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Nearly 1 million additional Americans will have access to ObamaCare subsidies next year under a final rule issued Tuesday by the Biden administration. The rule fixes the so-called family glitch, a loophole in the health law that prevents family members from receiving ObamaCare subsidies if a household member has access to an affordable employer-sponsored health plan. (Weixel, 10/11)

The rule doesn’t change significantly from the proposal issued in April. The regulation focuses on a provision of the ACA that entitles low-income Americans to get premium assistance on the marketplace if their employer-sponsored insurance doesn’t reach a certain threshold. An employee would qualify for such assistance if they must spend more than 9.5% of their household income on premiums. However, a glitch in the regulation meant that the threshold only affects the individual’s health plan and not the premium for dependents. While the individual and family can meet the 9.5% threshold, they would only get premium assistance for just the individual’s healthcare costs. (King, 10/11)

The problem was that employer-based health plans have been considered affordable as long as the coverage was within the financial means of an employee, regardless of whether it was too expensive for family members. As a result, the family members were not eligible for the subsidies they may have needed, the White House said. The open enrollment period for health insurance plans under the Affordable Care Act starts on Nov. 1. (Aboulenein, 10/11)

The announcement comes less than a month before the start of open enrollment for 2023 coverage on the Obamacare exchanges. Americans can start signing up on November 1. (Luhby, 10/11)

“Today’s action resolves a flaw in prior ACA regulations to bring more affordable coverage to about one million Americans,” Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra said in a statement. “Our goal is simple: leave no one behind, and give everyone the peace of mind that comes with health insurance.” The number of uninsured Americans has dipped to a historic low of 8% this year, with an estimated 26 million people in the U.S. still without health insurance. (10/11)

The Supreme Court on Tuesday turned away a dispute over whether the unborn are entitled to constitutional protections, sidestepping an issue that could be at the center of the next big battle over abortion after high court's conservative majority reversed the nearly 50-year-old Roe v. Wade decision. The court declined to hear an appeal from two pregnant women, filed on behalf of their then-unborn fetuses, and a Catholic organization of a Rhode Island Supreme Court decision. The state court left intact a Rhode Island abortion rights law and found the unborn babies, Baby Mary Doe and Baby Roe, did not have legal standing to challenge the law because they were not "persons" under the 14th Amendment. (Quinn, 10/11)

The justices turned away an appeal by a Catholic group and two women of a lower court's ruling against their challenge to a 2019 Rhode Island law that codified the right to abortion in line with the Roe precedent. The two women, pregnant at the time when the case was filed, sued on behalf of their fetuses and later gave birth. The Rhode Island Supreme Court decided that fetuses lacked the proper legal standing to bring the suit. (Raymond, 10/12)

An attorney for the plaintiffs, Diane Messere Magee, tweeted about the Supreme Court denying the petition, saying, “It means that they will not take up our case to determine whether unborn human beings have any rights or guarantees of protection under the US Constitution. While we are extremely disappointed with this outcome, we are confident that #SCOTUS will eventually have to answer the question in the future.” (Fitzpatrick, 10/11)

Legal abortions that restarted in Arizona this week after a court blocked enforcement of a pre-statehood ban will be able to continue for at least five weeks while an appeals court considers the case. A schedule set Tuesday for Planned Parenthood and the Arizona attorney general’s office lawyers to file their legal briefs in the case means the Arizona Court of Appeals can’t decide the case until at least Nov. 17. The appeals court blocked enforcement of the Civil War-era law on Friday, reversing at least for now a Sept. 23 ruling from a judge in Tucson. (Christie, 10/11)

Hawaii Gov. David Ige signed an executive order Tuesday that aims to prevent other states from punishing their residents who get an abortion in the islands and stop other states from sanctioning local doctors and nurses who provide such care. “We will not cooperate with any other state that tries to prosecute women who receive abortions in Hawaii. And we will not cooperate with any other state that tries to sanction medical professionals who provide abortions in Hawaii,” Ige, a Democrat, said at a news conference. (McAvoy, 10/11)

When Kansas voted two-to-one against a proposal that would have said there was no right to an abortion in the state, the resounding victory suggested that abortion bans are a losing issue. But it wasn’t clear whether that argument could apply to red states beyond Kansas. Now comes the next test: Kentucky, which is already enforcing a near-total ban on the procedure. (Luthra, 10/11)

