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A federal appeals court on Monday temporarily blocked a lower court decision that overturned the Affordable Care Act’s requirement that all health plans fully cover certain preventive health services. The move by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in New Orleans will put on hold a decision from March that had threatened insurance coverage for recommended services like depression screenings for teenagers and drugs that prevent transmission of H.I.V. The Justice Department had appealed the decision, and the appeals court’s stay will stand while the appeals process plays out. (Baumgaertner, 5/15)

After months of anticipation, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal of a lower court ruling that throws into question whether generic companies can “carve out” uses for their medicines and supply Americans with cheaper alternatives to brand-name drugs. At issue is skinny labeling, which happens when a generic company seeks regulatory approval to market its medicine for a specific use, but not other patented uses for which a brand-name drug is prescribed. For instance, a generic drug could be marketed to treat one type of heart problem, but not another. In doing so, the generic company seeks to avoid lawsuits claiming patent infringement. (Silverman, 5/15)

President Biden on Monday officially announced that he would nominate National Cancer Institute Director Monica Bertagnolli to fill the long-vacant director slot at the National Institutes of Health. The cancer surgeon has led NCI — NIH’s largest institute — since last October and previously led Dana-Farber Cancer Institute’s surgical oncology unit. If confirmed by the Senate, she would be the second woman to lead the agency. (Owermohle, 5/15)

Republicans are feeling increasingly optimistic they can force President Joe Biden to make concessions on work requirements for safety net programs as part of the debt limit talks taking place this week. Democrats are floating a rough proposal within their ranks that includes potential new restrictions on the emergency aid program known as the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families as part of the debt limit talks, according to two Republicans and three other people familiar with the conversations who were granted anonymity to discuss internal conversations. But House Republicans, who are aware of the movement, are still demanding further concessions on work requirements for food assistance and believe they have the leverage to force them, possibly before Biden leaves for the G-7 meeting in Japan Wednesday. (Hill, 5/15)

Billions of dollars of veterans benefits could be imperiled if the U.S. defaults on its debts, though the full extent of the fallout is uncertain because of the unprecedented nature of a default. About $12 billion in veterans benefits are expected to be paid out June 1 -- the same day the Treasury Department has named as the earliest day a default could happen if Congress doesn't act to avoid it. (Kheel, 5/15)

President Biden said Monday that the next meeting with congressional leaders will come Tuesday, while responding “no” when asked if there were updates regarding the talks with Republicans. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.) said that the two sides remain “far apart” and that he would like a deal to be done by this weekend. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen reiterated in an updated forecast Monday that the U.S. could become unable to pay its bills on time as soon as June 1 unless Congress acts. (Restuccia and Andrews, 5/15)

And what exactly does the debt ceiling have to do with retirement plans? Morning Edition's A Martínez asked Joel Dickson, the global head of advice methodology at the investment firm Vanguard. Dickson says it's clear that there will be increased market volatility as the threat of a default gets closer and if it comes to pass. (Treisman, 5/15)

Three conservative appeals court judges, each with a history of supporting restrictions on abortion, will hear arguments May 17 on whether a widely used abortion drug should remain available. The case involves a regulatory issue — whether the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of mifepristone, and subsequent actions making it easier to obtain, must be rolled back. The appellate hearing follows an April ruling by a federal judge in Texas, who ordered a hold on federal approval of mifepristone in a decision that overruled decades of scientific approval. His ruling was stayed pending appeal. The case was allotted to a panel made up of Jennifer Walker Elrod, James Ho and Cory Wilson. *McGill, 5/16)

North Carolina’s Republican-controlled legislature on Tuesday will attempt to quickly override the governor’s veto of legislation banning nearly all abortions after 12 weeks of pregnancy in a consequential test of unity for the party’s recently attained supermajority. The Senate plans to first consider an override Tuesday afternoon, according to Senate leader Phil Berger. House Speaker Tim Moore’s chief of staff said the speaker then aims to complete the override later in the day should Senate Republicans be successful. (Schoenbaum and Robertson, 5/16)

