The advocacy group American Commitment said empowering Medicare to negotiate drug prices would raid it of billions of dollars. Drug pricing experts say that that’s not the case and that such policies would instead reduce costs for the Medicare program and seniors.
Doctors in states where abortion is or could be banned say more patients are seeking permanent sterilization procedures, but some patients are reporting that providers are unwilling to operate on people of childbearing age.
In an exciting recent study, researchers found that for adults with obesity, weight loss through bariatric surgery lowered their risk of cancer by 35% and reduced their risk of cancer-related death by 43%. This was true of both gastric bypass and gastr…
Two children are among more than 2,500 people in the U.S. who have contracted monkeypox, according to CDC Director Rochelle Walensky, MD.
The U.S. reported modest increases in COVID-19 cases and admissions this week as the highly transmissible omicron subvariant BA.5 accounts for nearly 78 percent of infections nationwide, according to the CDC’s COVID-19 data tracker weekly review publis…
The U.S. has reported 355 probable cases of acute hepatitis of unknown origin among children in 42 states and jurisdictions as of July 20, according to the CDC.
While there will likely be new COVID-19 variants to worry about in the future, omicron relative BA.2.75 is not the next big one to fret over, experts predict.
The commonly repeated myths include arguments that only women who are pregnant are affected by the decision overturning Roe v. Wade, that Democratic lawmakers could have codified abortion protections before, and that Congress can easily get rid of federal laws restricting abortion.
New York state has confirmed reports of the first U.S. polio case in nearly a decade, ABC-7 reported July 21.
Two things happened in Washington this week that were inevitable: President Joe Biden tested positive for covid-19, and the Senate agreed to move forward on a budget bill that includes only a sliver of what Biden hoped it would. Still, the bill to allow Medicare to negotiate some drug prices, cap out-of-pocket drug costs for seniors, and extend temporary subsidies for Affordable Care Act insurance premiums would represent a major step if Democrats can get it across the finish line. Meanwhile, abortion battles continue to escalate around the country, with Texas leading the way in restrictions. Shefali Luthra of The 19th, Joanne Kenen of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Politico, and Rachel Cohrs of Stat join KHN’s Julie Rovner to discuss these issues and more. Also this week, Rovner interviews Dr. Jack Resneck Jr., the new president of the American Medical Association.