KHN: Abortion Bans Are Motivating Midterm Voters, Poll Shows

Half of voters say the Supreme Court’s decision overturning the constitutional right to an abortion has made them more motivated to vote in next month’s midterm elections, with enthusiasm growing especially among Democrats and those living in states with abortion bans, according to a new poll from KFF. The survey also showed that most voters, whether they are Democrats or Republicans, do not think abortion should be prohibited in cases of rape or incest, nor do they support laws that set criminal punishments for abortion providers and women who have abortions. (Huetteman, 10/12)

In Wisconsin, Tim Michels, a Republican running for governor, promised activists that he would never “flip-flop” on his support for an 1849 law that bans abortion except when a woman’s life is threatened. Less than three weeks later, he changed his stance. In the Phoenix suburbs, staffers whisked away Juan Ciscomani, a Republican House candidate, citing an urgent text, after he was asked by a voter whether he supported abortion bans. And in New Hampshire, Don Bolduc, the Republican running for governor, described abortion as a distraction from the “really important issues.” (Lerer and Glueck, 10/12)

When the Supreme Court’s decision undoing Roe v. Wade came down in June, anti-abortion groups were jubilant – but far from satisfied. Many in the movement have a new target: hormonal birth control. It seems contradictory; doesn’t preventing unwanted pregnancies also prevent abortions? But anti-abortion groups don’t see it that way. They claim that hormonal contraceptives like IUDs and the pill can actually cause abortions. (Mostafa, Butler and Mieszkowski, 10/8)

Florida’s surgeon general faced major blowback from the medical community after warning men against taking the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna Covid-19 vaccines and highlighting an analysis claiming the shots increase the risk of cardiac-related deaths. The guidance from Joseph A. Ladapo even prompted Twitter to temporarily block a social media post from the surgeon general promoting the analysis, though the social media company restored it. (Sarkissian, 10/11)

Daniel Salmon, director of the Institute for Vaccine Safety at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, said among those concerns was that Florida looked at deaths up to 25 weeks after vaccination. He called that a "huge problem" because it's too long and likely impacted by the "seasonality" of outcomes. "No experienced vaccine safety researcher would have a 20- or 25-week control period," he said. "If you submitted that to peer review, any decent journal would reject it," he added. (Flaherty, 10/12)

The White House on Tuesday said eligible Americans should get the updated COVID-19 boosters by Halloween to have maximum protection against the coronavirus by Thanksgiving and the holidays, as it warned of a “challenging” virus season ahead. Dr. Ashish Jha, the White House COVID-19 coordinator, said the U.S. has the tools, both from vaccines and treatments, to largely eliminate serious illness and death from the virus, but stressed that’s only the case if people do their part. “We are not helpless against these challenges,” he said. “What happens this winter is up to us.” (Miller, 10/11)

Health officials in the U.S. are keeping a close watch on several coronavirus omicron subvariants that may evade immunity, the White House said at a Tuesday briefing. Dr. Ashish Jha, head of the White House Covid task force, said sublineages such a BA.2.75, BA.4.6 and BF.7 are gaining traction across the country. But he assured that updated booster shots should protect against them. “We are not helpless against these challenges,” Jha said. “What happens this winter is up to us.” (Fracassa and Vaziri, 10/11)

Among 63,000 US adults and children tested for COVID-19, cough and sore throat were reported more often during the Omicron BA.1 period than amid the pre-Delta and Delta eras, and 80% of those retested during Omicron remained positive for 5 days after symptom onset. (10/11)

Just how much of a threat is medium COVID? The answer has been obscured, to some extent, by sloppy definitions. A lot of studies blend different, dire outcomes into a single giant bucket called “long COVID.” Illnesses arising in as few as four weeks, along with those that show up many months later, have been considered one and the same. (Mazer, 10/11)

A new long-covid study based on the experiences of nearly 100,000 participants provides powerful evidence that many people do not fully recover months after being infected with the coronavirus. The Scottish study found that between six and 18 months after infection, 1 in 20 people had not recovered and 42 percent reported feeling only somewhat better. There were some reassuring aspects to the results: People with asymptomatic infections are unlikely to suffer long-term effects, and vaccination appears to offer some protection from long covid. (Sellers, 10/12)