Abortion access would be almost entirely banned after about six weeks of pregnancy under a bill set for debate Tuesday in the South Carolina House, after the state Senate rejected a proposal to nearly outlaw the procedure. The two GOP-dominated chambers’ disagreement epitomizes the intra-Republican debates over how far to restrict access that have developed nationwide since the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade last year and allowed states to set their own policies on abortion. (Pollard, 5/16)

Conservative Nebraska lawmakers are taking what could be an all-or-nothing bet by proposing to merge two of the legislative session’s most contentious proposals — one to restrict abortion and another that would ban gender-affirming care for minors. The unconventional move follows conservatives’ failure by a single vote last month to advance a bill that would have banned abortion at around six weeks of pregnancy. Now, conservatives are backing an effort to amend the transgender health bill to include restricting abortion to 12 weeks of gestation. (Beck, 5/15)

The U.S. Supreme Court’s repeal of Roe v. Wade, upending a half-century of precedent and once again making abortion a matter of state’s rights, cast a long shadow Monday over the confirmation of Sandra Slack Glover to the Connecticut Supreme Court. Glover, the appellate chief for the U.S. Attorney of Connecticut, articulated a belief that the nation’s highest court egregiously erred in discarding the reproductive rights established in 1973 by Roe with a 6-3 decision last year in Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. (Pazniokas, 5/15)

America's mpox outbreak "is not over" and could see a resurgence over the coming months, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Monday, ramping up their warnings after reports of "ongoing community transmission" of the virus around the country. The CDC's new alert for doctors and health authorities comes ahead of new vaccine effectiveness data expected to be released by the agency. (Tin, 5/15)

Between April 17 and May 5, doctors reported 13 confirmed or probable cases of mpox to public health authorities in Chicago. All the cases were in men, all had symptoms -- and nine of the 13 were previously vaccinated with two doses of the JYNNEOS vaccine."Travel history was available for 9 cases; 4 recently traveled (New York City, New Orleans, and Mexico)," the CDC said in an update issued via its Health Alert Network. None of the 13 were sick enough to be hospitalized. (5/15)

New in Emerging Infectious Diseases is a case history of a 33-year-old man from Baltimore who died from mpox complications, one of the 42 fatal cases documented in the United States during the latest outbreak of the disease, which began last summer. The case highlights the challenges of using novel therapeutic regimens to treat orthopoxviruses, as well as the complications posed by untreated HIV infection. (Soucheray, 5/15)

Signs urging everyone to mask up have largely disappeared from places like grocery stores and schools in the third year of the Covid-19 pandemic. But they remain in many medical offices, and a study published Monday says they might still be a good idea. Even after the expiration of the US public health emergency declaration and with many Americans moving away from pandemic precautions, masks continue to offer some protection, reducing your risk of catching Covid-19 in a community setting like in a close doctor and patient interaction, according to the study, which reviewed the latest science on the protective quality of masks. (Christensen, 5/15)

With wide-reaching intervention against COVID-19 now firmly in the past, officials and experts continue to preach the importance of individual decision-making to assess and manage their health risks. Monitoring coronavirus conditions is becoming more difficult, however, as the pandemic’s post-emergency phase has seen data collection and reporting endeavors either scaled back or abandoned entirely. (Money and Lin II, 5/15)

If you got an alert saying you'll no longer get COVID-19 exposure notifications on your phone, don't bother checking your settings. It's not your device — it's the government. Driving the news: The end of the federal public health emergency last Thursday also meant the end of federal funding for some state programs, Lacy Fehrenbach, chief of prevention for the Washington state Department of Health, said at a news conference last week. (Santos, 5/15)

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) last week published guidance for improving building ventilation to help protect people from respiratory infections, with a goal of at least five air changes each hour and an upgrade to MERV-13 filters. (Schnirring, 5/15)

San Francisco employees who believe they would be endorsing abortion by getting vaccinated against COVID-19 can sue the city for violating their religious rights by mandating vaccination for all its workers, a federal appeals court ruled Monday. (Egelko, 5/15)

Over 90% of adult long-COVID patients in France gradually recovered over 2 years, while 5% improved rapidly, and 4% reported persistent symptoms, finds a study published late last week in the International Journal of Infectious Diseases. (Van Beusekom, 5/15)

