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A controversial process for arbitrating medical billing disputes awarded nearly $15 billion in payouts to healthcare providers last year, according to new federal data analyzed by The Wall Street Journal, more than triple the total for 2024. Doctor groups representing radiologists, anesthesiologists and emergency-room physicians have been among the winners under the setup, which was created under a 2020 law meant to protect patients from surprise medical bills. Insurers have to make the awarded payouts, and they have generally ended up on the losing end since arbitration began four years ago. (Mathews and McGinty, 7/22)

For the first time, officials have acknowledged problems with the No Surprises Act, which has led to huge payments. (Kliff, Sanger-Katz and Parlapiano, 7/22)

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and its contractors can’t keep up with the ceaseless onslaught of No Surprises Act out-of-network billing cases, federal data show. Providers and health insurance plans initiated 1.43 million Independent Dispute Resolution arbitrations this year through May, 46% more than during the comparable period in 2025. The system resolved 1.36 million cases over those five months. (Tepper and Broderick, 7/22)

The new proposed rule is meant to prevent states from guaranteeing providers will be refunded for their taxes, and should save Washington $246 billion over the next decade, regulators said. (Parduhn, 7/22)

The federal government wants Colorado to return $8 million in Medicaid funding after accusing the state of misspending money on an in-home care program for people with disabilities. (Brown, 7/22)

Bipartisan legislation to cap the cost of insulin at $35 for people with private health insurance advanced through a key Senate committee Wednesday, but its future remains uncertain. (Weixel, 7/22)

People retiring this year can expect medical expenses to take a significantly bigger bite of their savings, according to a new report from Fidelity Investments. (Woolley, 7/22)

���ϳԹ��� News: Listen To The Latest ‘���ϳԹ��� News Minute’ 

Jackie Fortiér reads this week’s news: Coverage disruptions can have fatal consequences when switching health plans. Plus, more states are shaming employers that use your tax dollars to cover health costs for their low-income workers. (7/23)

President Trump’s science adviser told lawmakers on Wednesday that the Trump administration intended to drastically overhaul the country’s approach to scientific research, including by shifting research funding away from universities toward individual researchers and private companies. At a House hearing, Michael Kratsios echoed points he laid out in a report released Tuesday, titled “Science: A New Golden Age.” He said the administration would prioritize artificial intelligence, robotics and nuclear energy while reducing the government’s focus on what he called “life sciences.” (Flavelle and Stolberg, 7/22)

More than a quarter of physician-industry interactions for research funding also involved the doctor receiving general payments from that same sponsor, an analysis of CMS data showed. In an analysis of nearly 60,000 physician-industry interactions, those payments peaked around the time the research began, Alon Bergman, PhD, of the University of Pennsylvania, and colleagues reported in JAMA Network Open. (Clark, 7/22)

Texas spent billions recruiting scientists from around the world to turn the state into a cancer-research powerhouse. Now, nearly six months after Gov. Greg Abbott restricted public institutions’ use of the H-1B visa program, cancer advocates and immigration attorneys warn the policy could undercut that strategy. (Priest and Ngo, 7/22)

A slate of experimental peptide therapies are under scrutiny today in what marks the beginning of a two-day meeting to help determine whether the compounds will become available from specialized pharmacies. The panel of advisers to the Food and Drug Administration is considering the evidence for seven compounds including some of the most sought-after: TB-500, BPC-157 and MOTs-C. (Stone, 7/23)

The Trump administration will appeal a Georgia court ruling that triggered a broad recalculation of insurers' Medicare Advantage star rating scores for 2026. In court documents filed Tuesday, federal agencies said they would appeal the ruling to the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals. In late May, a judge in Georgia's Southern District Court came down in favor of Clover Health, tossing 20 measures that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services used to calculate its scores. (Minemyer, 7/22)

���ϳԹ��� News: Public Health Improvements Stall Amid Trump’s DEI Crackdown 

As Earl Williams drove through a historic Black neighborhood known as Dewey City in his hometown, he hardly recognized what he saw. Homes that once belonged to friends, family, and neighbors had siding covered in mold. Some were boarded up. Others had holes in their roofs. (Lumpkins, 7/23)

