20 million doses of a new smallpox vaccine — also effective against monkeypox — sitting in freezers in a national stockpile. (Goldstein, 8/1)

California Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency over the rapidly spreading monkeypox outbreak on Monday, the third U.S. state to do so in a matter of days. (Kimball, 8/1)

Eight of the top 10 metro areas searching online for nearby monkeypox vaccines over the last week were in California, according to Google Trends. The Jynneos vaccine, which has been approved for protection from monkeypox preventatively and post-exposure, remains in short supply across the nation. Clinics report long waitlists for the vaccine, and images from many U.S. cities have shown people in lines snaking around city blocks to get the shots. (Toohey, 8/1)

Monkeypox has been detected in Southern Nevada’s wastewater, suggesting there are more infections than the 23 cases reported in Clark County, a UNLV researcher said Monday. (Hynes, 8/1)

State health experts say universities should start communicating with students ahead of the fall semester about how to identify symptoms and avoid contracting the virus. They also say schools should consider how they would respond to an outbreak on campuses where students live in close proximity engaging in intimate behaviors and sharing beverages or food. (McGee, 8/1)

Whether you’re confused by the headlines or exhausted trying to make sense of them, you’re not alone. Here, an epidemiologist cuts through the swirl of misinformation to help you understand the facts about monkeypox, including how it’s contracted, prevented, and how worried you should really be. (Fields, 8/1)  

The NorthShore University Health System has agreed to pay $10.3 million in a COVID-19 vaccine lawsuit. More than a dozen health care workers sued the Evanston-based group after they were denied religious exemptions for vaccinations. In a statement, NorthShore said the settlement reflects its new vaccine policy at Edward-Elmhurst Health. (8/1)

With new research showing that people are often infectious for more than five days, the CDC guidance has drawn criticism from some infectious-disease experts. The Biden protocol strikes many of them as the right way to go — because it’s empirical evidence that a person isn’t shedding virus. (Sun and Achenbach, 8/1)

You’ve got covid-19. When can you exit isolation? If you do resume activities outside your home, can you be sure you’re no longer contagious? It’s complicated. Be forewarned: Guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are nuanced but a little confusing. (Sun and Achenbach, 8/1)

As the coronavirus mutates, though, that’s no longer a given. And each individual infection carries the risk not only for acute illness but the potential to develop long COVID. “The additive risk is really not trivial, not insignificant. It’s really substantial,” said Dr. Ziyad Al-Aly, clinical epidemiologist at Washington University in St. Louis and chief of research and development at the Veterans Affairs St. Louis Healthcare System. (Lin II and Money, 8/1)

KHN: The Time Has Come For DIY Mandates On Covid 

Here we are in the grip of yet another covid-19 surge, yet most people I see out and about are behaving as if the pandemic is over. And I live in Los Angeles County, whose public health department is arguably one of the most vigilant and proactive in the U.S. We all have pandemic fatigue. Even people who should know better have let precautionary measures slide. If you are sensing a mea culpa on the way, I won’t disappoint. (Wolfson, 8/2)

As students around the country start a new school year, providers say childhood immunization rates are too low, in some places, to prevent outbreaks of diseases like measles. (Dreher, 8/2)

New US surveillance data indicates infections caused by multidrug-resistant bacterial pathogens are moving beyond the healthcare setting. In a study published last week in the American Journal of Infection Control, researchers with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and eight US public health departments reported that 1 in 10 infections caused by carbapenem-resistant Enterobacterales (CRE) were community-associated, occurring in patients without the known healthcare risks—like hospitalization or stays in long-term care facilities—typically associated with CRE infections. Most were found in white women with urinary tract infections (UTIs). (Dall, 8/1)

Academics and electronic-health-record companies have developed automated systems that send reminders to check patients for sepsis, but the sheer number of alerts can cause health care providers to ignore or turn off these notices. Researchers have been trying to use machine learning to fine-tune such programs and reduce the number of alerts they generate. Now one algorithm has proved its mettle in real hospitals, helping doctors and nurses treat sepsis cases nearly two hours earlier on average—and cutting the condition’s hospital mortality rate by 18 percent. (Bushwick, 8/1)

