Today's early morning highlights from the major news organizations.
KFF HEALTH NEWS ORIGINAL STORIES
KFF Health News: Indiana Takes On Powerful Hospitals By Capping Prices They Charge Employers Tired of watching its employers struggle to afford the cost of healthcare, Republican-controlled Indiana is trying a traditionally liberal tactic to control costs: setting government price controls on hospitals. Under a law enacted last year, five of Indiana’s largest nonprofit hospital systems cannot charge patients covered by job-based health plans more than an established price cap. Hospitals that fail to keep prices below the threshold by 2029 risk losing their tax-exempt status — which would mean owing millions of dollars in state taxes. (Galewitz and Liss, 6/22)
KFF Health News: KFF Health News’ ‘An Arm and a Leg’: Try These Tips When You Can’t Afford Your Rx Last year, An Arm and a Leg set out on a mission: Collect the best advice about what to do when you can’t afford your prescription drugs. Dozens of listeners wrote in. The result was “The Prescription Drug Playbook.” (6/22)
KFF Health News: KFF Health News’ ‘What The Health?’: Democrats Keep Healthcare At The Fore Senate Democrats hope a little-used law from the 1990s will help draw attention to the healthcare cost issue by forcing a vote on the Trump administration’s recent changes to the Affordable Care Act. Meanwhile, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is demanding information from a medical journal that retracted a study that backed Kennedy’s claims of vaccine harm. (Rovner, 6/18)
HANTAVIRUS OUTBREAK
The New York Times: Hantavirus Quarantine Ends For 18 Americans Exposed On A Cruise Ship Quarantine ended on Sunday for American passengers of a cruise ship that was hit by a deadly hantavirus outbreak. The passengers had been held for weeks at a federal facility in Nebraska. The quarantine was lifted at 2 p.m. Central time, officials said. It marked a return to day-to-day life for all 18 passengers, including the six who had stayed at the National Quarantine Unit at the University of Nebraska Medical Center until the end of the 42-day period. Since the end of May, 12 had been released from the unit to home confinement. (Spoto, 6/21)
NBC News: The Hantavirus Quarantine Is Over. Here’s What Cruise Passengers And Scientists Learned. The moment ends a painful chapter of isolation and uncertainty for those exposed, who say they are looking forward to hugging parents, getting haircuts and touching grass. (Bendix, 6/21)
FLU, MEASLES, AND BIRD FLU
San Antonio Express-News: 222 Recruits At Lackland Reported Ill As Flu Outbreak Spreads U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro says 222 recruits in basic training have fallen ill at Lackland. The flu outbreak is in its third week. The outbreak comes two months after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth made flu vaccines optional for troops in the armed services, including those entering basic training. One recruit died Tuesday, days after being admitted to Brooke Army Medical Center, but the Pentagon has not said if he presented symptoms for the flu. (Christenson, 6/20)
NBC News: FDA Panel Recommends Moderna’s MRNA Flu Shot For Older Adults A Food and Drug Administration advisory panel on Thursday recommended the approval of Moderna’s mRNA-based flu shot for older adults. If approved, it would be the world’s first messenger RNA flu shot, providing public health officials with a much more nimble tool to fight influenza. In a late-stage trial, the vaccine was found to be about 27% more effective than a standard flu shot. (Lovelace Jr., 6/18)
AP: Utah Marks A Year Of Fighting Measles Utah has spent the past year fighting measles outbreaks — a grim milestone that could affect whether the United States can keep its measles-free designation. More than 680 people have gotten sick since the state’s first outbreak began on June 20, 2025. Unlike measles outbreaks in Texas, South Carolina and Arizona, the spread in Utah has been tough to contain to one region — infecting undervaccinated communities in nearly every county. (Shastri, 6/20)
The Baltimore Sun: Maryland Resident With Measles Traveled Through Dulles, DC Clinic Health officials in Maryland and the District of Columbia are investigating a confirmed measles case involving a Maryland resident who recently traveled internationally and may have exposed others at locations in Northern Virginia and Washington, D.C. (Henney, 6/21)
BBC: Australia Confirms First Case Of Bird Flu As Virus Reaches Every Continent The H5N1 strain of bird flu has for the first time been found in Australia, the country's agriculture ministry confirmed. It means the highly contagious variant has now reached every continent. The disease was found in a migratory seabird, a brown skua, in remote Western Australia, Agriculture Minister Julie Collins said on Saturday. (Tan, 6/20)
EBOLA OUTBREAK
Bloomberg: Ebola Cases Top 1,000 In Congo As Virus Infects Frontline Health Workers Ebola cases have surpassed 1,000 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where health workers are becoming infected before anyone realizes they’re treating the deadly virus, exposing a dangerous weakness in efforts to contain one of the world’s fastest-growing outbreaks. (Gale, 6/22)
