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The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services issued a regulation Friday that will usher in major changes to the Affordable Care Act of 2010 health insurance exchanges next year. The final rule institutes substantial new policies, including tighter eligibility verification requirements and broader access to non-traditional health plans such as catastrophic policies that can be in place for multiple years and insurance without provider networks. (Early, 5/15)

Dr. Tracy Beth Høeg is leaving her role as head of the FDA division that regulates over-the-counter and prescription drugs, according to a Department of Health and Human Services official. Høeg, a sports medicine doctor who criticized Covid shots for children during the pandemic, served as acting director of the Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research for about five months. (Lovelace Jr. and Bendix, 5/15)

���ϳԹ��� News: Trump Bought Stock In Drugmaker As His Government Boosted Its Obesity Drugs

President Donald Trump earlier this year bought as much as $680,000 in stock of Eli Lilly, the maker of blockbuster obesity drugs, as the agencies he oversees undertook an agenda that largely benefited the company. On May 14, the federal government released ethics disclosures revealing a list of stock and bond trades made on Trump’s behalf from January to March of this year. They included extensive trades across the economy, including investments in tech giants such as Microsoft and Nvidia, aerospace firms such as Boeing, and household-name companies such as Target and Chipotle. (Tahir, 5/18)

The Health and Human Services Department is moving hundreds of senior career staff to a new civil service classification that will make it easier to fire them. President Donald Trump tinkered with the idea late in his first term and the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, recommended the reclassification of career staff with policy-making responsibilities in its Project 2025 blueprint for Trump’s second term. Trump dismissed that document during his campaign, but has since adopted many of its proposals. (Paun and Sophie Gardner, 5/15)

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his followers scored a big win Saturday when Kennedy’s nemesis, Sen. Bill Cassidy, went down in his Louisiana primary. The cherry on top for Kennedy and his Make America Healthy Again movement would be if another Republican doctor in the Senate, Kansas’ Roger Marshall, replaces Cassidy next year as chair of the Health Committee. Marshall, unlike Cassidy, is a big Kennedy fan, having founded a MAHA caucus to promote Kennedy’s push to combat chronic disease. (Levien, 5/17)

When Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. took the helm of the department in February 2025, he pledged to remove special interests from HHS and chart a new path focused on “gold-standard science.” He made his core policy interests clear in November 2024, even before he was President Donald Trump’s pick for the job, accusing the federal government of suppressing “psychedelics, peptides, stem cells, raw milk, hyperbaric therapies, chelating compounds, ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, vitamins, clean foods, sunshine, exercise, nutraceuticals and anything else that advances human health and can’t be patented by Pharma.” (DeGroot, 5/15)

���ϳԹ��� News: A Danish Couple’s Maverick African Research Finds Its Moment In RFK Jr.’s Vaccine Policy 

In 1996, Guinea-Bissau seemed like an ideal research post for budding pediatrician Lone Graff Stensballe. Her supervisor, a fellow Dane named Peter Aaby, had spent nearly two decades collecting data on 100,000 people living in the mud brick homes of the West African country’s capital. Aaby and his partner, Christine Stabell Benn, believed that the years of research in the impoverished country had yielded a major discovery about vaccines — and what they described as “non-specific effects”: The measles and tuberculosis vaccines, which were derived from live, weakened viruses and bacteria, they said, boosted child survival beyond protecting against those particular pathogens. (Allen, 5/18)

As the Trump administration's immigration crackdown stretches into its second year, researchers and health care workers say that it is creating a mental health crisis in immigrant communities. Data from one primary care clinic in Los Angeles, shared exclusively with NPR, shows a sharp rise in anxiety, depression and suicidal thoughts among patients. (Chatterjee, 5/17)

Two state transportation workers were replacing a sign on the shoulder of U.S. Highway 6 in western Colorado one morning when a Jeep Grand Cherokee swerved off the road and struck them. The workers, Nathan Jones and Trent Umberger, died in the September 2024 crash, as did a passenger in the Jeep. Tests found that the driver, Patrick Sneddon, then 59, had oxycodone and six times Colorado’s presumed impairment threshold of THC — the psychoactive compound in cannabis — in his blood. He pleaded guilty and is serving 30 years in prison on three counts of vehicular homicide and other charges. (DiCola, 5/17)

Two advocacy groups are demanding the United Kingdom revoke regulations at the heart of a new trade agreement with the U.S. over concerns the deal will allow outsiders to influence official decisions about the cost-effectiveness of medicines. And if the government does not comply, the groups are readying legal action. (Silverman, 5/17)