A new global estimate of people who experienced long-COVID symptoms after having symptomatic COVID infection suggests that 6.2% reported one of three long-term symptom clusters, an international research group reported yesterday in JAMA. (10/11)

KHN: Watch: What Experts Advise For Seniors Living Under The Long Shadow Of Covid 

The covid-19 pandemic casts a long shadow over the lives of older adults and their family caregivers in the United States, even as many people resolve to move on and resume normal activities. Even President Joe Biden declared “the pandemic is over” in a recent interview, a controversial statement he later sought to clarify. Judith Graham, KHN’s “Navigating Aging” columnist, invited a panel of experts from across the country to talk candidly about the intractable challenges seniors face. (10/11)

The affected states are Alabama, Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Nebraska, North Carolina, Texas and Tennessee. Bright Health, which in April announced plans to exit six other markets, said the move will reduce costs and free up about $250 million after settling medical liabilities. The insurtech company has sought to exit expensive markets as the COVID-19 pandemic drove up medical costs for members gained during the special enrollment period. (Hudson, 10/11)

Children’s hospitals were spared from the worst ravages of the pandemic, putting them in a much stronger financial position than their acute-care peers. (Bannow, 10/11)

It was Lachlan Rutledge’s sixth birthday, but as he mustered a laborious breath and blew out one candle, it was his mother who made a wish: for a pediatric hospital bed in northeast Oklahoma. The kindergartner has a connective tissue disorder, severe allergies and asthma. Those conditions repeatedly landed him in the pediatric intensive care unit at Ascension St. John Medical Center in Tulsa, with collapsed veins and oxygen levels so low, he was unresponsive to his mother’s voice. (Baumgaertner, 10/11)

Michigan's largest in-state health system finally has a permanent name: Corewell Health. The announcement comes more than 8 months after the merger of Spectrum Health and Beaumont Health. The two systems merged on Feb. 1 after announcing the intent to merge more than a year ago. The two entities previously operated under the BHSH parent company while maintaining the Spectrum and Beaumont names on hospitals. (Walsh, 10/11)

Private equity's reputation when it comes to nursing home ownership is on par with bed bugs, with President Biden even devoting a few withering lines of his most recent State of the Union address to chastise the relationship. (Primack, 10/11)

Latinos in many communities in the Southwest live in "pulmonology deserts" and have to drive up to 14 hours to access care, a new study found. (Franco, 10/11)

KHN: Climate Change Magnifies Health Impacts Of Wildfire Smoke In Care Deserts 

Smoke began billowing into the skies of northwestern Nevada in September, clouding the mountains, dimming the sun — and quashing residents’ hopes that they would be spared from wildfires and the awful air quality the blazes produce. The lung-irritating particles were blowing in from burning forests in California and settling in Douglas County, Nevada, home to nearly 50,000 people, prompting warnings that air quality had reached hazardous levels. (Appleby and Orozco Rodriguez, 10/12)

Thailand’s government approved development of a 5 billion baht ($131 million) international medical hub in Phuket, with the aim of expanding health- and wellness-related tourism on the country’s largest island. (Sangwongwanich, 10/11)

An older class of diabetes drugs appeared to lower the risk of developing dementia in a study, suggesting the inexpensive medicines could be researched to help combat the growing societal burden of cognitive decline. (Loh, 10/11)

Patrick Keenan, director of policy and partnerships at the Pennsylvania Health Access Network, a nonprofit focused on pricing and accessibility of the health care system in the state, weighed in on Eckard's situation. "We've seen an explosion of prices, really over the past decade, with a lot of these blockbuster drugs that the price just seems to go up and up and up," Keenan said. (Panyard, 10/11)

Walmart said Tuesday it will begin helping pharmaceutical companies, clinical research organizations and academic medical centers recruit people for clinical research trials. (Devereaux, 10/11)

The Deerfield, Illinois-based company is paying a total of $722 million to quickly boost its presence in the industry. Walgreens completed its initial $330 million deal with CareCentrix in late August, taking a 55% share in the company that helps transition patients from hospitals to their homes. The remaining stake will cost the company $392 million and the transaction is expected to close by March 2023, according to a news release. (Berryman, 10/11)