Compared with feverish infants who tested negative for COVID-19, a lower proportion of babies aged 8 to 60 days who tested positive had co-occurring urinary tract infections (UTIs), bacteremia without meningitis, and bacterial meningitis, according to a study published late last week in JAMA Network Open. (Van Beusekom, 5/15)

Physician staffing company Envision Healthcare filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection Monday, and said it reached agreements with certain of its key lenders. Nashville, Tennessee-based Envision said it entered into a restructuring support agreement for about $7.7 billion in debt. Amsurg, its ambulatory surgery unit, and Envision Physician Services will be owned separately. Envision will sell its surgery centers to Amsurg for $300 million plus a waiver of intercompany loans held by Amsurg, according to court filings. (Hudson, 5/15)

Thomas Jefferson University on Monday reported a $117 million operating loss for the nine months that ended in March — nearly three times bigger than the loss for the comparable period a year ago. Jefferson is typically the first of the not-for-profit health systems in the Philadelphia region to report quarterly financial results to municipal bondholders. Experts expect results for the March quarter to show that many health systems are still struggling financially because their costs have outpaced revenue growth and federal COVID aid has stopped. (Brubaker, 5/15)

CommonSpirit Health is dealing with fallout from rising costs and lower patient acuity—challenges that have forced the nonprofit Catholic system to centralize functions and cut jobs. The Chicago-based system said Monday it has cut leadership and administrative roles at the divisional and national levels, although it did not specify how many positions were affected. A spokesperson declined comment. (Hudson, 5/15)

CVS Health's time as a clinical trials operator is coming to a close three years after the company ventured into medical research. The company began its collaboration with pharmaceutical companies in 2021 and will shut it down at the end of 2024. To date, CVS Health has worked with more than 30 drugmakers on 50 phase II, II and IV studies involving 33,000 participants. (Hartnett, 5/15)

It was the worst nightmare for any doctor — let alone a resident just a couple of years out of med school. After a routine appointment with two children at Baptist Health Medical Group in Madisonville, Kentucky, the children’s mother reported that Dr. John M. Farmer was impaired. Her evidence that day — Nov. 4, 2019 — was that Farmer was “touching his nose a lot.” An attending physician, Dr. Kenneth Hargrove, who also saw the patients insisted that Farmer was not impaired. “He is twitchy, but that is Dr. Farmer,” Hargrove said. (Wolfson, 5/15)

A chain of luxury ketamine clinics called Field Trip started churning through business strategies at an increasingly rapid pace late last year. The money was running out, clinics were half full, and the company’s vice president of clinical services was under intense pressure to launch an at-home ketamine service. It was a challenging assignment, figuring out how to safely provide a sedative to depressed patients away from clinic supervision, but Elizabeth Wolfson said senior leaders gave her just a week or two, telling her to “hurry up and do it.” (Cueto and Goldhill, 5/16)

The winner of the 2023 Templeton Prize is Dr. Edna Adan Ismail, a nurse-midwife, hospital founder, and healthcare advocate who has worked courageously to change cultural, religious, and medical norms surrounding women’s health in East Africa, improving the lives of thousands of women and girls in the region and beyond. ... Her many achievements include the founding of the Edna Adan University and Edna Adan Hospital, which has significantly reduced maternal mortality in Somaliland, and her tireless campaign to end female genital mutilation (FGM) around the world. (5/16)

Marines and sailors who unwittingly drank and showered in water containing organic solvents and other volatile compounds at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, during its water contamination crisis decades ago had a 70% higher risk of developing Parkinson's disease, according to newly published research. A study published Monday in the Journal of the American Medical Association Neurology suggests the chemicals that poisoned the base water supply more than 40 years ago contribute to the fatal illness, which affects the nervous system and can cause tremors, slurred speech and difficulty moving. (Kime, 5/15)

The Pentagon has estimated that the cleanup costs for PFAS chemicals on active and former military bases, as well as in local communities, could exceed $31 billion, yet the Defense Department's budget for the job is falling behind, according to an advocacy group pressing for broader funding. The Washington, D.C.-based Environmental Working Group issued a report Monday charging that, although the costs for cleaning up what are known as "forever chemicals" are soaring, the Pentagon consistently has requested just a fraction of the amount needed to remove these contaminants from the ground and groundwater at hundreds of sites. (Kime, 5/15)