As federal regulators continue broadening their healthcare fraud crackdown, providers and insurers want them to move cautiously. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services issued a formal request for information in February to solicit recommendations for an anti-fraud campaign dubbed Comprehensive Regulations to Uncover Suspicious Healthcare, or CRUSH. CMS asked about issues such as blocking Medicare-banned providers from participating in Medicare Advantage; using artificial intelligence in Medicare Advantage oversight; and improving identity verification for Medicare-enrolled providers and suppliers. (Early, 5/15)

Two of the most powerful lobbies in the country are turning on a third in the hopes of deflecting Washington’s wrath and securing bigger shares of the $5 trillion Americans spend on health care each year. Drugmakers and insurers are aiming to take advantage of lawmakers’ worries about affordability to convince them it’s the hospitals they should regulate, and not them, if they want to bring down Americans’ bills. Some of the changes the drugmakers and insurers are pursuing would pad their own profits. (Chu, 5/17)

���ϳԹ��� News: Kids Keep Getting Stuck In Hospitals, Even After Being Cleared For Discharge

Overwhelmed by the demands of caregiving, Quette dialed 911 when she found her teenage son downstairs in their kitchen struggling to breathe. He had rolled his wheelchair to the oven to keep himself warm as he tried to regulate his temperature, she recalled, and was drenched in sweat from an apparent infection. (Anthony, 5/18)

Providers could face higher prices for medical devices and supplies as a result of the war in Iran. Major medtech companies said during recent earning calls that rising oil, transportation and component costs are driving the inflationary pressure, though most indicated they are not seeing widespread supply disruptions or shortages. The price increases come at a time when the companies are launching new products. At the same time, providers are looking to cut costs amid approximately $1 trillion in federal Medicaid funding cuts and other policy changes under the tax bill the Trump administration signed into law in 2025. (Dubinsky, 5/15)

AstraZeneca Plc’s new hypertension pill won US Food and Drug Administration approval in a boost for the drugmaker that’s seeking to garner more than $5 billion in annual sales from the medicine. The drug, called Baxfendy, significantly lowered blood pressure when added to other hypertension medicines in clinical trials. The regulator cleared it for patients who aren’t adequately controlled with existing treatments. (Furlong, 5/18)

Millions of older Americans may have access for the first time to obesity drugs at a low price of $50 a month starting in July under a Medicare pilot program. While Medicare Part D already covers some GLP-1 medications for conditions like diabetes, cardiovascular disease and sleep apnea, the government program for people 65 and older had prohibited coverage solely for obesity. Now, more people on Medicare will be eligible, including those who are most overweight and those with both obesity and conditions like prediabetes or uncontrolled hypertension. (Miller, 5/15)

UnitedHealth Group Inc. is tracking how often some employees use artificial intelligence tools as part of a push to embed the technology throughout its operations, according to people familiar with the matter. The company is monitoring whether some workers in its Optum services division perform at least one query a day with programs such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT or Microsoft Corp.’s Copilot, said the people, who asked not to be named discussing internal operations. (Tozzi and Fletcher, 5/15)

Private equity firm Kinderhook Industries has closed its $1.1 billion acquisition of Enhabit Home Health and Hospice. Enhabit’s common stock will no longer be listed on the New York Stock Exchange, the companies said in a Friday news release announcing the deal’s completion. Enhabit shareholders voted Tuesday to accept Kinderhook’s offer of $13.80 per share in cash. (Eastabrook, 5/15)

Activist investor Elliott Investment Management has built a sizable stake in Bio-Rad Laboratories to boost the firm’s underperforming stock price, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter. The exact size of Elliott’s stake in Bio-Rad, a supplier of life-science tools, was unclear, the Journal said. Bio-Rad has a market value of about $6.7 billion. The firm’s stock has dropped more than 70% since a peak in late 2021. (Yilun Chen, 5/18)

The Texas attorney general has secured an unusual settlement over child transgender care that compels Texas Children’s Hospital to create the nation’s first ever “detransition clinic” in addition to paying the state $10 million. (Langford and Deguzman, 5/15)

A Kansas judge on Friday protected access to gender-affirming care for transgender minors as the nation’s largest children’s hospital moved to restrict such care in Texas, buckling under pressure from the Trump administration. Texas Children’s Hospital, based in Houston, said in a statement that it had agreed to a legal settlement “to protect our resources from endless and costly litigation.” The hospital, which serves more than 1 million patients a year, stopped providing hormone treatments for transgender children and teens in 2022, a year before the state banned such care, but still faced a yearslong investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office. (Hanna, 5/16)

