From Washington, DC

• The American Hospital Association reports,
  • “The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services today announced a six-month nationwide moratorium preventing enrollment of new home health agencies and hospice providers, effective immediately. CMS said that the moratorium is part of Vice President JD Vance’s Anti-Fraud Task Force and that the agency will use this time to intensify anti-fraud efforts within the sector.  
  • “In response to the moratorium, Ashley Thompson, AHA senior vice president of public policy analysis and development, said, “The AHA strongly supports CMS’ efforts to protect the integrity of the Medicare program and combat fraud. Yet, as we have stated previously, we are concerned about subjecting entire categories of providers or claims to restrictions due to the actions of a limited number of bad actors. There are many rural and underserved areas of the country where hospitals struggle to find appropriate discharge locations for patients, and home health agencies and hospice providers are essential to ensuring timely and safe next levels of care. This moratorium may exacerbate these existing difficulties. We therefore recommend CMS consider a more targeted, data-driven approach to identify bad actors while allowing quality care providers to continue to service Medicare beneficiaries.” 
• and
  • “The AHA today urged Eli Lilly to abandon its 340B Drug Pricing Program claims-data policy and work with the AHA to develop a functional third-party clearinghouse. 
  • “Lilly’s policy is unprecedented,” AHA President and CEO Rick Pollack wrote in a letter to Eli Lilly’s CEO. “It will impose onerous costs on 340B hospitals, forcing our members to divert scarce resources away from patient care and toward unnecessary administrative requirements. And it risks limiting patient access to Lilly’s lifesaving, innovative drugs. We therefore invite Lilly to work in good faith with the AHA and our 340B hospital members to find a better path forward than the cycle of escalation that has beset the 340B program in recent years.” 

• Per an HHS news release,
  • “The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), through the Office on Women’s Health (OWH), today announced a new Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Heartland Forward to advance maternal health outcomes and improve care for women and families across the United States. This collaboration supports a shared goal of making the U.S. the safest place in the world to have a baby.
  • “Through this partnership, HHS and Heartland Forward will exchange information, align strategies, and collaborate on evidence-based initiatives to reduce maternal morbidity and mortality and strengthen care across the lifespan, including before, during, and after pregnancy.” * * *
  • “Heartland Forward, a non-profit, describes itself as a policy think-and-do tank focused on driving economic growth and stronger communities, established the Maternal and Child Health Center for Policy and Practice (MCH CPP) in 2025. MCH CPP has a stated focus on state-led, evidence-based strategies to improve outcomes, particularly in rural and underserved communities, with the goal of cutting U.S. maternal mortality in half within five years.”

• Per a CMS news release,
  • “The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), through its Health Tech Ecosystem, is advancing its electronic prior authorization efforts through a newly established Electronic Prior Authorization Acceleration initiative to address key challenges and drive solutions ahead of 2027 requirements. 
  • “30 healthcare organizations—including health systems, electronic health record developers, physician practices, networks, and digital health developers—have signed on as early adopters in this cross-sector effort. They join many of the nation’s largest payers that have already committed to working with CMS to identify and address workflow, technical, and operational barriers that have slowed adoption of electronic prior authorization across the healthcare system.
  • “Prior authorization won’t be fixed by technology alone. It requires the entire healthcare system to work together to solve real-world challenges,” said CMS Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz. “CMS continues to bring organizations together to do just that, and these early adopters are choosing to lead. This work will help reduce administrative burden, giving clinicians more time to focus on patients and helping people get care faster.” * * *
  • “CMS encourages organizations across the healthcare system—including providers, technology developers, and network partners—to join this initiative and help accelerate progress toward a more efficient, transparent, and patient-centered prior authorization process.”

From the Food and Drug Administration front,

• Beckers Hospital Review reports,
  • “The FDA has alerted healthcare providers and patients about an increased risk of new blood cancers tied to Tazverik (tazemetostat) and said the drug’s sponsor plans to withdraw the product from the U.S. market.
  • “Tazverik was approved under the FDA’s accelerated approval pathway in 2020 to treat patients 16 and older with metastatic or locally advanced epithelioid sarcoma and certain adults with relapsed or refractory follicular lymphoma. The agency said new data showed the risks of treatment outweigh the drug’s benefits.
  • “According to a May 11 FDA safety alert, 18 out of 318 patients, or 5.7%, treated with Tazverik in the Phase 1b/3 Symphony-1 trial developed hematologic second primary malignancies, compared to no reported events in the control arm. The cancers included myelodysplastic syndrome, acute myeloid leukemia, B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia and clonal cytopenia of undetermined significance.”

