From Washington, DC

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

• The House Ways and Means Committee will hold a hearing with health system CEOs on April 28, 2026, at 10 am ET.

• Federal News Network interviews NARFE Staff Vice President John Hatton about OPM’s ill-advised health claims data warehouse and the Postal Service’s decision to suspend making contributions toward their employee’s retirement benefits due to its cash woes.

From the public health and medical / Rx research front,

• Health Exec reports,
  • “The more you maintain good physical fitness from your mid-40s to your mid-60s, the likelier you are to add years to your life and life to your later years. 
  • “So conclude researchers at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center who tracked cardiorespiratory health in around 25,000 adults from midlife through elder stages. 
  • “The team, led by Clare Meernik, PhD, MPH, assessed participants’ fitness using a treadmill test until age 65. From that point on, the researchers used Medicare data to watch for and record the onset of 11 major chronic conditions such as heart disease, diabetes, kidney disease and cancer.
  • “The Journal of the American College of Cardiology published the results April 21.”

• The FEHBlog noted on Friday that tick bites are increasing in the U.S. The Washington Post offers relevant advice. “Experts explained what to do if you find a tick attached to your skin, including how to remove it and document it, and when to seek medical advice.”

• Building on another FEHBlog post from Friday, the Wall Street Journal explains what heart valve patients need to know before treatment.

• Cardiovascular Business adds,
  • “New-onset postoperative atrial fibrillation (POAF) remains the most common complication following cardiac surgery, typically developing within four days of treatment. While it often resolves on its own, POAF is also associated with longer hospitalizations, higher healthcare costs and an increased risk of poor clinical outcomes, including long-term mortality.
  • “How can care teams work to minimize a patient’s risk of developing POAF? What is the best way to manage POAF once it develops? To answer those very questions, the Society of Thoracic Surgeons (STS) gathered a committee of cardiac surgeons, cardiologists, anesthesiologists and intensivists who specialize in POAF. The group reviewed years of data, including randomized trials and contemporary treatment guidelines, and landed on a total of 15 recommendations for reducing the risk of POAF after cardiac surgery. This included eight preventive strategies, three intraoperative techniques and four postoperative treatments.
  • “The committee’s report, first presented at the STS annual meeting in New Orleans, is now published in full in The Annals of Thoracic Surgery.

From the U.S. healthcare business front

• Health Exec kindly offers five reasons not to (solely) blame insurance companies for what ails US healthcare.
  • High health insurance premiums are largely driven by high underlying healthcare costs. 
  • Health insurers don’t raise premiums to be mean, greedy or otherwise uncaring. 
  • As a share of premium revenues, health insurers’ profit margins are generally modest.
  • Prior authorization: A necessary ‘evil’ without which things would be worse. 
  • There’s enough blame to go around. 

• Health Exec reports,
  • “TV viewers of a certain age have a hard time avoiding commercials hawking pharmaceutical and medical products. That category is the second-most heavily advertised on TV. Only entertainment is ahead of it. 
  • “And that’s just TV. Across all media, pharmaceutical companies are spending close to $10 billion per year on direct-to-consumer advertising in the U.S., MediaRadar reports. Only the entertainment industry spends more. 
  • “This kind of drug-pushing is legal, of course. But is it good for the health status of Americans?
  • “There are two schools of thought on that question. One defends a soft yes, the other a hard no. Both get a hearing in a slice of investigative journalism from KFF Health News in partnership with The New York Times.”

• MedCity News notes
  • “Regeneron Pharmaceuticals’ Otarmeni is now approved for treating hearing loss from an ultra-rare genetic mutation found in an estimated 50 newborns per year. While Regeneron will offer this gene therapy for free, the approval came with a rare pediatric disease priority review voucher that the company can sell for hundreds of millions of dollars.”