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Pool via REUTERSApril 8 (Reuters) - The federal judge who on Friday suspended approval of the abortion pill mifepristone is a former Christian legal activist whose small courthouse in Amarillo, Texas, has become a go-to destination for conservatives challenging Biden administration policies. U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, an appointee of former Republican President Donald Trump, had a long track record of opposing abortion and LGBTQ rights before the U.S. Senate confirmed him in 2019 to a life-tenured position as a federal judge. When anti-abortion groups in November filed a lawsuit challenging the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's more than two-decade old approval of the abortion pill mifepristone, they filed in Amarillo, guaranteeing the case would be heard by Kacsmaryk. FAVORED VENUESince then, his courthouse has become a favored venue for conservative legal activists and Republican state attorneys general pursuing lawsuits seeking to halt aspects of Democratic President Joe Biden's agenda - often with success. While the district's chief judge could order cases be reallocated, he has not.

March 30 (Reuters) - A federal judge in Texas on Thursday blocked Obamacare's mandate that health insurance plans cover pre-exposure prophylaxis against HIV (PrEP) and other preventive care including cancer and diabetes screenings. U.S. District Judge Reed O'Connor in Fort Worth, Texas, said the PrEP mandate violated a federal religious freedom law and that the other preventive care mandates were based on recommendations by an illegally appointed task force. The ruling was a victory for conservative businesses and individuals that sued to challenge the mandates in 2020. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees Obamacare, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Reporting By Brendan Pierson in New York; Editing by Mark PorterOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

☆ US declines to force lower price on cancer drug Xtandi
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-21 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

WASHINGTON, March 21 (Reuters) - The U.S. government will not force Pfizer Inc (PFE.N) and Astellas Pharma Inc (4503.T) to lower the price of their prostate cancer drug Xtandi using its emergency "march-in" authority, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) said on Tuesday. Patient group the Union for Affordable Cancer Treatment first filed a petition calling on the NIH to use its authority to lower the drug's price in March 2016. The NIH said in a letter made public on Tuesday that its analyses in response to the petition found the prostate cancer treatment was widely available. "NIH does not believe that use of the march-in authority would be an effective means of lowering the price of the drug," the letter said. Progressive lawmakers in the Democratic Party have been calling on President Joe Biden's administration to use its march-in authority to lower drug prices.

The Alzheimer's Association and the pharmaceutical industry say the drug companies are not directly involved in the campaign. But the Alzheimer's Association says patients simply don't have the time to spare. The agency did not address the Alzheimer's Association campaign. Association members have met 30 times with staffers for the state's 20 members of Congress, Ryan Schiff, the chapter's public policy manager, said. Spokespeople for all three companies said they do not work with the Association on its campaign to expand Medicare coverage of the drugs.

☆ Almost 30,000 Amazon employees have signed an internal petition to fight the company's return-to-office mandate. Read the full copy here.
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-10 | by ( Eugene Kim | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +15 min

New mandate requires most office workers to come into the office at least 3 times a week starting in May. About 3 weeks since the announcement of the new policy, more than 29,200 Amazon employees have signed an internal petition opposing the mandate. Roughly 30,000 Amazon employees have joined that Slack channel, which was created shortly after the RTO announcement. In the petition, Amazon employees added internal data supporting continued remote work and dozens of comments explaining why they oppose the change. A 2013 Stanford University study of Chinese workers found that remote workers are 13% more productive than their in-office counterparts.

☆ Fact Check-Michigan incentive program for children’s vaccines paid far less than $40,000 to individual providers
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-09 | by ( Reuters Fact Check | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +4 min

The posts read, “DID YOU KNOW: Blue Cross Blue Shield pays pediatricians a $40,000 bonus for fully vaccinating 100 patients under the age of 2. The full document does describe an incentive program offered to Michigan providers in 2016, and the excerpt seen in the posts about childhood vaccines is on the document’s page 15. “While vaccinations may fall into that category, they would not be the sole performance measure,” said a spokesperson for the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association (BCBSA), which represents the insurer’s affiliates in multiple states. Each of the 34 Blue Cross and Blue Shield companies “sets its own value-based contracts and determines which performance measures would be taken into account for incentives,” she added. A 2016 Michigan program paid individual providers smaller maximum amounts for vaccinating children than claimed online.