A $25 million grant to cash-strapped hospitals became law less than a week after it was introduced — so fast that it caught some hospitals, their advocates, and even some lawmakers, off guard. It also left a litany of unanswered questions: who came up with the narrow criteria, how many hospitals would qualify and whether the funding will be enough to prevent hospital closures in the near term. (Yu and Ibarra, 5/15)

Finley Thomas is an 11-year-old girl who’s got a morning makeup and skin care routine. She loves Halloween, dressing up, her older brothers and cheering with her squad. She also uses a wheelchair, has a tracheostomy tube that gets hooked up to a ventilator at night, receives tube feedings for much of her nutrition, and has multiple therapy sessions each week—all the result of a neurological condition she was born with that has recently required a couple of surgeries. (Hoban, 5/18)

When the Connecticut legislature gaveled out on May 6, several bills didn’t make it across the finish line. Among them was a proposal that would have allowed dental cleanings in private residences. (Savitt, 5/15)

A top regulator for Colorado’s Marijuana Enforcement Division acknowledged in a private meeting with industry representatives that the amount of chemically converted hemp being illegally sold as marijuana is far greater than the agency has publicly disclosed. The remarks confirmed testing by The Denver Gazette and ProPublica, which found signs of hemp in marijuana vapes sold at dispensaries, as well as reporting that regulators have discovered that some hemp-derived vapes were contaminated with a toxic chemical. (Osher, 5/15)

California’s monthslong spate of mushroom poisonings, in which four people have died and 43 others hospitalized, has become the largest known outbreak of its kind in U.S. history, experts say. Three cases were reported earlier this week, long after the typical growing season for the mushrooms behind the illnesses, leaving public health officials and mycologists puzzled about why the poisonings have been so widespread and what is causing the trend. (Bush, 5/15)

Salmonella outbreaks tied to backyard poultry have sickened at least 184 people across 31 states this year, including six in Maryland, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. One person has died and 53 people have been hospitalized, the CDC said in a May 14 notice. More than a quarter of the people sickened were children younger than 5. (Davis, 5/16)

Mission Hospital has no plans to add staff in key areas – including trauma care, security, and nursing administration – as part of its recently approved, now-contested, 95-bed acute-care expansion, according to its application to the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services. (Clifford, 5/16)

The World Health Organization late Saturday declared the outbreak of Ebola that was first seen in the Democratic Republic of the Congo an international public health emergency, underscoring the concern about the spread of the virus as travel-related cases were reported in Kampala, the capital of Uganda. (Joseph, 5/17)

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is escalating its response to the ongoing Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda, after the World Health Organization labeled the outbreak a public health emergency. The agency plans to deploy additional staff to the affected countries and will provide technical support including laboratory testing, contact tracing and surveillance through its country offices, said Satish Pillai, the CDC’s Ebola response incident manager, on a call with reporters Sunday. It has also activated its emergency response center. (Nix, 5/17)

At least six Americans were exposed to Ebola virus in the Democratic Republic of Congo, sources with international aid organizations told CBS News, although it was unclear if any had been infected. Three of the Americans faced a high-risk contact or exposure, the sources said, and one was symptomatic. It wasn't immediately clear whether the Americans are still in Congo. The health news organization STAT was first to report on the exposures. (Gounder, 5/17)

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Sunday that risk of the Ebola virus to the U.S. population remains low as the World Health Organization has declared a global health emergency amid an outbreak of the disease in central Africa. “Travelers to the region should avoid contact with sick people, report symptoms immediately and follow our travel health guidance,” Satish Pillai, the CDC’s Ebola response incident manager, said on a call with reporters. (Hooper, 5/17)

A “small number” of Americans are being withdrawn from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Uganda after exposure to an Ebola outbreak, U.S. health officials said, not long after the hantavirus outbreak aboard an Antarctic expedition cruise ship, which has left dozens of Americans under monitoring following possible exposure. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said it is assisting those “directly affected” by the outbreak following the World Health Organization’s declaration of a public health emergency of international concern. The outbreak has so far included 10 confirmed cases and 336 suspected cases—88 of them fatal—in the DRC, along with two confirmed cases and one death in Uganda. (Laws, 5/18)