She paces the side of the darkened highway in central Nepal, just enough light from the trucks roaring past to illuminate her painted face to the men rolling in on rickshaws and motorbikes. She knows that every stranger who pays for her body could end her life. But she also knows their money is the only thing preventing her death. This spot, littered in condom wrappers and fringed by jungle, is familiar to her. Rubi Lama once came here not as a sex worker, but as an aid worker who helped sex workers. (Gelineau, 7/23)

Hospitals are warning they may have to close unless state regulators speed up increasingly rigorous reviews of their efforts to be acquired. (Kacik, 7/22)

SIHF Healthcare has received state approval to build a new $231 million hospital to replace Touchette Regional Hospital in Cahokia Heights. (Cortes, 7/22)

AdventHealth is planning to build an 80-bed hospital in The Villages, expanding acute-care services in one of the nation's fastest-growing metropolitan areas as the retirement community and its surrounding workforce continue to grow. (Mayer, 7/23)

"Hospital food" has long been synonymous with packaged, ultraprocessed meals — despite the fact that hospitals are meant to promote healing. In an exclusive interview with Fox News Digital at the Great American State Fair in Washington, D.C., Michelin-star chef Geoffrey Zakarian shared his initiative to improve what is served in U.S. hospitals, following the concept that "food is medicine." For the last three years, Zakarian said he’s been working on changing hospital food — most notably at Tampa General, which is a $4 billion nonprofit, 1,000-bed public hospital. (Stabile and Quill, 7/22)

A lawsuit filed July 21 claims that ChatGPT offered inaccurate medical guidance to a Florida man that resulted in delayed care for a pulmonary embolism last year. The lawsuit, filed in the Superior Court of California in San Francisco, accuses OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman of negligence, unlicensed practice of medicine, defective product design and other claims. It is among the first to allege that a chatbot’s health advice caused physical injury to a user seeking guidance about a medical condition, according to The New York Times, and the plaintiff has asked the court to stop ChatGPT Health from operating until independent evaluators verify its safety. (Gamble, 7/22)

Samsung Electronics Co. is rolling out a new AI-powered assistant that acts as a virtual health companion, joining a growing number of tech companies using chatbots to deliver personalized wellness insights to its users. (Kelly, 7/21)

A generic version of the brand-name allergy medication Zyrtec is under recall across the U.S. due to potential cross-contamination with a heartburn drug, according to the Food and Drug Administration. (Cerullo, 7/22)

The FDA approved zidesamtinib (Jideytro) for previously treated adults with locally advanced or metastatic ROS1-positive non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), drugmaker GSK announced Wednesday. (Bassett, 7/22)

Europeans can now receive a device that can partially restore their vision loss. Americans may not have to wait long to get it, either. (Broderick, 7/22)

Adults with type 2 diabetes who used a GLP-1 receptor agonist had an increased risk of clinically recorded hair loss, data from a target trial emulation suggested. (Monaco, 7/22)

Dassault Systemes said it agreed to buy Nordic Capital’s ArisGlobal, a U.S. supplier of software to the life-sciences industry, for up to $2 billion, seeking to bolster its artificial-intelligence offering. French software company Dassault Systemes said Thursday that it is buying ArisGlobal for about $1.8 billion in cash at closing and up to $200 million in additional payments linked to AI-related revenue targets. (Calatayud, 7/23)

The U.S. Food and Drug and Administration said Wednesday it is investigating an additional cyclospora outbreak that the agency said has sickened at least 72 people. It is the latest of four continuing cyclospora outbreaks being investigated by the FDA. The largest involves at least 1,644 cases, which have been linked to shredded iceberg lettuce supplied by Taylor Farms and served at Taco Bell in five states. (McKee, 7/22)

Shredded iceberg lettuce likely isn’t the only source of cyclosporiasis that’s spreading in the U.S. this summer, but former top Food and Drug Administration officials say we may never be able to pinpoint every food behind the outbreaks. (Lovelace Jr., 7/22)

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention dramatically increased its national tally of cyclosporiasis cases Tuesday, adding more than 4,000 confirmed illnesses after weeks in which state health departments had reported substantially higher numbers than the federal government. The confirmed cases count is more than double the 1,645 cases reported last week. The CDC also said it is aware of more than 7,400 additional illnesses that require further analysis to determine whether they should be counted as domestically acquired cases. That’s about 45 percent more than the 5,100 suspected cases previously reported. (Sun, 7/22)