Bloomberg: Fighting Ebola Means Going Door To Door To Explain It’s Real Faced with a combative crowd demanding to see the body about to be buried in the trading hub of Bunia, the Red Cross team proposed a compromise borne from past Ebola outbreaks: They offered to open the coffin as long as onlookers brought protection to avoid infection. The rejection was swift. The crowd in this war-torn part of eastern Congo assaulted the volunteers, seriously injuring two of them, and opened the coffin, unwittingly exposing themselves to the virus at its most contagious. (Furlong, 6/20)
AP: 6-Month-Old Ebola Victim Buried As Congo Outbreak Spreads Mourners gathered Friday to bury a 6-month-old girl who died from Ebola earlier this week, the third child to die at an orphanage in eastern Congo as authorities have struggled to contain the latest outbreak. Carrying a cross, people stood at a distance as the small coffin was lowered into the ground by masked and gloved health workers, and a Catholic priest prayed over her body. “It’s a feeling of sadness because we have lost one of our own, a daughter of the church,” said Father Innocent Ndogo. (Kabumba and McMakin, 6/20)
REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH
St. Louis Public Radio: Planned Parenthood Will Resume Missouri Medication Abortions Missouri’s Planned Parenthood affiliates will offer medication abortions next week for the first time since 2018 after a Jackson County judge struck down a slew of restrictions on Thursday. While the ruling will be appealed, Jackson County Judge Jerri Zhang’s decision marks arguably the most legally significant move since Missourians approved an amendment protecting abortion rights in 2024. (Rosenbaum and Fentem, 6/18)
Politico: Republicans Don’t Want To Talk About Abortion. In These States, They May Have To Democrats are prioritizing other issues over abortion in the runup to the fall midterm elections, while Republicans are taking pains to avoid the topic altogether. But another wave of state ballot initiatives to protect a right to abortion could force candidates on both sides to articulate their positions. Progressive advocacy groups and Democratic strategists are confident that this year’s four abortion rights ballot measures — especially those in Virginia and Nevada — will put vulnerable GOP candidates in the hot seat with voters, 60 percent of whom believe abortion should be legal in most or all cases. (Ollstein, 6/21)
Bloomberg: RFK Jr. Seeks FDA Label Changes For Testosterone Therapy In Older Men The US Department of Health and Human Services wants to remove some of the stigma from testosterone treatment. The agency, through the US Food and Drug Administration, is asking manufacturers to take off warnings that have long appeared on hormone replacement therapy labels for older men whose testosterone levels decline naturally with age, it said in a statement Thursday. (Inampudi and Muller, 6/18)
CIDRAP: Women With Menstruation-Related Disorders More Likely To Be Diagnosed With STIs, Study Suggests Young women with menstruation-related disorders, such as endometriosis and dysmenorrhea (painful periods), were significantly more likely to be diagnosed as having an STI than women without those conditions, according to a large study from Japan published this week in PLOS One. Endometriosis occurs when tissue similar to uterine tissue grows outside the uterus. While not strictly a menstrual disorder, it can cause pain, irregular periods, and infertility. (Bergeson, 6/18)
GUN VIOLENCE AND MENTAL HEALTH
AP: Luigi Mangione's Won't Pursue A Psychiatric Defense In a stunning reversal, Luigi Mangione ‘s lawyers told a judge Thursday that he will no longer be asserting a psychiatric defense at his state murder trial in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. The retraction came just a day after Mangione’s lawyers told Judge Gregory Carro that they planned to pursue a defense involving claims that the 28-year-old Ivy League graduate was suffering from extreme emotional disturbance at the time of the Dec. 4, 2024, killing. (Sisak, 6/19)
THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION
Politico: Trump Administration To Phase Out HIV Funding For South Africa The Trump administration has decided to start phasing out HIV funding for South Africa following the country’s “failure to make demonstrable progress on policy requests by the administration,” a State Department official told POLITICO on Thursday. The official, who agreed to discuss the decision only if POLITICO did not use their name, said the decision to “initiate a phased drawdown of PEPFAR programming in South Africa” is in line with President Donald Trump’s February 2025 executive order accusing South Africa of discriminating against its white Afrikaner minority and directing U.S. agencies to stop providing aid to the country unless it changes its policies. (Paun, 6/18)
ProPublica: Trump Is Defying Congress On Foreign Aid After the Trump administration upended the world’s largest foreign aid provider last year, terminating thousands of programs and firing nearly all of its staff, its plan for the agency was clear: Eliminate it entirely. But because it is a congressionally created agency, President Donald Trump needed lawmakers’ permission to do so. So this year, Trump officials asked Congress for permission to shutter the U.S. Agency for International Development and dramatically reduce federal spending on food, medicine and lifesaving work around the world. (Barry-Jester, 6/22)