A deeper look at the company's billing practices revealed what appeared to be Medicare fraud, Pérez Aybar said. Fraud flourishesThat's just one of thousands of examples of how Medicare fraud is flourishing — not only in south Florida, but across the country. Taxpayers are losing more than $100 billion a year to Medicare and Medicaid fraud, according to estimates from the National Health Care Anti-Fraud Association. This convicted felon says Medicare and Medicaid fraud is "very easy" to get away with. The same pills could be sold and resold multiple times with different phony patients, billing Medicare each time.

[1/2] People pose with syringe with needle in front of displayed Moderna logo in this illustration taken, December 11, 2021. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/IllustrationFeb 15 (Reuters) - The U.S. government should face a patent lawsuit over COVID-19 vaccines, not vaccine maker Moderna Inc (MRNA.O), the Department of Justice told a Delaware federal court on Tuesday. Moderna made the same argument last year in an unsuccessful bid to win an early dismissal of the lawsuit. Both Moderna and Pfizer Inc (PFE.N) have been the target of multiple patent lawsuits over their COVID vaccines, including a lawsuit brought by Moderna against Pfizer in August. The case is Arbutus Biopharma Corp v. Moderna Inc, U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware, No.

WASHINGTON, Feb 7 (Reuters) - Texas sued the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden on Tuesday to prevent it from asking pharmacies to fill reproductive health prescriptions. The Biden administration said in July 2022 that refusing to fill prescriptions for drugs that could be used to terminate a pregnancy could violate federal law, regardless of various state bans on the procedure. The lawsuit was filed on Tuesday against the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas. The Food and Drug Administration said January that abortion pills would become more widely available at pharmacies and through the mail. A legal battle is under way at a federal court in Texas, where abortion opponents have sued to undo the approval of the drugs.

☆ Jim Cramer's Investing Club meeting Tuesday: Caterpillar, J&J, Humana
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-31 | by ( Krystal Hur | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +3 min

Every weekday the CNBC Investing Club with Jim Cramer holds a "Morning Meeting" livestream at 10:20 a.m. Opportunity to buy Caterpillar Confident in decision to buy Johnson & Johnson Why buy ahead of an overhang? Opportunity to buy Caterpillar Shares of Caterpillar (CAT) were down 4.2% mid-morning Tuesday after the company reported earnings before the bell. Why we bought more Johnson & Johnson Shares of Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) fell Tuesday after a U.S. appeals court on Monday dismissed the pharmaceutical giant's bankruptcy strategy for tens of thousands of lawsuits concerning the company's talc products. As a subscriber to the CNBC Investing Club with Jim Cramer, you will receive a trade alert before Jim makes a trade.

Jan 30 (Reuters) - Drug manufacturers can limit healthcare providers' use of outside pharmacies for dispensing drugs under a federal drug discount program, a federal appeals court ruled Monday. The case centers on the federal 340B program, in which drugmakers provide discounts to eligible healthcare providers that serve low-income populations. Drugmakers are required to participate in the 340B program in order to receive funds from government health insurance programs like Medicare and Medicaid. Sanofi, Novo Nordisk and AstraZeneca all continued to allow 340B providers without in-house pharmacies to use a single contract pharmacy. HHS ordered them to stop, saying the new policies were not allowed under the 340B program.

☆ U.S. govt proposes expanding Obamacare coverage for birth control
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-30 | by ( Reuters Staff | ) www.reuters.com time to read: 1 min

A sign on an insurance store advertises Obamacare in San Ysidro, San Diego, California, U.S., October 26, 2017. REUTERS/Mike Blake(Reuters) - The U.S. government on Monday proposed a new rule to expand coverage of the Obamacare health insurance plans for all women who need or want birth control. Regulations in 2018 expanded exemptions for religious beliefs and moral convictions allowing private health plans and insurers to exclude coverage of contraceptive services. The new rules proposed by the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) and the Departments of Labor and the Treasury would remove the moral exemption and retain the existing religious exemption. The rules would ensure that “tens of millions of women across the country” who have access to birth control coverage under the Affordable Care Act would get access to contraception, the HHS said.