A biotech company co-founded by venture capital firm Atlas Venture has shut down after running into problems with its lead drug and raising new funding. The goal was to develop drugs for what are known as repeat expansion disorders — genetic diseases that are caused when short chunks of the DNA sequence repeat over and over again in the DNA strand. (DeAngelis, 10/12)

NFL Hall of Famer Brett Favre hosted Mississippi officials at his home in January 2019, where an executive for a pharmaceutical company Favre invested in solicited nearly $2 million in state welfare funds, according to pitch materials obtained by CBS News. (Kaplan, Hymes, Villafranca and Kates, 10/11)

Lewisville-based Orthofix will merge with a California firm to form a medical device maker with combined revenue of nearly $700 million and products distributed in 68 countries. The all-stock deal with SeaSpine, a Carlsbad-based company that makes spinal and orthopedics devices, is expected to close early next year. The combined firm, which will be named at closing, will be headquartered in Lewisville with offices in Carlsbad and Verona, Italy. (O'Donnell, 10/11)

For the first time, US Preventive Services Task Force recommended on Tuesday that children ages 8 and older be screened for anxiety. It also suggested those 12 and older be screened for depression. A month ago, the group recommended all adults under 65 be evaluated for the same conditions. The task force urges preventative screening for children and adolescents who don’t have a mental health diagnosis and don’t show symptoms. (Ighodaro, 10/12)

An influential national panel of preventive health experts on Tuesday recommended for the first time that children and adolescents between 8 and 18 should be screened for anxiety, but said there was insufficient evidence to say that children 7 and under should be screened. (McFarling, 10/11)

The midlife crisis is real, new research tells us. People in their 40s and 50s, in rich countries, are prone to a rise in suicidal thoughts, job stress, depression and alcohol dependence, according to a new paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research. (Pandey, 10/11)

Dogs see the world through their noses. Their exceptional ability to recognize specific scents — vastly better than humans’ — helps them find bombs, guns, drugs and human remains, and point to some diseases. Now a study has found that dogs can do something just as remarkable: sniff out stress in people. (Cimons, 10/11)

Last year at this time, Communities United, a survivor-led, grassroots, intergenerational, racial justice organization in Chicago set their sights on changing the mental health landscape for youth with the help of Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago. The goal was to develop a wholistic plan for youth that moves the mental health conversation from one focused on individual treatment to one that supports community healing. (Rockett, 10/11)

"We have no problem with the study itself," American Cancer Society CEO Karen E. Knudsen told Fox News Digital in a phone interview on Monday, Oct. 10, 2022. "It's the interpretation of the study that gives us grave concern," she said — calling the study "wildly misinterpreted." (Reilly, 10/11)

A new study in European countries where colonoscopies weren't routinely offered appears to suggest the procedure may be less helpful than many had hoped. But some health experts warn against misinterpreting the study's findings. "There's a lot of nuances here, so it's understandable that there are different takeaways from different folks," said Dr. Chris Manz, a gastroenterology oncologist at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. (Weintraub and Rodriguez, 10/11)

A new study from the United Kingdom shows widespread monkeypox DNA surface contamination in healthcare settings, with 93% of surfaces in occupied patient rooms contaminated, and significant contamination on healthcare worker personal protective equipment (PPE). (Soucheray, 10/11)

The nation’s monkeypox response is shifting from crisis mode to a more long-term approach as the Biden administration acknowledges that it will be impossible to eradicate the virus from the country anytime soon. (Cohen, 10/11)

An estimated 1.5 million Americans have a rheumatoid arthritis diagnosis, according to the Arthritis Foundation. Many patients with the autoimmune illness experience flare-ups and chronic pain. But speaking up at the doctor's office and making lifestyle adjustments can help alleviate some of the pain and discomfort, says Nick Turkas, senior director for patient education at the Arthritis Foundation. (Santichen, 10/6)