Bloomberg: Merz Says US Expected To Honor Trade Pact After German Drug Pricing Probe Chancellor Friedrich Merz said he expects the US to stand by its trade commitments with Europe after Donald Trump’s administration launched a tariff investigation into Germany’s drug pricing. The German leader, who said decisions on pharmaceutical payments are a domestic matter, made the remarks after the US started an investigation under rules that allow the Office of the US Trade Representative to impose levies in response to unfair trade barriers. (Delfs and Kresge, 6/19)
Stat: Health Disparity Researchers See A Threat In New Rules On NIH Grants Deep inside a White House proposal to overhaul how the government awards grants is a short section that health disparities researchers say could disqualify much of their work from federal funding — perhaps the most serious threat yet to the future of their field. (Oza, 6/22)
Newsweek: Tulsi Gabbard Drops Documents She Says Relate To COVID, Fauci Outgoing Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has released what she described as previously unseen communications and documents related to the origins of COVID-19, research funding, and the alleged actions of Dr. Anthony Fauci. The documents, released late Thursday as part of what the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) described as a yearlong declassification review, include internal communications, whistleblower allegations and intelligence-related material tied to debates over how the coronavirus pandemic began. (Commander and Stevenson, 6/19)
The Hill: Trump Cabinet's Sauerkraut Obsession Isn't Key To Weight Loss, Doctor Says A jar of sauerkraut has become an unlikely status symbol inside the Trump administration. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and Vice President Vance have adopted a diet centered on fermented foods and grass-fed meat, according to a Wall Street Journal report. The diet is recommended by Dr. Sean O’Mara, who encourages patients to eat more sauerkraut, kimchi and grass-fed steak while cutting out alcohol and sugar. He says the approach reduces visceral fat and supports gut health. (Fischels, 6/20)
OPIOID CRISIS
AP: Staggering Amounts Of Fentanyl Hit Streets As The DEA Watched And Took No Action, Records Show Even as it battled the deadliest drug epidemic in American history, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration permitted hundreds of thousands of fentanyl pills to hit the streets of New Mexico between 2023 and 2025, according to three current and former DEA agents and government records reviewed by The Associated Press. DEA agents repeatedly monitored shipments of fentanyl pills — but did not seize them — as federal prosecutors sought to bring bigger criminal cases against traffickers of a synthetic opioid that the White House last year designated a “ weapon of mass destruction.” (Mustian and Goodman, 6/22)
The New York Times: Cities And Schools Are Testing Wastewater For Illicit Drugs A foul odor permeated the early morning heat as city workers in Tempe, Ariz., unlocked a sewage monitoring shed and opened the tap of a collection jug that had been siphoning from the city’s wastewater over the previous day. They filled a jar, packed it in a blue cooler and hurried to the next shed, or “doghouse,” retrieving from 11 in all. Rushing to prevent the samples from degrading under the glowering sun, they delivered the coolers to a new municipal lab, where chemists test sewage for traces of dangerous drugs. (Hoffman, 6/21)
AGING
HealthDay: Fish Oil Supplements May Be A Bust For Alzheimer's Prevention Millions of Americans take fish oil supplements hoping to keep their brains sharp as they age. But evidence just published in the journal EBioMedicine suggests those capsules may not deliver the cognitive boost many expect. A two-year clinical trial followed 365 adults between the ages of 55 and 80 who were at increased risk for Alzheimer's disease. Participants received either a daily high-dose omega-3 supplement or a placebo. Memory tests and brain scans showed no advantage for those taking fish oil supplements. (6/19)
The Hill: Is Hearing Loss An Alzheimer’s Warning Sign? Research Shows New Risk Factors The number of people living with Alzheimer’s disease is expected to double by 2060. New research is shedding light on warning signs and risk factors that could signal cognitive decline ahead. One clear risk factor, the research shows, is hearing loss. (Martichoux, 6/21)
HEALTHCARE INDUSTRY
Asheville Watchdog: UNC Health Seeks Approval For New Hospital In Asheville UNC Health, the University of North Carolina’s hospital system, has applied for permission to open a 92-bed hospital near downtown Asheville. North Carolina’s state-owned nonprofit health provider, which already has a management agreement with UNCHealth Pardee in Henderson County, made the request to the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services under the state’s Certificate of Need (CON) requirement, which requires regulatory approval. (Clifford, 6/20)