New data from a study in humans provides additional support to the idea that Merck’s Ebola vaccine Ervebo, licensed to target the Zaire species of ebolaviruses, could also offer some protection against another species currently circulating in a rapidly expanding outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. (Branswell, 7/22)

More than 1,000 people have died in the Ebola outbreak in Congo, according to Africa’s top health body, a grim toll in the fastest Ebola outbreak in history, as conflict, community resistance and an uneven response fuel its spread. (Ngorora and Asadu, 7/23)

When the Covid-19 vaccine was released in 2020, Daniel Pendergast was intrigued. “I honestly thought it sounded kind of ingenious at first,” he said. But then he learned there was a very small chance of heart inflammation that could occur after vaccination in healthy men like himself: around eight cases per million, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. For Pendergast, 44, whose family has a history of heart disease, even that low risk felt too high. He decided against taking the shot. (Rosenbaum, 7/23)

Earlier in the COVID-19 pandemic, some women reported menstrual periods that arrived early or late or spotting between periods, and now a study published yesterday in BMC Infectious Diseases has confirmed those reports. (Holohan, 7/22)

More than a year after COVID-19 symptom onset, both previously hospitalized and nonhospitalized women who had long COVID reported four neurologic symptoms more often than their male peers, Northwestern University researchers write. (Van Beusekom, 7/22)

Climate change and rapid urbanization are reshaping how dengue spreads in low- and middle-income countries, according to a systematic review published this week in PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases. Dengue virus is spread by Aedes mosquitoes. (Bergeson, 7/22)

A bill easing access to late-term abortion in Massachusetts passed in the state House of Representatives on Wednesday. The Senate is expected to vote on the measure before the legislative session ends next week. (Russell, 7/22)

Over the past decade, Louisiana hospitals began stocking specialized carts designed to treat hemorrhages, one of the most common pregnancy complications in the state. The plug-in cart can be wheeled from room to room and holds surgical tools and lifesaving medications to stem blood loss. A state law passed in 2024 forced hospitals to remove a key drug — misoprostol — from the medical cart and keep it locked in a secure room designated for controlled substances. (Parker, 7/23)

A group of 61 biopharma companies, executives and investors has filed an amicus brief in support of the FDA in an ongoing case brought by Louisiana meant to remove access to the abortion pill mifepristone. (Incorvaia, 7/22)

Higher levels of trihalomethanes (THMs) -- a disinfection byproduct of the drinking water treatment process -- were linked to a higher risk of uterine cancer among a cohort of California women. (Bassett, 7/22)

The families of two men who discovered through DNA tests that they were switched at birth 38 years ago are accusing a North Dakota hospital of robbing them of the lives they were supposed to lead. (Schuettler, Peipert and Johnson, 7/17)

Jury selection began Monday in the trial of a Massachusetts mother who strangled her three children while undergoing medical treatment for psychiatric problems that developed after she gave birth. The trial of Lindsay Clancy, a former labor and delivery nurse at Massachusetts General Hospital, could take several weeks and is expected to explore the complicated and rare phenomenon of postpartum psychosis, which afflicts a very small percentage of women who develop delusions and sometimes hallucinations after childbirth. (7/22)

Had this guide existed during my years of confusion, suffering and self-doubt, my experience with menopause would have been far more legible to me. Instead, I experienced gaslighting, racism and disbelief. (Harris and McCray, 7/22)

In 2021, Karen, who asked that her last name not be used, was always running to the bathroom because of a burning sensation and the urge to urinate. It had been more than 30 years since she had a urinary tract infection (UTI), but Karen suspected that one was causing her frequent bathroom trips. She visited her gynecologist, but her urinary culture tested negative for infection. At the time, her doctor didn’t seem concerned by Karen’s discomfort. (Holohan, 7/22)

Despite access to the best healthcare, Melinda French Gates said it took three doctors to diagnose and treat her when she started perimenopause in her early 40s. (7/21)

Three longtime Philadelphia police officers developed the same rare cancer, and the similarities in their cases were hard to ignore. They all had spent years working in the department’s narcotics unit. They all died of glioblastoma, an aggressive form of brain cancer, within years of each other. (Lavietes, 7/23)

A single blood sample taken before surgery may one day help doctors identify colorectal cancer patients at greater risk of recurrence or metastasis, according to new research from scientists at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), Gangnam Severance Hospital and Asan Medical Center. The study found that as colorectal cancer progresses, it reshapes the body's metabolism in ways that can be detected in the blood. (Azzurra Volpe, 7/22)