KHN: BMI: The Mismeasure Of Weight And The Mistreatment Of Obesity 

People who seek medical treatment for obesity or an eating disorder do so with the hope their health plan will pay for part of it. But whether it’s covered often comes down to a measure invented almost 200 years ago by a Belgian mathematician as part of his quest to use statistics to define the “average man.” That work, done in the 1830s by Adolphe Quetelet, appealed to life insurance companies, which created “ideal” weight tables after the turn of the century. By the 1970s and 1980s, the measurement, now dubbed body mass index, was adopted to screen for and track obesity. (Appleby, 10/12)

A New Orleans health care nonprofit is acquiring three hospitals from a national chain in a deal that will leave two major players on the city’s hospital care scene. New Orleans-based LCMC Health will acquire three Tulane hospitals from HCA Healthcare. The deal includes Tulane Medical Center in downtown New Orleans, along with two suburban hospitals, Tulane Lakeside Hospital and Lakeview Regional Medical Center. (10/11)

Gov. Kevin Stitt is defending his push to outsource management of the state’s Medicaid program, one of his biggest policy achievements that Joy Hofmeister, his Democratic challenger, says she would work to undo if elected. (Felder, 10/11)

Maryland health officials are continuing a push to outsource Maryland’s public hospital services by asking a state spending panel meeting Wednesday to approve a projected $328 million award for the Western Maryland Hospital Center in Hagerstown — but providing few details about the plan. (Cohn, 10/12)

In the Central Valley, where two-thirds of the nation’s fruit and nuts are grown, the pastoral landscape masks entrenched racial and economic disparities. Life expectancy in Fresno County drops by 20 years depending on where you live, and it’s those who live in historically poor, redlined or rural neighborhoods who are most impacted by a resurgence of maternal and congenital syphilis. “Are you familiar with syphilis?” Hou Vang, a county communicable disease specialist, asks a pregnant woman standing in the shade of a tree outside her home. (Hwang, 10/10)

KHN: ‘Separate And Unequal’: Critics Say Newsom’s Pricey Medicaid Reforms Leave Most Patients Behind 

It wasn’t exactly an emergency, but Michael Reed, a security guard who lives in Watts, had back pain and ran out of his blood pressure medication. Unsure where else to turn, he went to his local emergency room for a refill. Around the same time, James Woodard, a homeless man, appeared for his third visit that week. He wasn’t in medical distress. Nurses said he was likely high on meth and just looking for a place to rest. (Hart, 10/12)

The Massachusetts Department of Public Health has received a $25 million federal grant intended to help health officials address infectious disease outbreaks by deploying the burgeoning science of genomics. (Freyer, 10/10)

Cristina Ramsey, frail but defiant, arrived at the headquarters of Project Weber/Renew to say her goodbyes to people who had watched out for her for nearly two decades. She embraced staff members at the group, which helps drug users in one of this city’s poorest neighborhoods, convinced they had prolonged her life with clean needles, treatment, housing and friendship. She told them that she was going into hospice care and that the organization “really did help me — a lot.” (Weiland, 10/12)

The results of a phase 3 clinical trial indicate that a novel combination antibiotic may soon be available for treatment of complicated urinary tract infections (cUTIs) caused by multidrug-resistant gram-negative bacteria. The trial results, published this week in JAMA, show that cefepime/enmetazobactam, which combines a fourth-generation cephalosporin with a novel beta-lactamase inhibitor, was noninferior to piperacillin/tazobactam in patients with cUTIs or acute pyelonephritis, and met superiority criteria with respect to clinical cure and microbiologic eradication. (Dall, 10/6)

A compound that both inhibits the MRSA superbug and renders it more vulnerable to antibiotics in lab experiments has been discovered. (University of Bath, 10/11)

Quest Diagnostics Inc resolved allegations that its prenatal DNA tests infringed a patent owned by biotech company Ravgen Inc on Friday shortly before a trial in Los Angeles federal court was set to begin, according to a court filing. (Brittain, 10/10)

Becton Dickinson & Co is recalling some models of its sterilization containers sold under the Genesis Sterrad brand in the United States and Canada, the company said on Friday, citing "discrepant test results" during an internal quality assessment. ... The Genesis Sterrad line of reusable containers, which Becton acquired in 2015 as part of its $12 billion takeover of CareFusion Corp, are used by hospitals for storing surgical instruments before and after sterilization. (10/10)