Tackling the mounting military suicide rates is a massive task, but a network of nationwide providers agrees — traumatic brain injuries are a contributing factor. One of the people pushing for awareness on the issue is Mark Riddick, who served in the U.S. Army for 21 years as a combat medic and healthcare administrator. “I went to Iraq, Afghanistan, Kosovo, South Korea, all over the place." In his many years of training and service, he had quite a few bumps or blows to the head. (Friedman, 5/15)

Military service members in need of mental health treatment recently got a significant boost in the resources available to them. In the first week of May 2023, Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness Gilbert Cisneros, Jr. began the process of implementing the Brandon Act, which President Biden had signed into law late in 2021. (Carroll, 5/13)

TRICARE pharmacy users will see cost increases in 2024 as the Defense Health Agency implements prescription medication copays set by the FY 2018 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). That same legislation gives DoD authority to adjust copays for 2028 and beyond to reflect changes in the cost of pharmaceutical agents and prescription drug dispensing. MOAA already has started discussions on Capitol Hill to establish guardrails on this authority, with the goal of legislation to limit DoD increases on prescription drug copays. (Ruedisueli,

A Mississippi podiatrist was sentenced Monday to two years in federal prison for his role in defrauding Medicare and the military insurer Tricare by prescribing and dispensing medically unnecessary foot bath medications. Federal prosecutors said Dr. Marion Shaun Lund, 54, of Batesville, also ordered medically unnecessary testing of toenails in exchange for kickbacks and bribes. (5/15)

Patients are now enrolling in an early-stage clinical trial to test a universal flu vaccine based on messenger RNA technology, the National Institutes of Health announced Monday. Scientists hope the vaccine will protect against a wide variety of flu strains and provide long-term immunity so people do not have to receive a shot every year. (Kimball, 5/15)

The World Health Organization on Monday warned against using artificial sweeteners to control body weight or reduce the risk of noncommunicable diseases, saying that long-term use is not effective and could pose health risks. These alternatives to sugar, when consumed long term, do not serve to reduce body fat in either adults or children, the W.H.O. said in a recommendation, adding that continued consumption could increase the risk of Type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular diseases and mortality in adults. (Rubin, 5/15)

Royal Philips NV said new tests on its recalled sleep apnea products showed the vast majority of the devices are unlikely to cause considerable health damage to patients. The shares jumped. (Koc, 5/16)

If you are pregnant and use any form of cannabis product, consider stopping. That’s the takeaway from a new study that found a significant health impact of marijuana use on fetal development as early as the beginning of pregnancy. (LaMotte, 5/16)

The man should have gotten Alzheimer’s disease in his early 40s — he had a gene mutation that guaranteed it, or so it seemed. Scans of his brain even revealed severe atrophying and the hallmarks of the disease: rough, hard, amyloid plaques and spaghetti-like tangles of tau proteins. But the fatal brain disease did not appear until the man was 67. Now an intense research effort has discovered why. The man was protected because another mutation in a different gene blocked the disease from entering his entorhinal cortex. (Kolata, 5/15)

�������ýҕ�l Health News: Michael Milken Wants To Speed Up Cures 

Years ago, a top chemical biologist pondered ditching his cancer research to take a more lucrative commission growing healthier apples. Michael Milken stopped him. “I told him we could probably eat the same apples for the next 20 years and be OK, but we wouldn’t be OK if he didn’t continue his potential groundbreaking work,” Milken, 76, said. “Then we funded him.” Driven by a family history of disease and his own experience with prostate cancer, Milken, the onetime junk-bond wizard whose spectacular downfall on securities charges led to a 22-month prison term in the 1990s, has spent the last three decades trying to advance medical science so that people “can find cures to life-threatening diseases within their own lifetimes.” (Kreidler, 5/16)

Two new gun control measures are headed to the Minnesota governor’s desk to be signed into law. A Democratic-Farmer-Labor-backed budget package that boosts funding for public safety and courts by $880 million introduces universal background checks and a “red flag” law to temporarily remove guns from people deemed a threat to themselves or others. The bill passed early Tuesday morning, May 16, on a 69-63 on a mostly party line vote. (Derosier, 5/16)