From the public health and medical / Rx research front,

• The Wall Street Journal reports,
  • “The number of people who died from drug overdoses dropped again in 2025, a promising trend as the U.S. emerges from a national fentanyl crisis that accelerated these fatalities.
  • “There were an estimated 69,973 drug-overdose deaths in 2025, a nearly 14% drop from a year earlier, according to preliminary data released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Wednesday. 
  • “Drug-overdose deaths have now declined for three consecutive years, falling to levels closer to those not seen since before the Covid-19 pandemic, which intensified the drug-overdose crisis. 
  • “For us, finally, to be seeing some sustained declines is very promising,” said Farida Ahmad, a health scientist with the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics.”

• STAT News relates,
  • The United States is hardly the only country where heavy and binge drinking is a problem. But Americans face a unique crisis: This country’s obesity and diabetes epidemics, combined with heavy alcohol use, are causing more people to get sick from a liver disease that, until recently, didn’t even have a name. 
  • Metabolic dysfunction and alcohol-associated liver disease, or MetALD, is now a leading concern among doctors in the U.S. as more young people and women face serious illness and die from the condition. Doctors worry that many more Americans might be silently developing MetALD, at least in part because many people do not realize they are drinking too much.” * * *
  • “MetALD is now nearly twice as common as alcohol-associated liver disease, and the risk factors are hitting younger adults: People 26 to 34 years old have the most overlapping alcohol use disorder and obesity of any age group, national survey data reveal.”
     
• Beckers Payer Issues tells us,
  • “For the second consecutive year, Vermont ranked as the healthiest state for older adults in the U.S., according to the United Health Foundation’s “America’s Health Rankings 2026 Senior Report.”
  • “The United Health Foundation is a nonprofit founded by UnitedHealth Group. State health rankings are based on 36 measures spanning social and economic factors, physical environment, behaviors, clinical care, and health outcomes.
  • “The early death rate for adults aged 65 to 74 dropped 2% between 2023 and 2024. However, compared to 2019 to 2021, drug deaths were up 38% for older adults from 2022 to 2024. Suicides increased 4% over the same period. Excessive drinking increased 10% for older adults between 2023 and 2024.
  • “The workforce serving older adults has grown in recent years, including home healthcare workers and geriatric clinicians.”
    
• Endocrinology Advisor informs us,
  • “Younger adults with type 2 diabetes (T2D) exhibit worse glycemic control and greater obesity than older adults with T2D, according to results of a study published in the Journal of the Endocrine Society.
  • “In general, earlier T2D onsets are associated with greater burden of morbidity and mortality. However, there may be subpopulations of early-onset T2D.”

• Medscape lets us know,
  • “The once-daily oral GLP-1 receptor agonist orforglipron (Foundayo, Eli Lilly) produced clinically meaningful weight loss in adults aged 65 and older, whether or not they had type 2 diabetes (T2D). Its safety profile also closely mirrored the one seen in younger patients, according to a post hoc analysis of the phase 3 ATTAIN clinical trial program. 
  • “The findings may help address longstanding uncertainty and a lack of robust evidence around the use of GLP-1 receptor agonists in older adults. This group is often underrepresented in obesity trials and considered more vulnerable to reduction in lean muscle mass, potentially precipitating frailty, sarcopenia, falls, fractures, and renal complications. They also have a high prevalence of obesity and cardiometabolic disease. 
  • “This data provides the information clinicians needed to feel confident prescribing orforglipron to older individuals who often have many other medications and health concerns,” lead author, Deborah Horn, DO, MPH, director of the Center for Obesity Medicine and Metabolic Performance at McGovern Medical School at UTHealth Houston, told Medscape News Europe.”

• BioPharma Dive adds,
  • “Eli Lilly is offering new data suggesting its medicines can help patients who take injectable GLP-1 drugs keep most of the weight off long-term.
  • “The research included patients who achieved significant weight loss with either Lilly’s Zepbound or Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy. Researchers wanted to see how patients fared for another year when given the same treatment, a lower-dose version of an injection or Lilly’s newly launched Foundayo pill. In both trials, the medical options significantly outperformed placebo.
  • “Lilly detailed the studies on Tuesday to coincide with their presentation at an obesity conference in Europe and publication in medical journals. One of the trials, dubbed Surmount-Maintain, was published in The Lancet, while the other, Attain-Maintain, appeared in Nature Medicine. Lilly had given investors a preview of the Nature Medicine research in December.”