A few months after Sanofi and Regeneron’s Dupixent scored a new indication as the first and only medicine to treat eosinophilic esophagitis (EoE) in patients 12 and older, new late-stage trial data show the drug's worth in younger children. (Becker, 10/11)

The deaths of 69 children from acute kidney injury in Gambia is linked to four cough syrups made in India and imported into the West African country via a U.S.-based pharmaceutical company, the Gambian police said in a preliminary investigation report on Tuesday. ... Atlanta-based Atlantic Pharmaceuticals Company Ltd, which has permission to export medicines into Gambia, ordered a combined total of 50,000 bottles of those syrups, according to the police report. (10/12)

It has been a tumultuous few months for Gilead Sciences’ breast cancer med Trodelvy. But after a surprise comeback at ESMO this year that reignited blockbuster hopes for the franchise, the antibody-drug conjugate is keeping its winning streak rolling. (Kansteiner, 10/11)

The European Commission has informed Teva Pharmaceutical of its preliminary view that the company breached European Union (EU) antitrust rules with practices aimed at delaying competition to multiple sclerosis product Copaxone. (10/10)

Drugmaker Nexus Pharmaceuticals Inc has lost approval to sell a generic version of Melinta Therapeutics LLC's injectable antibiotic minocin, after a federal judge found that a contactless FedEx delivery at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic did not give Melinta adequate notice of Nexus's application to make the drug. ... Nexus provided a FedEx receipt indicating that the notice was delivered on December 8, 2020, with the signature "C-19" indicating that FedEx had used contactless delivery because of COVID. (Pierson, 10/10)

One child dies every two minutes from malaria. Wider use of a new vaccine can make a dent in that devastating statistic. (Marian W. Wentworth and Thomas Hall, 10/10)

A little over a decade ago, our group tested a simple idea: Could we fight cancer cells using cells that we changed? We armed these killer immune cells — T cells — with a tailor-made receptor so they could see and kill cancer. This treatment, called CAR T therapy, worked even better than we could have hoped. (Daniel Baker and Carl June, 10/8)

Congress has taken the necessary step of including critical reauthorizations for the Prescription Drug User Fee Act in its continuing resolution that will avert a partial government shutdown. (David F. Arons, 10/10)

While most people assume that all Federal Drug Administration-approved drugs are equally safe and effective, research shows that this is not always true. The reality is that the FDA tests only a small fraction of generic drugs sold in the U.S. each year. (Rosemary Gibson and John V. Gray, 10/6)

Many people in the US may now be thinking that they’ve received a blessed reprieve from a middle age rite of passage: the colonoscopy. (Lisa Jarvis, 10/11)

Early on, back in 2020, gender equity advocates warned that the pandemic was already threatening to derail the progress toward goals for girls. (Sheila Mulrooney Eldred, 10/11)

Article after article shows us that America’s teenagers aren’t doing well, without putting their finger on what is wrong beyond issues of individual “mental illness” and the usual bugbears trotted out — social media, video games, the weakening of the family unit. But what are the teenagers telling us is wrong? (Jamieson Webster, 10/11)

After pushing for several hours, my patient looks exhausted but happy, clutching her seconds-old newborn to her chest. She doesn’t know that this birth would have happened by C-section at most American hospitals, something that would have put her at risk for a host of complications and virtually guaranteed that any future births would also be by C-section. But I do. (Ann Ledbetter, 10/12)

The spread of anti-vaccine misinformation and disinformation has become one of the defining public health challenges of our time — so dangerous that it prompted the California legislature to make the practice grounds for revoking a doctor’s license. But what can we do when this pseudoscientific claptrap comes from an agency of a state government, dressed up as a public health recommendation? (Michael Hiltzik, 10/10)

During a Little League World Series game in August, a hitter was accidentally beaned by the opposing pitcher. His helmet and cap flew off as he crumpled to the ground, his hands pressed to his head. (Renee Graham, 10/11)

Can price transparency meaningfully reduce the outrageous cost of health care and coverage? I believe it can. So do the last several presidential administrations, led by Democrats and Republicans, and nearly 90% of Americans, according to numerous recent polls. (Cynthia A. Fisher, 10/11)