Chicago Tribune: Illinois Hospitals Owe The State More Than $700 Million When West Suburban Medical Center closed in March, it didn’t just leave patients in a lurch; it also left the state high and dry. Around the time of its closure, the Oak Park hospital owed the state more than $51 million in taxes and penalties, along with $20 million that the state had advanced to help stabilize West Suburban and its sister facility, Weiss Memorial Hospital in Chicago’s Uptown neighborhood. (Schencker, 6/21)
MPR News: Frustrated Rural Hospitals In Minnesota Are Still Waiting On Federal Funding Rural health care providers in Minnesota and across the country are bracing for heavy Medicaid funding cuts next year. They're part of President Donald Trump’s tax breaks and spending cuts package known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act he signed into law last year, and includes nearly $1 trillion in Medicaid spending cuts over 10 years. As it made its way through Congress, lawmakers worked to appease some congressional Republicans concerned about how cuts could disproportionately impact rural hospitals and health providers, which see a larger portion of Medicaid patients. (Work, 6/22)
Modern Healthcare: CMS Medicare Advantage Star Ratings Redo Boosts Humana, Clover Medicare Advantage insurers are in line for an estimated $428 million windfall when the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services recalculates quality scores across the sector. Clover Health — whose successful lawsuit against the agency triggered the new ratings — and Humana will be among the health insurance companies that see the greatest increases in bonus payments through the Medicare Advantage Star Ratings program, according to an analysis Rex Wallace Consulting performed for Modern Healthcare. (Tepper, 6/19)
HealthDay: Federal Push To Boost U.S. Primary Care Doctors Falls Short Federal efforts to expand the number of primary care doctors in America have fallen short, a new study says. Primary care’s share of 1,000 new U.S. residency positions funded by Medicare has dwindled over time, researchers reported June 15 in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Overall, primary care positions increased by just 2% as a result of new laws passed in 2021 and 2023 to increase medical residencies in the United States. (Thompson, 6/22)
PHARMA AND TECH
The Hill: Medicare To Offer GLP-1 Obesity Drugs At Flat Monthly Rate: What To Know Starting in July, some Medicare beneficiaries will be able to access GLP-1 medications by paying one flat fee per month. The temporary program is set to run for a year-and-a-half through the end of 2027. But with less than two weeks before its launch, questions remain over how it will operate. The Medicare GLP-1 Bridge, described by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) as a “time-limited demonstration,” will officially run from July 1, 2026, to Dec. 31, 2027. (Choi, 6/21)
Bloomberg: Novo Nordisk Owner To Open Obesity Drug Incubators Across Europe The primary owner of Ozempic maker Novo Nordisk A/S is launching a network of research incubators across Europe, seeking to create breakthrough obesity and diabetes treatments by turning academic discoveries into commercial ventures. The CardioMetabolic Bridge program will open its first location in London this month, followed by sites in Italy and Germany later this year, according to a statement from the Novo Nordisk Foundation, which holds a controlling stake in the Danish drugmaker. (Wass, 6/19)
ABC News: AI Model Helps Some Patients Get Diagnoses After Years Of Uncertainty: Study An artificial intelligence (AI) model is helping some patients get diagnoses after years of unexplained illness, according to a new study. Researchers from OpenAI and Boston Children's Hospital took the existing genetic data of 18 pediatric patients -- many now adults -- and reviewed it through a newly developed AI model, cracking cases that stumped doctors for years. The team hopes its model will help thousands of American kids who are impacted. Researchers pointed out one in 10 Americans -- more than 30 million people, half of whom are children -- have a rare disease. (Anthony, 6/20)
Bloomberg: UnitedHealth Bets $3 Billion On AI To Cut Costs, Tame Backlash At UnitedHealth Group Inc., artificial intelligence reads aloud summaries of medical charts as nurses drive to patients’ homes. It listens to millions of customer calls to find the causes of complaints. One trial even has AI agents calling doctors’ offices to schedule appointments for patients. The largest US health insurer plans to invest $3 billion in AI over 2026 and 2027. UnitedHealth executives say they’re seeing a 2-to-1 return, as AI automates cumbersome manual processes and makes workers more efficient. Executives say the technology can reduce friction for patients while lowering costs. (Tozzi, 6/19)
CNN: A 22-Year-Old Engineer 3D Prints Dentures For Low-Income Americans At just 22, Connor Gibson is doing something he never dreamed possible: using his engineering skills to 3D print dentures for America’s most vulnerable people — and giving them back their sense of dignity in the process. (Drash, 6/22)
STATE WATCH
