Simplicity is a virtue.

From Washington, DC

• The Senate is in session this week on Capitol Hill for floor voting and Committee business.

• Bloomberg Law reports,
  • “Mehmet Oz [,an MD who administers the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services within the Department of Health and Human Services] has been loyal to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. while cultivating a close relationship with President Donald Trump and a reputation as a serious operator in the administration.
  • Oz has been playing a significant role in the administration, with access to the president and involvement in various policy discussions, leading to speculation that he could be the heir apparent to lead the health department if Kennedy departs.
  • Despite potential challenges and criticisms, Oz has earned respect from some outside the administration, including major healthcare companies and industry groups, and has been working to implement the administration’s health policies and reduce healthcare costs.

From the public health and medical/Rx research front.

• The Wall Street Journal relates,
  • “The eyes are a window to the soul, but the mouth may reveal just as much about a person’s health—and the diseases that shape how we age.
  • “To better understand those connections, scientists are studying how issues that start in the mouth may contribute to chronic inflammation elsewhere in the body. In particular, they’re examining how bacteria from diseased gums, and the immune response they trigger, may contribute to conditions including heart disease, diabetes, cognitive decline, arthritis, respiratory disease and chronic liver disease.
  • “The emerging science poses a challenge for healthcare, given the traditional divide between medicine and dentistry—fields that have long been divided by separate training, records and insurance systems. “Dentists haven’t traditionally been trained to think about whole-body health in relation to the mouth, and doctors haven’t been trained to see dental health as a first step to overall well-being,” says Dr. Jessica Lederhausen, a dentist and author of “Oral,” a book exploring the role of lifestyle on oral health.
  • “But that is changing. Dental schools, which have taught how diseases like diabetes affect the mouth, are also placing greater emphasis on how oral disease can affect the rest of the body. Medical-education leaders have called on medical schools to better integrate oral health into physician training.“

• Newsweek relates,
  • “Air quality alerts spanned large swaths of the western United States on Sunday as wildfire smoke and high ozone levels triggered unhealthy breathing conditions across Oregon, Idaho, Washington, Montana, Colorado, and California.
  • “Data from AirNow, the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) monitoring platform, showed widespread “unhealthy” air or worse, driven primarily by smoke from ongoing fires in Canada and the Pacific Northwest. Officials urged residents in affected zones to remain indoors, limit strenuous outdoor activities, and take precautions if they suffer from asthma, heart disease, or other respiratory ailments.”
  • The primary health threat stems from fine particulate matter, known as PM2.5, which is small enough to penetrate deep into human lung tissue.

• Columbia University tells us,
  • “If you’re among the hundreds of millions of people now using an AI chatbot on a regular basis, chances are you’ve tried asking it for personal advice. So you know the peculiar comfort that comes from instantly receiving thorough, information-packed takes on your most private concerns, delivered in a warm, affirming tone. “That’s an excellent question and you’re smart to ask it!” a typical chatbot response might begin, whether you’re considering cosmetic surgery or leaving your spouse. “Now let’s think this through, step by step.”
  • “Today, roughly one in three US adults and nearly 20 percent of adolescents are turning to chatbots for personal guidance, seeking insights on everything from relationship problems and workplace conflicts to deeper concerns about anxiety and depression. No one knows yet exactly how this is affecting people, because the phenomenon is so new. But many experts are alarmed. 
  • “People should not be relying on chatbots for emotional support or therapy, that’s for sure,” says Ragy Girgis ’14PH, a Columbia psychiatrist and outspoken advocate for research on the issue. “The technology cannot be trusted to be accurate or helpful in that way.”