The National Committee for Quality Assurance is adding metrics to the Healthcare Effective Data and Information Set to track how well insurers address health disparities. The update adds some race and ethnicity breakdowns, revises gender labels for people who are pregnant and includes social needs screening within 2023 measures for health plans. (Hartnett, 8/1)

PerkinElmer’s remaining Life Sciences and Diagnostics business unit, which made up approximately 80 percent of the company’s revenue in 2021, will operate under a new name, brand, and ticker that the company said it will announce prior to the closing of the sale. The Applied, Food, and Enterprise Services businesses will continue to operate under the PerkinElmer name, according to the company. (Robisheaux, 8/1)

After a nearly two-week-long strike by hundreds of Sequoia Hospital workers, management and strikers reached an agreement for a 16% raise effective immediately and provisions that could make healthcare benefit costs more predictable. (Toledo, 8/1)

Late in the afternoon of July 15, leaders at St. Charles Health System took the unprecedented step of declaring “crisis standards of care” at all four of their locations — the first health system in Oregon to do so during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the Oregon Health Authority. (Land and Templeton, 7/27)

A single mother, Tashina Hosey quit her job at a Pittsburgh post office when she was assigned to work a seventh consecutive day just as her second daughter was about to be born. Desperate to find her next paycheck, she stumbled upon a free 10-week emergency medical technician course. (Muthukumar, 8/1)

Illinois residents who buy health insurance through the Affordable Care Act exchange will likely see prices rise for next year — in some cases by double digit percentages. (Schencker, 8/1)

West Virginia cities and counties reached a $400 million tentative settlement with three major U.S. drug distributors, lawyers announced Monday. In a lawsuit in state court, the cities and counties accused the distributors of fueling the opioid epidemic. The companies are AmerisourceBergen, Cardinal Health and McKesson. (8/1)

A former opioid manufacturer and a pharmaceutical company that acquired a portion of its business in 2016 have agreed in principle to pay up to $6.6 billion in a settlement with a dozen states, including Iowa, state Attorney General Tom Miller says. Miller also announced he is pursuing legal action to enforce a prior settlement of a lawsuit against several tobacco companies. (Morris, 8/1)

The Rhode Island Department of Health said Monday a man tested positive for the Jamestown Canyon Virus. (8/1)

America’s mayors are drooling over President Biden’s new high-stakes research agency, ARPA-H. (Facher, 8/2)

Eating highly processed foods like instant noodles, sugary drinks or frozen meals may be linked to a faster rate of cognitive decline. That's according to new research presented Monday at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference in San Diego. The study examined the diets and cognition of more than 10,000 middle-aged and older adults in Brazil. (Bendix, 8/2)

Elementary school-age kids who sleep less than the recommended number of hours per night exhibit differences in brain regions associated with memory, intelligence and well-being, according to a recent study.  For the study published in Lancet Child & Adolescent Health, researchers from the University of Maryland examined MRI images and medical records of more than 8,300 children aged 9 to 10, as well as surveys completed by the participants and their parents. (Barnes, 8/1)

COVID is not over, but the pandemic exposed a troubling trend - children's mental health has suffered. According to the Mental Health Alliance, in 2022, fifteen percent of kids ages 12 to 17 reported experiencing at least one major depressive episode. That was 306,000 more than last year. (Murray, 8/1)

Unprecedented demand and a sparse employee pipeline are adding stress to Ohio’s already strained behavioral health system. (Alexander, 8/2)

A jail diversion program that provides mental health clinicians to assist police in six North Shore communities will continue another year as a result of a recent grant. The state Department of Mental Health awarded Beverly $200,000to fund the initiative for this fiscal year. The grant funds the cost of two full-time clinicians who respond with police officers in Beverly, Ipswich, Essex, Gloucester, Manchester-by-the-Sea, and Rockport. on calls involving individuals with mental health or substance abuse issues. (Laidler, 8/2)

