Endpoints reports, single-sourced, that the acting general counsel at HHS has left the department, the latest personnel churn at the agency as it pushes through the vaccine-injury initiative, the 340B fight and the mifepristone review.
Medicare Advantage insurers got their 2027 star ratings, triggering new bonus payments and fresh uncertainty, STAT reports, with Humana and Alignment among the names in focus. The ratings feed directly into plan revenue and marketing for the coming enrollment season.
An analysis covered by STAT finds that pharma’s free lunches for doctors boost inappropriate prescribing, adding to the evidence base on industry-physician financial ties and prescribing behavior.
A House Democrat is seeking to scrap the No Surprises Act’s costly arbitration process, STAT reports, reopening a fight over how out-of-network billing disputes get resolved.
Proposed changes to the U.S. census could be catastrophic for public health, STAT argues in an opinion piece, threatening the data equity and morbidity and mortality tracking that researchers rely on.
ARPA-H’s BoSS program is funding three teams tackling cold-chain challenges for cell therapies, Genetic Engineering News reports, addressing one of the practical bottlenecks in getting cell products from manufacturing to patients.
STAT’s health-policy team looks at the fresh faces that may shake up key Senate committees ahead of the midterms, and separately at whether the MAHA movement survives the midterms with Kennedy on the campaign trail, the political backdrop for the HHS agenda items in today’s edition.
PharmaVoice analyzes pharma’s $500 billion patent problem, arguing it arrives in waves rather than as a single cliff, with Merck and AbbVie dealmaking as case studies in how the industry is buying its way past loss of exclusivity.