The Washington Post: Tennessee To Restrict Medical Aid For Critically Ill Undocumented Children Families in Tennessee with critically ill or severely disabled children who are undocumented are being asked to make a difficult choice: leave the state program that pays for lifesaving medication and treatment or stay and have their child reported to immigration authorities. The program, Children’s Special Services, funds low-income families who have exhausted all other options to cover costs for their sick children — helping pay for ventilators, wheelchairs or feeding tubes, for example, or for expensive drugs and emergency treatments. (Foster-Frau, 6/22)
New Service of Florida: Report: Florida's AIDS Drug Program Could Use More Money Lawmakers acted earlier this year to save a key AIDS drug program from drastic cuts, but a new report from the state released Monday indicates the program remains in peril. A report by the Florida Department of Health argues the state won’t be able to secure enough funds for the AIDS Drug Assistance Program if it continues to serve people at 400 percent of the poverty level. (Goni-Lessan, 6/19)
The New York Times: Warehouse Fire in L.A. Still Burns, Spreading Smoke Across Region Air quality in central Los Angeles and the San Gabriel Valley continued to be affected by particulates in the smoke. The South Coast Air Quality Management District extended a warning about poor air quality until midday on Monday and indicated that the wind could disperse smoke as far as Riverside and Orange Counties. In a statement, the air quality agency said that particulates had reached “very unhealthy” levels in some areas on Saturday night and Sunday. The agency was expecting the most significant smoke effects north and east of the fire, and in the San Gabriel Valley and parts of the western Inland Empire. (Spoto, 6/21)
The Baltimore Sun: Why Carroll County's Suicide Rate Is Higher Than The State's Carroll County’s age-adjusted suicide death rate of 10.6 deaths per 100,000 people looms higher than the state’s rate of 9.5 per 100,000, according to National Institutes of Health data from 2019 to 2023. Carroll has the 14th-highest suicide rate of Maryland’s 24 jurisdictions, and had an average annual count of 19 deaths, with a rate that has held stable from 2019 to 2023. (Fine, 6/22)
AP: Ohio's Law On Parental Consent For Social Media Apps Reinstated By Court Ohio’s law requiring children under 16 to get parental consent to use social media apps must be restored, a divided panel of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Thursday. The decision comes as a blow to NetChoice, which has won court victories against identical digital identification laws in other states, including Arkansas, Louisiana and Georgia. The trade group representing TikTok, Snapchat, Meta and other major tech companies said the Ohio decision went against “clear national consensus” and that it intended to keep fighting. (Carr Smyth, 6/19)
The Washington Post: Why Electricity Disconnections Are Far More Common In Oklahoma Than Any Other State More than 2 percent of Oklahoma households were shut off each month in 2024, a rate that no other state approaches. In fact, only Alabama, Louisiana, and Texas had a shutoff rate above 2 percent in even one month of the year. In some low-shutoff states, like Iowa and Massachusetts, the monthly rate stays below half a percent all year long. Electricity isn’t particularly expensive in Oklahoma — as of March, the state’s average residential price-per-kilowatt-hour was the eighth-lowest in the nation. But residents’ incomes are lower than all but five states. (Weil, 6/22)
AP: 3 Hikers Die Of Apparent Heat Illness In The Grand Canyon Three hikers died from apparent heat-related illnesses in the Grand Canyon on two separate days in the past week in the inner canyon, where temperatures can exceed 109 degrees Fahrenheit (43 degrees Celsius) in the shade during midday hours, federal officials said Friday. A 72-year-old man became ill from the heat on June 12 while hiking the South Kaibab Trail and died before rescue crews could reach him. Four days later, a 67-year-old man and a 68-year-old woman also appeared to suffer from heat-related illnesses while hiking the North Kaibab Trail and died before help arrived, the U.S. National Park Service said in a statement. (6/20)
PUBLIC HEALTH
The Washington Post: Misinformation About Sunscreen Is Spreading On TikTok, Researchers Say Skepticism of sunscreen, which has long alarmed dermatologists and health care experts, is relatively rare on TikTok. But a small number of videos pushing misinformation about sunscreen received a disproportionately high share of likes, shares and comments on the platform, suggesting that anti-sunscreen views resonate strongly with some users, according to a new study published Thursday. (Wu, 6/20)
The Washington Post: 7 Unexpected Takeaways From The Newest Research On Cannabis And Brain Effects Stephen Lankenau has spent years studying how people use cannabis in everyday life. As director of Drexel University’s Medical Cannabis Research Center, he has watched legalization spread, products grow stronger and daily use become increasingly common. Yet one of the most basic questions remains surprisingly difficult to answer: How much cannabis is too much for the brain? (Eunjung Cha, 6/18)
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