The World Health Organization (WHO) said Friday there is currently no evidence that the hantavirus that caused an outbreak on a cruise ship has mutated to be more severe or transmissible. That news comes amid fears of a broader outbreak of the Andes hantavirus, which has no cure and can be fatal. Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, director of epidemic and pandemic preparedness and prevention at the WHO, said geneticists have been sequencing the virus that infected those on the ship. (Whiteside, 5/15)

The World Health Organization (WHO) today reduced the number of reported hantavirus cases from the Dutch cruise ship MV Hondius from 11 to 10. WHO officials said at a press briefing this morning that the 11 cases reported in a disease outbreak update on May 13 included one inconclusive test in a passenger from the United States. But the agency learned yesterday that the patient has tested negative. Eight cases have been confirmed, and two are probable. (Dall, 5/15)

A recent suspected hantavirus case in Illinois is a stark reminder that the potentially deadly virus does exist in the U.S. There are currently no cases of hantavirus in the U.S. that are linked to the MV Hondius cruise ship outbreak. The Andes strain of hantavirus that killed three passengers hasn’t been found in North America. (Edwards, 5/17)

Canada’s national health agency Sunday confirmed that one of four Canadians who returned home from a cruise ship hit with a hantavirus outbreak has tested positive for the virus. The Public Health Agency of Canada confirmed the positive test a day after the public health officer for the province of British Columbia said the person had received a “presumptive positive” but further testing would be conducted at the National Microbiology Lab in Winnipeg. “One individual’s sample was confirmed positive for hantavirus,” the national agency said in a statement. (5/17)

The federal hantavirus response has laid bare the impact of the Trump administration’s cuts to U.S. and global health, renewing concerns among public health experts that the U.S. is not prepared for a bigger health crisis. Career scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have been fired or left the agency, and there are far fewer people available to respond to outbreaks and to communicate with the public. That has largely left political appointees in charge of updating the public. (Weixel, 5/16)

Even as hantavirus cases on a cruise ship continue to cause concern, about one-fourth of states are not fully prepared to manage a public health emergency if one should come their way, a report found. "The nation faced the most severe flu season in nearly a decade, the highest annual measles case count since 1991, and devastating weather-related emergencies, even as federal public health funding, staffing, and operational support were destabilized," J. Nadine Gracia, MD, president and CEO of the Trust for America's Health (TFAH), which sponsored the report, said in a press release. (Frieden, 5/15)

A 2023 study suggesting the hantavirus can live for years in semen and be transmitted sexually long after infection is getting attention following the deadly outbreak on the MV Hondius. Three passengers on the Dutch‑flagged cruise ship died after contracting the Andes strain of hantavirus, and several others were infected. A small number of Americans who disembarked have either tested positive or are being monitored in the U.S. Global health officials say the Andes strain — the only known form of hantavirus capable of person‑to‑person transmission — is not expected to trigger a pandemic. However, the virus has a mortality rate estimated at up to 40 percent. (Ramsey, 5/17)

As more than 40 Americans remain in quarantine for up to six weeks following a hantavirus outbreak aboard a cruise ship, former patients who spent time inside some of the country’s highest-security medical isolation units during previous viral contagions are sharing what it’s like to endure weeks cut off from the outside world. “I want the people who are being affected by this, who are in quarantine or who have loved ones who are in quarantine, to rest assured that they are in the best of hands,” Dr. Kent Brantly, who spent weeks in isolation after contracting Ebola in 2014, told NBC News. “They are in the best place to be taken care of.” (Cohen, 5/17)

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) today confirmed 51 new measles cases in a nationwide outbreak that has now reached 1,893 infections. All but nine cases are locally acquired, with the rest related to international travel. The agency reported two new outbreaks, for a total of 27. Last year the nation saw 48 outbreaks and 2,288 cases for the entire year. The United States could top that total in the coming months. (Wappes, 5/15)

While most respondents to a survey of US backyard flock owners had heard of avian influenza, about one third didn’t know the signs or symptoms of infection in birds or people, highlighting the need for risk messaging and educational resources. The online survey was conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in collaboration with state and agricultural officials from July to December 2025. The aim was to learn more about flock owners and their knowledge, attitudes, and practices surrounding the H5 strain of avian flu that has affected millions of US poultry. Of 638 respondents, about half had an advanced degree. (Van Beusekom, 5/15)

The number of people sickened by three multistate outbreaks of the Salmonella bacterium has rocketed to 184. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported yesterday there are 150 new cases since April 23, though the true number of sick people is likely higher. At least 54 people have been hospitalized and one person died in Washington state, according to the CDC. Over a quarter of people sickened in this outbreak are children under 5 years old, with a median age of 31 years. (Boden, 5/15)