• Genetic Engineering and BioTechnology News points out,
  • “A study headed by researchers at King’s College London and the University of Porto has mapped the histamine system in the brain. Histamine, a molecule more commonly associated with allergies, plays a separate but poorly understood role in brain function. The new study addresses this gap, building the first multiscale map of the histamine system which spans from genetics to behavior and related mental health conditions.
  • “The findings provide a new framework for understanding how this often-overlooked chemical system contributes to brain function and could point towards new treatment strategies for histamine-related conditions such as depression, ADHD, and schizophrenia. The study was funded by the National institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Maudsley Biomedical Research Centre.”

From the U.S. healthcare business front,

• CMS released 2026 hospital star ratings today.
  • Beckers Hospital Review tells us,
    • “Ninety-four more hospitals earned a five-star quality rating from CMS in 2026 compared to 2025. 
    • “CMS publishes its Overall Hospital Quality Star Ratings annually. The ratings, updated May 13, reflect a hospital’s performance across five quality measures: mortality, safety, readmission, patient experience, and timely and effective care. Read more about how CMS calculates star ratings here.
    • “Read the list of CMS’ one-star hospitals here.”
    • The article lists the 385 hospitals that won five stars this year.
  • and
    • identifies the health systems with the most five-star hospitals in 2026, according to CMS data released May 13.

• Modern Healthcare reports,
  • “Health insurance companies including UnitedHealth Group and Elevance Health are bolstering their reserves to safeguard against tougher times ahead. 
  • “Several major insurers conveyed confidence and raised earnings guidance when announcing their first-quarter financial results, suggesting the industry is surmounting challenges that have squeezed earnings in recent years.
  • “That’s put companies such as the UnitedHealth Group, Elevance Health and Alignment Healthcare in a position to stockpile cash after they raised premiums and cut down on spending.
  • “It’s a nice rainy day fund they can dip into,” said Michael Ha, a senior research analyst at the investment bank Baird.
  • “Elevance Health and UnitedHealthcare parent company UnitedHealth Group reported year-over-year increases in days claims payable of 2.6 and 3.1, respectively. Days claims payable measures the percentage of claims held in reserve, with a larger ratio indicating stronger reserves.”

• The American Journal of Managed Care informs us,
  • “COVID-era policy changes rapidly increased virtual care use, enabling a difference-in-differences comparison of high- vs low-adoption regions using a national, multi-payer claims database. 
  • “Across payer groups and Census regions, higher telemedicine adoption showed no significant change in visits or total spending; confidence intervals crossed zero for all primary estimates. 
  • “Subgroup analyses by geography, income, and social vulnerability remained null, with nonsignificant trends toward modest savings in several urban and safety-net–adjacent populations. 
  • “Limitations included inability to assess quality or outcomes, limited race/ethnicity stratification, and regional-level inference constraints despite large-scale, consistent findings.”

• Medscape points out,
  • “Preventive care prioritization can enhance patient outcomes, with preexposure prophylaxis and breast cancer risk-reduction medications offering significant quality-adjusted life years. Efficient use of physician time is crucial for maximizing these benefits.” * * *
  • “The top six interventions by patient quality years gained were:
    • “Prescribing preexposure prophylaxis for patients with high-risk sexual activity (0.41 QALYs) and intravenous drug use (0.13)
    • “Offer to prescribe medications to reduce the risk for breast cancer(0.21)
    • “Prescribe statins for primary prevention for adults aged 40-75 years at high risk for cardiovascular disease (0.12)
    • “Screen for alcohol use and provide brief behavioral counseling for adults with hazardous drinking behaviors (0.11)
    • “Weight-loss counseling and referral to a dietician for adults with obesity(0.07)
  • “When physician time was factored in, the top four services maintained their position but hepatitis B screening for high-risk patients (1.19) and hypertension screening (0.74) rose in value.”
    
• CVS Health offers a 2026 GLP-1 outlook: A strategic roadmap to manage spend and trend.
  
• Beckers Hospital Review notes,
  • “Use of manufacturer-sponsored coupons for brand-name drugs declined among commercially insured patients between 2017 and 2024, even as the value of coupon offsets increased, according to a study published April 6 in JAMA.
  • “The study analyzed pharmacy claims data from 3,243,061 commercially insured patients covering 55,325,139 claims for brand-name drugs without generic competition. 
  • “The findings come as alternative drug purchasing and pricing models continue to expand, giving patients and health systems another channel to access brand-name and generic drugs at transparent prices without relying on manufacturer incentives. The Trump administration launched TrumpRx.gov in February, which now lists over 50 discounted brand-name drugs tied to most-favored-nation pricing agreements. Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Co. has also expanded its direct-pay pharmacy and wholesale operations.”