☆ U.S. seeks to expand birth control coverage under Obamacare
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-30 | by ( Ahmed Aboulenein | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

A sign on an insurance store advertises Obamacare in San Ysidro, San Diego, California, U.S., October 26, 2017. REUTERS/Mike BlakeWASHINGTON (Reuters) -Women whose employers have opted out of covering contraceptives under their health insurance plans on religious grounds would gain no-cost access to birth control under a rule proposed by the Biden administration on Monday. The Affordable Care Act (ACA), also known as Obamacare, requires private insurance plans to cover recommended preventive services including contraception without any patient cost-sharing, but current regulations grant exemptions for religious or moral objections. If the new rule is implemented, women enrolled in plans governed by the ACA would gain birth control coverage regardless of employer exemption, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) said in a statement. The rule would also remove employer moral objections as grounds for exemption from coverage but keep religious ones in place.

☆ Long Covid has an ‘underappreciated’ role in labor shortage, study finds
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-30 | by ( Greg Iacurci | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +1 min

Long Covid is keeping people out of work and may reduce on-the-job productivity for others, contributing to a labor shortage and weighing on the U.S. economy at large, according to a new study. Long Covid — also known as long-haul Covid, post-Covid or post-acute Covid syndrome — is a chronic illness that results from a Covid-19 infection. Up to 30% of Americans develop long Covid after a Covid infection, affecting as many as 23 million Americans, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said in November. About 18% of people with long Covid hadn't returned to work for more than a year after contracting Covid, according to a recent study by the New York State Insurance Fund, the state's largest workers' compensation insurer. The labor force participation rate was 62.3% in December, which has shown "little net change" since early 2022 and remains a percentage point below its pre-pandemic level, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics most recent jobs report.

☆ Nearly 16 million Americans sign up for 2023 Obamacare plans
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-11 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

[1/2] U.S. President-elect Joe Biden adjusts his face mask after during a news conference, where he discussed health care and the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare, at the theater serving as his transition headquarters in Wilmington, Delaware, U.S., November 10, 2020. REUTERS/Jonathan ErnstJan 11 (Reuters) - Nearly 16 million Americans have so far signed up for health insurance through the Affordable Care Act's marketplace, a 13% jump from a year earlier, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) on Wednesday. Enrollment for 2023 healthcare plans under the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, is open between Nov. 1 and Jan. 15. About 3.1 million people who have signed up for the plans are new enrollees, HHS said. Obamacare helps low and middle-income Americans who do not have access to affordable health insurance coverage through an employer.

☆ Successfully applying for Social Security disability is difficult. Applying as a long Covid patient is even trickier
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-09 | by ( Lorie Konish | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +8 min

Social Security disability benefits are generally available to workers who have earned enough credits through payroll taxes — typically 40 credits, though younger workers may qualify with less. Supplemental Security Income, or SSI, is a federal benefit available to disabled individuals who may not qualify for Social Security disability based on their work records. Allsup, which works with NASA, helped Perry get his Social Security disability benefits application approved. "That can really make or break a Social Security disability case," he said. Social Security disability benefits are aimed at long-term conditions.

The law targets fraud and abuse, such as bribery, in federal healthcare programs including Medicare, which provides coverage for the elderly and disabled. Pfizer contends the government's interpretation of the law was blocking access to critical medical care. New York-based Pfizer's medication, also known as tafamidis, treats a rare heart condition known as transthyretin amyloid cardiomyopathy that can lead to progressive heart failure. Given the drug's high price, patients would need to bear yearly co-payments of roughly $13,000, with Medicare covering the rest. Pfizer's proposal sought to assist "middle-income" patients who do not qualify for low-income co-pay support but might still be deterred by its cost.

☆ A Study Sounds a False Alarm About America’s Emergency Rooms
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-30 | by ( Kristen Panthagani | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

A shocking headline recently claimed that every year 250,000 people in the U.S. die after misdiagnosis in the emergency room. Even more shocking, the statistic was extrapolated from the death of one man—in a Canadian emergency room more than a decade ago. The figure comes from a Dec. 15 report by the Agency for Health Care Research and Quality. The AHRQ, part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, produces research to improve healthcare in America.

