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Health care has ebbed and surged as an election issue throughout the presidential campaign. Here are the ways some of the most consequential changes in health policies could hinge on whether Vice President Kamala Harris or former President Donald Trump wins.
A Massachusetts woman ended up stranded in the hospital because CVS stopped providing the IV nutrition she needs to survive at home. Without it, she’d starve.
The Big Three pharmacy benefit managers say they return nearly all the rebates they get from drugmakers to the employers and insurers who hire them. But most employers seem to doubt that.
For decades, the pulse oximeters used in hospitals, ambulances, and homes have underestimated the oxygen needs of darker-skinned patients. The FDA is preparing guidelines to fix that. But will the new rules go far enough?
State Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo spread more anti-vaccine misinformation by telling Floridians to avoid mRNA vaccines. Vaccine experts and historians can’t remember another state health leader urging residents to avoid an FDA-approved vaccine.
Although public health officials recommend the newly approved covid vaccine for everyone 6 months and older, it may make more sense to wait until closer to the holiday season.
As Congress pushes for Medicare to cover payment for anti-obesity drugs, Denmark — Ozempic maker Novo Nordisk’s home — has limited coverage of the drug after cost overruns “emptied all the money boxes in the entire public health system.”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention promises better tests are being developed, but the episode points to vulnerabilities in the country’s defense against emerging outbreaks.
Although Novo Nordisk and Lilly lump together the pharmacies that compound semaglutide and tirzepatide with internet cowboys selling fake drugs, there is a distinction. The FDA has offered Americans little clarity about the vast gray and black markets for the drugs.
Even with a stockpile of bird flu vaccinations, the federal government is not offering them to those at high risk. Along with testing and measures to prevent spread, vaccinations may protect people and stop the outbreak from becoming a pandemic.
If widely used, flu tests could be helpful now. In the meantime, the government needs to clear a path for H5N1 tests, researchers warn, to avoid the early missteps of the covid pandemic.
The spread of an avian flu virus in cattle has again brought public health attention to the potential for a global pandemic. Fighting it would depend, for now, on 1940s technology that makes vaccines from hens’ eggs.
The FDA told Amgen to test whether a quarter-dose of its lung cancer drug worked as well as the amount recommended on the product label. It did and with fewer side effects. But Amgen is sticking to the higher dose — which earns it an additional $180,000 a year per patient.
The FDA and some oncologists have resisted efforts to require a quick, cheap gene test that could prevent thousands of deaths from a bad reaction to a common cancer drug.
Price worries, bureaucratic obstacles, and “I’m-over-covid-itis” slow uptake of a drug that’s complicated to take but often effective.
A restructuring of the Medicare drug benefit has wiped out big drug bills for people who need expensive medicines. But the legal battle over drug negotiations means uncertainty over long-term savings.
When bankers and investors flocked to San Francisco for the largest gathering of health care industry investors, the buzz was all about artificial intelligence, the next hit weight-loss drug, and new opportunities to make money through nonprofit hospitals.
Stories of chronic pain, drug-hopping, and insurance meddling are all too common among patients with rheumatoid arthritis. Precision medicine offers new hope.
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