The Minnesota bill has a provision that some call a red flag bill to allow law enforcement to temporarily take guns from persons believed to be a risk to themselves or to others. ... ‘Red flag’ laws have popped up all over the United States as a response to increased gun violence. Jennifer Paruk researches extreme risk Protection orders at the University of Michigan. She's joined MPR News host Cathy Wurzer to explain how effective red flag laws really are. (Wurzer and Finn, 5/15)

Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee has signed off on additional protections for gun and ammunition dealers, manufacturers and sellers against lawsuits within a bill that lawmakers passed after a deadly school shooting in March. The Republican governor quietly signed the legislation Thursday. Its provisions kick in on July 1.The state Senate gave final passage to the bill in mid-April, just weeks after the March 27 shooting at The Covenant School in Nashville that killed six people, including three 9-year-olds. The House had passed it before the shooting. (Mattise, 5/15)

An 18-year-old gunman fired indiscriminately while roaming a residential street in Farmington, N.M., on Monday morning, killing three people before the police arrived and killed the suspect, the authorities said. Six other people, including two officers, were injured. ... Chief Steve Hebbe of the Farmington Police Department said that the gunman, whom he did not name, had used at least three different weapons, including an “AR-style rifle,” a gun commonly used in mass shootings, as he roamed through the neighborhood, randomly firing “at whatever entered his head to shoot at” including at least six houses and three cars. (Albeck-Ripka and Rubin, 5/15)

Cancer deaths in D.C. dropped 61% over the past quarter century, higher than typical declines nationwide, according to a study published in the journal Cancer. The study shows cancer deaths declined in every congressional district, typically between 20% and 45% among men and 10% and 40% among women, writes Axios Health reporter Tina Reed. (Dil, 5/15)

A Superior Court Judge on Monday ordered that a receiver assume control of the Pawtucket Falls Healthcare Center, less than one month after the state revoked its administrator’s license for allegedly deceiving investigators looking into complaints. (Gagosz, 5/15)

More than half a million Americans with intellectual and developmental disabilities are currently waiting for government funding for long-term care in their homes. That list of individuals, who need lifelong or extended support to live independently within their communities, is lengthy in dozens of states, forcing them to wait, often for years, to acquire assistance with daily tasks such as cooking and transportation. (Kemp, 5/15)

�������ýҕ�l Health News: A Rural County’s Choice: Use Opioid Funds To Pay Off Debt, Or Pay Them Forward To Curb Crisis 

Over the past two years, rural Greene County in northeastern Tennessee has collected more than $2.7 million from regional and national settlements with opioid manufacturers and distributors. But instead of helping people harmed by addiction, county officials are finding other ways to spend it. They have put $2.4 million toward paying off the county’s debt and have directed another $1 million arriving over more than a decade into a capital projects fund. In March, they appropriated $50,000 from that fund to buy a “litter crew vehicle” — a pickup truck to drive inmates to collect trash along county roads. (Pattani, 5/16)

In 2019, I visited Sierra Leone’s Lakka Government Hospital, a tuberculosis treatment center. At the time, I knew almost nothing about TB. I didn’t know that it is curable, or that for almost all of human history, it has been the world’s deadliest infectious disease. (John Green, 5/16)

There’s long been variability in mammography recommendations among various professional medical organizations, which has created confusion for patients. (Mehra Golshan, 5/16)

Recent news about the failures in the U.S. organ transplant system has the nation talking about an important topic that I have spent much of my life working to improve. As a transplant surgeon and advisor to the Kidney Transplant Collaborative (KTC), these discussions give me hope that much-needed change is coming. (Tom Peters, 5/15)

Improving health equity means confronting the systemic, avoidable and unjust outcomes our patients and health plan members may experience. It is meaningful and exciting, yet daunting, work. (Leigh Caswell and Liz Lacouture, 5/15)

A 2022 state-mandated report on suicide prevention revealed that the number of suicides among Texas children in foster care jumped from one in 2017 to four in 2021. There are about 50,000 youths in the state’s foster care system. (5/16)

Assisted-living facilities and the federal-state Medicaid system that's supposed to provide medical insurance for low-income people are at odds over reimbursement rates — how much the facilities should receive for caring for people whose bills are paid by Medicaid. (5/15)