Army veteran Alan Bonnin would be alive today if not for an aggressive three-year fight with asbestos-causing mesothelioma that ultimately took his life. The hardworking husband, father and retired soldier never questioned his work as a longtime mechanic and HVAC technician after leaving the armed forces. His specialty of working on brakes and then later for 30 years at a heating and cooling company is believed to be how he contracted the cancer from the hidden asbestos risk he faced on the job. (Dennis, 5/17)

Too much or too little opioid pain management at discharge after urologic surgery significantly increased the likelihood of refills, providing new insight into opioid overuse, according to a study reported here. More than 60% of patients received discharge opioid prescriptions that were mismatched with their last in-hospital opioid dose, with underdosing accounting for a third of the mismatches. As compared with patients who received matched opioid doses at discharge, overprescription increased the odds for additional refills by as much as 85% and underprescription increased the odds by as much as 47%. (Bankhead, 5/17)

An in-office device that uses low-pressure ultrasound waves to breaking up kidney stones was safe and effective, according to data from the SOUND trial. Treatment with the Break Wave lithotripsy device reduced stones to passable fragments of ≤4 mm in seven out of 10 patients and with minor complication, reported Benjamin Chew, MD, of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. (Bassett, 5/17)

Adding immunotherapy to standard treatment for non-muscle invasive bladder cancer (NMIBC) achieved complete response (CR) in more than 90% of patients who had refused cystectomy for high-risk disease, a small prospective study showed. (Bankhead, 5/17)

A COVID-19 outbreak in a residential building in Spain during the early months of the pandemic likely spread through shared bathroom ventilation ducts, according to a study published this week in PLOS One. The outbreak occurred in June 2020 in a seven-story apartment building in the city of Santander in northern Spain, during a period when transmission in the city (population 172,000) had dropped to zero. Fifteen COVID cases were identified in four vertically stacked apartments connected by the same bathroom ventilation shaft. No cases were detected in surrounding apartments or elsewhere in the building. (Bergeson, 5/15)

People who do more short bursts of vigorous activity — like running to catch the bus or running up stairs — are less likely to develop several chronic diseases including heart disease and dementia compared to people who do no vigorous activity, according to a recent study in the European Heart Journal. The takeaway, the researchers said, is that people may want to prioritize intense activity over total volume of activity because it may prevent many chronic diseases more effectively. Even as little as 15 to 20 minutes a week of vigorous activity, or just two to three minutes a day, appear to have meaningful health benefits. (Ho, 5/17)

Fiber is kind of like the Peter Parker of food nutrients. For a long time, most people ignored it as kind of boring. But it's really a superhero when it comes to good health, and now, it's finally having its moment. Social media has fully embraced the concept of "fibermaxxing" – or boosting the amount of fiber in our diets. On Tiktok, you'll find loads of videos with tips on how to maximize the fiber in meals and why it matters for so many aspects of health – from improving digestion to reducing the risk of dying prematurely. (Godoy, 5/18)

Early retirement sounds pretty great. It’s hard to picture a downside of ditching the daily grind for a lifetime of more personally fulfilling pursuits. But leaving employment before traditional retirement age — especially because of layoffs or weak labor markets — could have negative impacts on cognitive abilities, according to a new working paper from researchers at UC Irvine published by the National Bureau of Economic Research. (Roy, 5/17)

If you want to live a long and healthy life, you’d be better off in South Korea than the United States. In the 1980s, our country was about average in terms of life expectancy for developed nations. But since then much of the world has improved, and the United States has dropped toward the bottom of that list. (Holcombe, 5/16)

Chanel Robinson achieved exactly what the gold rush of blockbuster weight-loss drugs promised: She lost nearly 100 pounds, lowered her cholesterol to normal levels and reined in her polycystic ovary syndrome. Yet, nearly three years into her journey on Mounjaro, the 30-year-old from Atlanta, Ga., is discovering the hidden costs of the slimmed-down life. (Dangoor, 5/17)

Adding a dual GLP-1/GIP receptor agonist to the psoriasis drug ixekizumab (Taltz) significantly improved outcomes in adults with difficult-to-treat plaque psoriasis due to overweight or obesity, the open-label TOGETHER-PsO trial indicated. (Ingram, 5/15)