☆ Psychedelic therapies are on the horizon. Who will administer them?
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-26 | by ( Danica Jefferies | Danica Jefferies Is An Intern With The Data Graphics Team For Nbc News Digital. | ) www.nbcnews.com time to read: +11 min

Psychedelic therapy is nowhere near as simple as filling a prescription and taking a pill at home. A clinical psychologist, she founded and now leads the first accredited psychedelic therapy training program in the U.S. at the California Institute of Integral Studies. The psychedelic therapy program entails 150 hours of instruction and several in-person training sessions. So why the growing interest in using psychedelic drugs for mental health? Treatment with psychedelic drugs is not as simple as giving the patient a pill to take at home, and it’s not for everybody.

☆ Long Covid patients can face a battle trying to claim benefits through their workplace disability insurance
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-20 | by ( Sarah O'Brien | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +8 min

Many workers get disability coverage via an employerAn estimated 43% of private industry workers have access to short-term disability insurance through their employer, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Long-term disability insurance, which is intended to kick in when necessary after short-term disability benefits run out, is available to 35% of workers. After 10 weeks of struggling, he filed another short-term disability claim when it was clear he was not improving. Toward the end of 2021, with five doctors agreeing that his condition was disabling, he again filed a long-term disability claim. In fact, cases involving denial of long-term disability benefits for long Covid are cropping up around the country.

☆ Child workers found throughout Hyundai-Kia supply chain in Alabama
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-16 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +16 min

Hyundai and Kia now have dozens of suppliers in Alabama, according to the Economic Development Partnership of Alabama, a business group. The agency, they said, hired underage workers while they worked there. “It was my first job in the United States and this is not what you would expect to see here.”Six other former workers told Reuters they, too, saw underage workers at Ajin’s two factories in Cusseta. Herrera said he raised concerns about the underage workers with managers at SMART, but was brushed off. The officials, wearing shirts that bore Hyundai logos, inspected the assembly line even as underage workers labored there, Herrera said.

☆ Long Covid medical costs average $9,500 in first six months, as patients become 'health-system wanderers'
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-15 | by ( Greg Iacurci | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +5 min

Long Covid is a chronic illness that can carry potentially debilitating symptoms, which may last for months or years. Long Covid patients are "health-system wanderers," said Mark Newman, CEO and co-founder of Nomi Health. "There are diseases and conditions with a lot of obvious answers, and long Covid is not one of them," Newman said. In a separate study, Harvard University economist David Cutler estimated that long Covid costs patients $9,000 a year in medical expenses. Patients with long Covid racked up $9,000 in additional average medical costs per person when compared to similar people who had Covid but didn't have subsequent long-haul symptoms, Nomi Health found.

Covid-19 hospitalizations are declining again after a surge in December and January, followed by a smaller summer uptick. Track hospitalizations in states with this NBC News analysis of U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Covid hospitalizations data. This article will be updated daily.

These psychiatric drugs are regulated by the federal government as controlled substances that have high potential for abuse and addiction but are not opioids. The impact on independent pharmacies' prescriptions of psychiatric drugs from the widening crackdown on opioids has not been previously reported. It is dedicated to mitigating the abuse of controlled substances without interfering in good-faith clinical decisions made by doctors, she said. "Pharmaceutical distributors must walk a legal and ethical tightrope between providing access to necessary medications and acting to prevent diversion of controlled substances," Esposito said in a written statement. The FDA, the HHS agency that administers the list of controlled substances, did not respond to a request for comment.

☆ Long Covid's financial devastation: $8,000 in credit card debt, ruined retirement plans
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-08 | by ( Annie Nova | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +8 min

More than a third of respondents said their income had gone down as a result of long Covid. "Long Covid is as much part of the pandemic as is the acute phase, during which the government went to great lengths to treat people and save lives," said Oved Amitay, president of the Long Covid Alliance, an advocacy group. Of the long Covid patients she has seen, only 2 out of 50 who have applied for SSDI have been approved so far, she said. Sharon Sunders long Covid patient"They may not have the resources to go through the process," Verduzco-Gutierrez said. 'There's a tidal wave of us coming'Sunders wishes the Biden administration would do more to help those financially struggling with long Covid.

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