• Oschner Health informs us,
  • “Ultra-processed foods have been a hot topic in wellness conversations, and for good reason. Research continues to link diets high in these foods with anxiety and inflammation, obesity, Type 2 diabetes, heart disease, certain cancers and more.
  • “But this isn’t a story about fear. The goal is not perfection. It’s about awareness — understanding why some foods are so easy to overeat and how small shifts can help protect our long-term health.” * * *
  • Food scientists use the term “bliss point” to describe the “sweet spot” combination of carbohydrate, salt, fat and texture that lights up our brain’s pleasure centers. That combination can make food especially rewarding to eat —and incredibly difficult to stop eating.
  • “For a recent episode of my FUELED Wellness + Nutrition podcast, I [Molly Kimball RD] interviewed Erica LaFata, PhD, a clinical psychologist and researcher whose work focuses on the addictive and reinforcing properties of ultra-processed foods.
  • “This isn’t just about willpower; people aren’t suddenly becoming worse at regulating their eating behavior,” noted LaFata. The food environment itself has changed, making highly rewarding, ultra-processed foods easier to access and consume than ever before.” * * *
  • “This isn’t about obsessing over every ingredient label. It’s about recognizing how these foods are designed and marketed to us so we can make more intentional choices.
  • “LaFata believes that awareness itself can be empowering. It helps us recognize that the issue isn’t simply willpower, but the food environment surrounding us every day.
  • “Small shifts toward whole and minimally processed foods can support overall health. Making intentional choices–even when foods are designed to keep us coming back for more–is a step in the right direction.”

From the U.S. healthcare business front,

• The New York Times explains “What Geriatric Emergency Departments Do Differently.”
  • “These specialized units can help keep older patients out of the hospital, lower their health care costs and more.” * * *
  • “Since 2017, the American College of Emergency Physicians has accredited 624 such geriatric emergency departments across the United States, including 73 in Veterans Affairs medical centers. “A fairly exponential rate of growth,” said Dr. Kevin Biese, the emergency doctor who directs the Geriatric Emergency Department Collaborative.
  • “Few of these units are restricted to older patients. Instead, like the E.R. in La Jolla [CA], they serve all ages but incorporate senior-friendly practices and protocols in an environment aimed at staving off disorientation, falls and other elder hazards. They’re classified from Level 1, for those fulfilling the highest number of criteria, to Level 3.
  • “Adults 75 and older visit the emergency room at a higher rate than any other age group except infants: 76 visits per 100 people in 2022. Yet standard emergency care “wasn’t correctly designed for the needs of older adults,” Dr. Biese said.”

• NavigateWell recommends
  • Questions [for employers to ask before your next [health benefits] renewal
    • Before your next renewal, work with your broker to answer these questions and identify where your greatest opportunity for activation exists.
    • Where are employees delaying preventive care or failing to act on identified risks?
    • Are our benefits connected through one experience or expected to work independently?
    • Are we measuring health improvement or simply participation?
    • Which partners are willing to share accountability for outcomes?
    • Healthcare costs will continue to rise. But employers still have an opportunity to influence what happens before tomorrow’s claims are created. The future of employer healthcare strategy requires both.

• The Wall Street Journal relates,
  • Regeneron REGN Pharmaceuticals co-founder and chief scientific officer George Yancopoulos is more comfortable in a leather jacket than a suit—so much so, his own team had to talk him into wearing one to the White House.
  • “He conceded, but not without adding a colorful tie, hand-painted by Nobel laureate Wally Gilbert. Yancopoulos isn’t one to blend in.
  • “The meeting with President Trump in April was organized in part to tout Regeneron’s latest invention: a gene therapy that restores hearing to children born with a rare genetic deafness, affecting fewer than 50 newborns a year in the U.S. Regeneron—at Yancopoulos’s urging—decided to give it away, free.
  • “We did it to make a statement,” said Yancopoulos, 66. “We want to remind people that when people are sick, you pray for a miracle. And where do they come from? They come from our industry.”
  • “Nearly four decades since he co-founded the biotech Regeneron, Yancopoulos has more than 1,000 patents worldwide, including 77 granted in the U.S., and has authored more than 500 scientific papers. He has turned Regeneron into one of the world’s most valuable drug companies, with a market cap of roughly $70 billion, by repeatedly pioneering technologies that opened up entirely new classes of blockbuster drugs.”