The parents of a Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting victim live with a complex form of post-traumatic stress disorder and a constant fear that followers of conspiracy theorist Alex Jones will kill them, a psychiatrist testified Monday at Jones’ defamation trial. (Vertuno, 8/1)

We have yet to put the coronavirus pandemic behind us, and already we are facing another public health crisis. New York has declared monkeypox a public health emergency as U.S. cases of the disease tick upward. Once again, the United States is unprepared to keep an emerging virus at bay — and just as unprepared to talk about it. (Katrina vanden Heuvel, 8/2)

The recent discovery by Stanford scientists that wastewater in Palo Alto, Sacramento and other cities in the Bay Area contains monkeypox DNA means that the outbreak has gained traction in California, where Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a monkeypox emergency on Monday. (Wendy Orent, 8/2)

The World Health Organization declared monkeypox a global health emergency on July 23, but in New York we’ve been seeing the outbreak’s effects for weeks. As gay men working in medicine, watching the monkeypox virus spread through our community has been devastating. (Eric Kutshcer and Lala Tanmoy Das, 8/1)

President Biden has tested positive for the coronavirus again, which is being attributed to his use of the antiviral pill Paxlovid. While a second round of isolation is inconvenient, the possibility of such a rebound should not deter Americans from making use of this highly effective treatment. (Leana S. Wen, 8/1)

The World Trade Organization recently agreed to suspend patent protections for Covid-19 vaccines. The trade body is now considering going one step further: extending the intellectual property waiver to Covid-19 therapeutics and diagnostics. (Kenneth E. Thorpe, 7/31)

Martin Schoeller, a photographer who is best known for his portraits of famous and powerful people, aims his lens at a different population: ordinary Americans who have been crushed by exorbitant hospital bills they didn’t see coming. (Martin Schoeller, 8/2)

The demise of Roe v. Wade is causing harms that extend well beyond abortion patients. In places where abortion is heavily restricted, women with ectopic pregnancies and those experiencing inevitable miscarriages have reported delays in care that have risked their health, life and future fertility. Some have struggled to get medications to treat miscarriage because those drugs are also used for abortion. (Greer Donley and Jill Wieber Lens, 8/2)

The new deal would use the "savings" from imposing price controls on drugs to extend the already-enhanced Affordable Care Act (ACA) subsidies, which took effect last year. This would lead to a massive loss of life, due to foregone medical innovation, and a reduction in the quality of care, due to the government gaining more control over people's insurance coverage. (Tomas J. Philpson, 8/2)

It’s rare and positive in politics when elected leaders are willing to change their position on issues in the face of overwhelming facts. But that’s what Republican legislative leaders have done on Medicaid expansion. After years of opposing it, Republicans now support it. That’s a big deal. And it’s real progress that they’re now saying what we’ve said for years: Medicaid expansion will help save rural hospitals, take pressure off businesses, increase mental health care, and provide insurance for hundreds of thousands of working North Carolinians at no cost to the state. It will save lives and livelihoods. Of course, as usual, there’s a hitch. (Gov. Roy Cooper, 8/2)

Since the start of the pandemic, the health care and life sciences sectors have relied more heavily on real-world data and real-world evidence as they work to develop new drugs and devices and survey the world outside of clinical trials. Hospitals and health systems are key to these efforts. (Victor Wang, 8/2)

Last week’s surprise agreement between Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) makes the pending budget reconciliation act —now called the Inflation Reduction Act — perhaps the most important health care bill considered by the Congress since the Affordable Care Act of 2010. (David Blumenthal, 8/1)

Drug development has been conducted at the same slow and incremental pace for so long that some have worried that speeding it up would mean cutting corners and sacrificing patient safety or the accuracy of data collected. (Ron Peck, 8/1)