Health

California on Thursday sued two anti-abortion organizations for telling patients that they can help reverse the effects of the abortion pill mifepristone, a potentially dangerous claim not supported by evidence. In a complaint filed in Alameda County Superior Court, California Attorney General Rob Bonta, a Democrat, accused Heartbeat International (HBI) and RealOptions Obria of violating a state law against fraudulent business practices.

The Biden administration on Thursday announced plans to remove medical bills from Americans' credit reports in a push to end what it called coercive debt collection tactics that affect millions of consumers. Proposals under consideration would help families financially recover from medical crises, stop debt collectors from coercing people into paying bills they may not even owe, and ensure that creditors are not relying on data that is often plagued with inaccuracies and mistakes, Vice President Kamala Harris and Rohit Chopra, the top consumer finance watchdog, announced.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) on Thursday said 30 states must pause disenrollments from their Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) programs and reinstate coverage for people who lost it due to a glitch uncovered in August. Medicaid, the federal/state health program for low income people and families, said nearly 500,000 children and other individuals that lost coverage due to a problem affecting automatic renewals will regain their insurance.

U.S. drug regulators issued a report detailing quality control lapses at Novo Nordisk's main factory in North America as early as May last year, according to the report obtained by Reuters via a Freedom of Information Act request. The inspection by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) was at Novo's facility in Clayton, North Carolina, which the company says produces the active pharmaceutical ingredient (API), semaglutide.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) said on Wednesday it will deliver COVID-19 tests for free to households across the country. Beginning Sept. 25, households will again be able to order four free tests through COVIDTests.gov, the health agency said, adding that the tests can detect currently circulating COVID-19 variants and are intended for use through the end of 2023. HHS also announced an investment of $600 million in 12 domestic COVID-19 test manufacturers.

U.S. employers are bracing for the largest increase in health insurance costs in a decade next year, according forecasts from healthcare consultants, but workers may be somewhat spared this time around in a tight labor market. Benefit consultants from Mercer, Aon and Willis Towers Watson see employer healthcare costs jumping 5.4% to 8.5% in 2024 due to medical inflation, soaring demand for costly weight-loss drugs and wider availability of high-priced gene therapies.

The U.S. government is awarding $45 million in grants to help clinics treating long COVID develop new models of care and expand access, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) said on Wednesday. Nine clinics will receive $1 million grants annually over the next five years through the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) within HHS, the department said. President Joe Biden had tasked HHS last year with developing a national action plan to tackle long COVID, a complex, multi-symptom condition that arises months after a COVID-19 infection and leaves many of its sufferers unable to work.

Eli Lilly on Tuesday said it was suing 10 U.S. medical spas, wellness centers and compounding pharmacies for selling products claiming to contain tirzepatide, the active ingredient in its diabetes drug Mounjaro which is expected to be approved for weight loss later this year. In four separate lawsuits filed in Florida and Texas federal courts, Eli Lilly is seeking orders barring Better Life Pharmacy, ReviveRX, Rx Compound Store and Wells Pharmacy Network from selling tirzepatide, and requesting unspecified damages.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg's philanthropy venture plans to build a computing system powered by artificial intelligence for life sciences research to study human cells and diseases. The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, created by Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan, will use the computing system to run openly available AI models, the philanthropy venture said on Tuesday. AI has been used in the life sciences domain for some years. Among the popular platforms, Google DeepMind's AlphaFold can predict protein structures, while Nvidia's RadImageGAN, an AI model for radiology, can catch a broad range of medical conditions, including stroke, heart attack, and cancer.

U.S. Representative Jennifer Wexton, a Virginia Democrat, said on Monday she would not seek reelection after learning that her medical condition, diagnosed earlier this year as Parkinson's Disease, was more serious than previously thought. Wexton, who represents an area of suburban Northern Virginia outside Washington, said she would serve out her current two-year term, which ends in January 2025, but would not seek a fourth term and would instead spend time with her husband and two sons.