From Washington, DC

• The House of Representatives and the Senate will be in session this week on Capitol Hill for Committee business and floor voting.

• Roll Call discusses expected floor activities this week on Capitol Hill.

• The House Financial Services and General Government Subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee will meet on Monday July 21 to mark up its appropriations bill which includes OPM appropriations.
  • The bill includes the following FEHB Program measures
    • Ban on applying full federal cost accounting standards on FEHB and PSHB carriers (Sec. 611).
    • Banning abortion coverage except “where the life of the mother would be endangered if the fetus were carried to term, or the pregnancy is the result of an act of rape or incest. (Sec. 614, also known as the Hyde Amendment).
    • A contraception mandate with certain exceptions (Sec. 726) which has been modified by the Affordable Care Act’s contraception mandate.
    • A new ban for 2026 (Sec. 761) which reads as follows:
      • “None of the funds made available by this Act, or in any previous appropriation, may be provided for in insurance plans in the Federal Employees Health Benefits program to cover the cost of surgical procedures or puberty blockers or hormone therapy for the purpose of gender affirming care.”

• OPM Director Scott Kupor has begun writing a weekly blog about OPM. Here is a link to his first post which is worth reading. 

• USA Today reports,
  • “Social Security recipients could get a 2.7% raise next year, up from last month’s estimate of 2.5%, based on the latest inflation report, according to a new estimate.
  • “The Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI-W), the index used to calculate the annual adjustment to Social Security benefits, gained 2.6% in June. Overall inflation rose 2.7%from May’s 2.4% increase. The Federal Reserve’s inflation goal is 2%.” * * *
  • [However,] Medicare Part B costs are rising several times faster than its average rate of increase in recent years.
  • “According to the 2025 Medicare Trustees annual report released in June [2025], the Medicare Part B premium for 2026, is expected to increase to $206.50 from $185.00 in 2025 for a jump of $21.50 per month, or 11.6%. That’s the largest Part B increase since 2022 when it rose 14.5%.” 

• MedTech Dive informs us,
  • “A warning letter sent by the Food and Drug Administration to wearable company Whoop has sparked a debate on when wellness claims should be regulated as medical devices.
  • Whoop, a company selling a wearable wristband to track metrics such as sleep, heart rate and strain, received the warning letter on Monday for marketing a blood pressure insights feature without FDA authorization. 
  • “The feature provides daily systolic and diastolic blood pressure estimates by measuring heart rate variability during sleep. Whoop’s website states that the feature is intended to help users track blood pressure trends and have a deeper understanding of how blood pressure affects their wellness. The website also marketed the feature as an example of how Whoop is “delivering medical-grade health & performance insights,” according to the warning letter. 
  • “In a response posted Tuesday, one day after the letter was sent to the company, Whoop said it disagrees with the FDA’s assertion that the blood pressure feature should be reviewed as a medical device before being available in the U.S., claiming it is a wellness feature, not a medical device.
  • “This interpretation is also inconsistent with the 21st Century Cures Act, which clarifies that functions intended to promote a healthy lifestyle — and unrelated to the diagnosis, cure, mitigation, prevention, or treatment of a disease or condition — are excluded from the definition of a medical device,” a Whoop spokesperson wrote in an emailed statement.” 

From the public health and medical research front,

• The New York Times reports,
  • “Across the United States, an intricate system of hospitals, doctors and nonprofit donation coordinators carries out tens of thousands of lifesaving transplants each year. At every step, it relies on carefully calibrated protocols to protect both donors and recipients.
  • “But in recent years, as the system has pushed to increase transplants, a growing number of patients have endured premature or bungled attempts to retrieve their organs. 
  • “Across the United States, an intricate system of hospitals, doctors and nonprofit donation coordinators carries out tens of thousands of lifesaving transplants each year. At every step, it relies on carefully calibrated protocols to protect both donors and recipients.
  • “But in recent years, as the system has pushed to increase transplants, a growing number of patients have endured premature or bungled attempts to retrieve their organs. 
  • “Circulatory death donation is different. These patients are on life support, often in a coma. Their prognoses are more of a medical judgment call.
• The FEHBlog certainly will be taking another look at his living will.

• NPR Shots tells us
  • “After about age 40, our brains begin to lose a step or two.
  • “Each year, our reaction time slows by a few thousandths of a second. We’re also less able to recall items on a shopping list.
  • “Those changes can be signs of a disease, like Alzheimer’s. But usually, they’re not.
  • “Both of those things, memory and processing speed, change with age in a normal group of people,” says Matt Huentelman, a professor at TGen, the Translational Genomics Research Institute, in Phoenix.
  • “Huentelman should know. He helps run MindCrowd, a free online cognitive test that has been taken by more than 700,000 adults.”
  • “About a thousand of those people had test scores indicating that their brain was “exceptional,” meaning they performed like a person 30 years younger on tests of memory and processing speed.
  • “Genetics played a role, of course. But Huentelman and a team of researchers have been focusing on other differences.” * * *
  • “Early results suggest that sleep and maintaining cardiovascular health are a good start. Other measures include avoiding smoking, limiting alcohol and getting plenty of exercise.”

• New York Times Well lets us know “Want More Self-Control? The Secret Isn’t Willpower. People who can delay gratification and master their impulses thrive in life. And experts say that you can learn skills to rein in bad habits.”

• The Wall Street Journal reports,
  • “Long contentious, chronic Lyme, as it is called by patient advocates, has gained more acknowledgment and investment by researchers after Covid-19 showcased how an infection can leave people with lingering symptoms that last months or longer. The virus’s aftermath looked strikingly similar to what some Lyme disease patients had been describing for years.
  • * * * “In May, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine published a report saying that research funders should put more emphasis on developing treatments for patients with lingering symptoms after Lyme disease, even as the root cause behind why patients experience the symptoms remains a mystery.” * * *
  • “Some laboratory researchers are investigating what might be behind the symptoms, including whether a molecule that the bacteria left behind could be driving inflammation. Newer trials are now looking at whether certain antibiotics or electrical nerve stimulation might help treat the condition, since persistent infection and immune-system or neural-network dysfunction are also theories doctors have proposed. Prior trials haven’t found a benefit to more antibiotics after initial treatment.
  • “We’re not just focusing on one mechanism but many different possible mechanisms as to why people might have persistent symptoms,” said Dr. Brian Fallon, director of the Lyme and Tick-Borne Disease Research Center at Columbia University and head of the Lyme-focused clinical trial network that launched in 2021. 
  • “Preventing tick bites remains a person’s best defense against Lyme and other tickborne diseases. People should avoid wooded and brushy areas with high grass, walk in the center of trails and cover up extremities, health officials say. Wearing insect repellent, checking your body for ticks and showering soon after being outdoors also help reduce the risk.”

• Modern Healthcare relates,
  • “People are beginning to trust AI for getting their health information, according to survey data from the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania. Nearly eight out of 10 U.S. adults say they’re likely to look online for the answer to a question about a health symptom or condition. Of who are using AI, 75% say that AI-generated responses provide them with the answer they need. Most Americans (63%) think AI-generated health information is reliable.”