Health authorities in Europe have given the green light for the first GLP-1 gene therapy trial to take place. Fractyl Health received clinical trial authorization in the Netherlands this week to begin a first-in-human study of RJVA-001in patients with obesity and Type 2 diabetes. “GLP-1 medicines have changed what is possible in obesity and type 2 diabetes, but they require chronic, high-dose systemic exposure that many patients cannot or do not sustain,” Dr. Harith Rajagopalan, CEO of Fractyl Health, said. (Hilling, 5/16)

Federal health officials report that a company is recalling a seasoning product sold nationwide at Walmart stores as it may be contaminated with salmonella. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced Friday that Blackstone Products, based in Utah, is voluntarily recalling some lots of its “Blackstone Parmesan Ranch” products. The company says the products contain powdered milk that was recalled earlier this year because of possible salmonella contamination, posing a health risk to people who purchased the seasoning. (Self, 5/16)

A California dairy company has issued a recall for five ice cream flavors, warning customers that some tubs may be contaminated with metal. The company, Straus Family Creamery, recalled some of its organic ice cream, which was sold in 17 states since May 4. It said it ordered the recall because of “the potential presence of metal foreign material,” without giving further details. The warning applies to its vanilla bean, strawberry, cookie dough, Dutch chocolate and mint chip flavors with specific “best-by” dates in late December 2026. (Sands, 5/17)

Sen. Susan Collins recently revealed that for decades she has had a condition called an essential tremor. She made the disclosure after questions arose about her head and hands trembling in a campaign video, leading to speculation that the 73-year-old Republican lawmaker was in declining health. (Luterman, 5/15)

���ϳԹ��� News: Journalists Unpack Latest On Vaccines, Vaping, And TrumpRx

���ϳԹ��� News journalists made the rounds on national media recently to discuss topical stories. Here’s a collection of their appearances.

A veterans advocacy group is suing the Trump administration over its ban on abortion care and counseling at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). The Minority Veterans of America said it brought the lawsuit on behalf of all its members harmed by the ban, including one pregnant member who has chronic medical conditions and a long history of pregnancy complications and needs access to abortion care and counseling to protect her health. The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. (Weixel, 5/15)

The new acting head of the Food and Drug Administration is scrambling to reassure abortion opponents that he is on their side after court records surfaced listing him as an outside counsel for a Planned Parenthood Florida chapter for at least three years beginning in 2014. Within hours of his appointment on Tuesday to temporarily lead the agency after the resignation of former FDA Commissioner Marty Makary, Kyle Diamantas was on the phone telling several anti-abortion leaders that he is morally opposed to the procedure. (Ollstein and Lim, 5/15)

An anti-abortion pregnancy center on the outskirts of this Idaho Panhandle town greets visitors with an abridged Bible verse painted on the wall of its waiting area: "Come to me & I will give you rest." 7B Care Clinic has been operating in Sandpoint since 2001 and was previously called Life Choices Pregnancy Center and Sandpoint Crisis Pregnancy Center. (Orozco Rodriguez, 5/18)

As his daughter Olivia was born, Marlon White felt his wife’s hand slacken as she fainted. The baby, born at 29 weeks and weighing about 2 pounds, wasn’t making a sound as she was rushed to the neonatal intensive care unit. Terrified, he waited in the hall while the doctors stabilized his newborn and wife. The next day, White, a welder, was back at work. Two days later, his wife, Farra Lanzer-White, was also back on the job, setting up a work station at the Denver hospital. For two months, first at one hospital then another, she kept up with emails and meetings as alarm bells went off each time Olivia stopped breathing, as she herself prepared for open-heart surgery for a condition discovered during her difficult pregnancy. (Olson, 5/18)

The Trump administration has made sweeping changes to vaccine policy over the past year justified by invocations of patients’ “personal autonomy.” In January, Department of Health and Human Services head Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Trump’s slashed the number of routinely recommended childhood vaccines from 17 to 11 after an HHS report emphasized “personal autonomy and self-determination” as key principles necessitating reconsideration of the childhood vaccine schedule. (Adam W. Gaffney, 5/18)

The gap between US drug prices and those abroad is not a market outcome — it is the result of deliberate political and regulatory choices. (Ashish K. Jha and Irene Papanicolas, 5/18)

The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) is responsible for developing recommendations for the use of licensed vaccines in the U.S. and has vast influence on immunization practices and financing. (Jesse L. Goodman, 5/18)

Make America Healthy Again recognizes the dangers of overmedicalization while ignoring the conditions fueling mental illness. (Khameer Kidia, 5/18)

State should enforce law requiring insurers to maintain accurate provider directories. (5/17)