A hormone that naturally declines as we grow older may play a key role in the chronic inflammation linked to cancer and other age-related diseases, according to new research in mice. The hormone, called thymulin, is produced by the thymus, a small organ behind the breastbone that helps train the body's immune system. (Azzurra Volpe, 7/22)

Of nearly 192,000 accidental or undetermined-intent drug overdose deaths in the United States from 2022 to 2024, 76% occurred when the decedent was alone, highlighting the need for targeted messaging and wider distribution of opioid antagonist medications, according to a Public Health Alert today. (Van Beusekom, 7/22)

Larry Mitchell never thought much about the dreams he wasn’t having. For years, while he regularly smoked cannabis, his dreams seemed to disappear. Then, last summer, he quit. Soon afterward, his nights became populated by a vivid nocturnal world unlike anything he had experienced before. (Cha, 7/23)

More than a year after a man killed a Minnesota lawmaker and her husband and shot another lawmaker and the legislator’s wife, he was expected to be sentenced to life in prison on Thursday. The attacks, described by prosecutors as targeted political assassinations, set off an urgent manhunt across the state and left Minnesotans in terror. The attacker went to the homes of Democratic lawmakers in the middle of the night, disguised as a law enforcement officer. (Londoño, 7/23)

���ϳԹ��� News: A Death Revives Concerns About Police Brutality Six Years After National Reckoning 

Not everyone at Lloyd Gilmore’s funeral knew him well. One woman, who had ironed her clothes two days in advance, said she just wanted to be there for his family. School-age children, guided by their parents, approached his open casket in the sanctuary of Cornerstone Baptist Church and peeked inside. Other people looked away. (Anthony, 7/23)

Five major pregnancy complications were independently associated with heightened long-term risk of peripheral artery disease (PAD), a Swedish cohort study of more than 2 million deliveries found. (Robertson, 7/21)

Oral microbiome dysbiosis and disruption of the oral-gut microbiome network are associated with symptomatic hand osteoarthritis (SHOA), according to a study published online July 21 in RMD Open. (Gotkine, 7/22)

Researchers have developed a fluoride-free gel that could help rebuild damaged tooth enamel, something the body cannot naturally replace once it is lost. Inspired by the proteins that guide enamel formation in infancy, the gel fills microscopic cracks and draws calcium and phosphate from saliva to grow a new mineral layer that closely matches healthy enamel. (7/23)

Phelan-McDermid syndrome (PMS), a genetic neurodevelopmental disorder, has a prevalence of 13.7 per 100,000, according to genetic data from multiple sources in a study published online June 28 in Autism Research. (Gotkine, 7/22)

Treatment with investigational duvakitug appeared to improve remission rates among patients with ulcerative colitis and endoscopic response rates in those with Crohn's disease, results from two cohorts of the phase IIb RELIEVE UCCD trial showed. (Bassett, 7/20)

Millions of Americans rely on these medications. This is the wrong way to change policy on them. (Aaron E. Carroll, 7/23)

President Donald Trump on Tuesday set a two-year deadline for manufacturers of generic drugs to move production plants to the United States, lest they face a 100 percent tariff. That would be a great way to jack up prices for lower-cost drugs that millions of Americans rely on — just ahead of the 2028 election. (7/22)

The approach to paying obstetricians and midwives is changing. These changes will likely raise the cost of childbirth, with no guarantee of better maternity outcomes. (Jeff Levin-Scherz, 7/23)

A change is coming to the codes OB-GYNs use to bill for maternity care services: Starting Jan. 1, 2027, we will shift from a bundled “global obstetric payment” to a fee-for-service model. This change impacts almost every U.S. family with a pregnancy. Under the current system, families receive a bill that does not distinguish the actual prenatal and postpartum costs from labor and delivery, which makes things incredibly confusing for patients. (Camille A. Clare and Lisa G. Hofler, 7/23)

Argentina taught me a lesson about hospitals this summer. Four years ago, Argentina won the World Cup with a solid team led by Lionel Messi. Messi provided extraordinary talent, but the championship was also built on cohesion, discipline, sacrifice, and players who seemed to understand exactly what they owed to one another. It was a truly well-oiled machine with a genius brain. (Basel Tarab, 7/22)