From Washington, DC

• House Majority Leader Stephen Scalise lets us know,
  • On Tuesday, [July 21] the House will meet at 10:00 a.m. for morning hour and noon for legislative business. First votes expected: 1:30 p.m. Last votes expected: 8:30 p.m. * * *
  • Legislation Considered Pursuant to a Rule:
  • Begin Consideration of H.R. 8800 – National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2027 (Sponsored by Rep. Rogers (AL) / Armed Services Committee)
  • H.R. 6955 – Main Street Capital Access Act (Sponsored by Rep. Hill / Financial Services Committee)
  • H.R. 9770 – Continuing Appropriations Act, 2027 (Sponsored by Rep. Cole / Appropriations Committee)

• Beckers Hospital Review reports,
  • “TrumpRx, the federal direct-to-consumer drug discount website President Donald Trump launched Feb. 5, reaches its six-month mark Aug. 5. The site has grown from 40 branded drugs at launch to 92 in July, with more than 600 generics added in May. But that catalog still covers fewer than 12% of the more than 800 brand-name drugs made by the 17 manufacturers that signed most-favored-nation pricing deals with the administration, according to an NPR analysis of an FDA drug database published July 16.” * * *
  • “Health policy researchers told NPR that TrumpRx is most useful for uninsured and underinsured cash-paying patients, particularly those seeking fertility treatment or obesity medications that insurance frequently excludes. That is not the majority of prescription drug users. Insured patients are often better off checking their copay first, a caveat TrumpRx displays on the site.”
    
• Beckers Payer Issues adds,
  • “Basing Medicaid drug prices on what other wealthy countries pay could save 47 states and the District of Columbia a combined $8.6 billion — about 35% of net spending on the drugs studied — according to research published July 15 in JAMA.
  • “The analysis, led by Thomas Hwang, MD, of Boston-based Brigham and Women’s Hospital, modeled the CMS Generating Cost Reductions for US Medicaid, or GENEROUS, model
  • “Under most-favored-nation pricing, drugmakers give participating state Medicaid programs added rebates whenever Medicaid’s net price surpasses the price paid abroad. 
  • “CMS announced the voluntary model in November 2025 and launched it in January. It will run five years, and 17 pharmaceutical companies had agreed to participate, as of May, in exchange for protection from pharmaceutical tariffs.”

• Per a Government Accountability Office news release,
  • “The Office of Personnel Management has undergone significant workforce changes in the last 2 years.
  • “Between December 2024 and March 2026:
    • OPM’s staff decreased by 35%
    • The agency eliminated 10 offices
    • 57% of employees who left OPM had 11 or more years of service—representing a loss of institutional knowledge
  • “These changes risk worsening pre-existing skills gaps we previously recommended OPM address. In addition, the OPM Office of the Inspector General identified the agency’s workforce reduction as a top management challenge for 2026, citing immediate gaps in operational capacity.”

• A guest author, Kevin Hennecken (LinkedIn link), added a post (OPM link) to the OPM Director’s Secrets of OPM blog. He discusses the Tech Force that OPM is developing under the Dirctor’s leadership.

From the Food and Drug Administration front,

• The Washington Post reports,
  • “The Food and Drug Administration said Sunday that a laboratory finding showing cyclospora contamination in a sample of shredded iceberg lettuce supplied by Taylor Farms de Mexico was a false positive. 
  • “But the agency did not back away from its conclusion that the company remains linked to a multistate outbreak of cyclosporiasis through its traceback investigation. 
  • “FDA’s traceback investigation and outbreak data continue to converge on shredded iceberg lettuce from Taylor Farms locations in central Mexico,” the agency said on social media Monday afternoon. It said there was “overwhelming epidemiological data” to support the voluntary recall.” * * *
  • “Federal and state investigators continue to examine thousands cases of cyclosporiasis nationwide. Michigan on Monday reported more than6,000 cases.
  • “It may not be just Taco Bell, it may not be just Taylor Farms, it may not be just lettuce,” said Barbara Kowalcyk, director of George Washington University’s Institute for Food Safety and Nutrition Security. “Lots of products carry the risk of being contaminated with cyclospora.”
  • “Other products could still be implicated, Kowalcyk said. “Next week it could be something else. It could be blueberries or raspberries or basil… or a food vehicle that we haven’t identified as a way of transmitting this pathogen,” she said. “The bottom line is this investigation is not over. It’s not just Taco Bell. It’s probably not just iceberg lettuce.”

• The New York Times adds,
  • “The leading suspect, it seemed, was the cilantro.
  • “Weeks before an outbreak of cyclosporiasis, now traced at least in part to iceberg lettuce, laid low thousands of Americans this summer, the New York City Health Department investigated a smaller outbreak. Testing labs and doctors notified the city that people were coming down with the intestinal illness, which is caused by a parasite and can result in explosive diarrhea and other types of gastric distress.
  • “The New York investigation back in April — one of multiple case clusters the city’s disease detectives have pursued this year — led to cilantro.
  • “But how exactly do health authorities figure out how people got sick?
  • “City officials shared details of the cilantro case with The New York Times. The city’s work is only one link in a chain that also involves state and federal disease surveillance efforts, but it helps illustrate how complicated it can be to pinpoint sources of contamination in a global food-supply system. The C.D.C. says it is continuing to investigate cyclosporiasis cases unrelated to the iceberg lettuce contamination.
  • “So far this year, 442 cases of cyclosporiasis have been diagnosed in the city — far above the average of 216 cases for an entire year during the period 2019 to 2024.”
    
• MedTech Dive relates,
  • “Resmed has contacted customers about a ventilator issue linked to five serious injuries, the Food and Drug Administration said Wednesday.
  • “A subset of Astral 100 and Astral 150 ventilators can inadvertently enter a fail-safe state and stop delivering therapy, creating a risk of serious injury or death.
  • Resmed informed customers of the issue on June 25, asking them to continue using the devices with precautions. The FDA shared the message in an early alert notification last week.

No Surprises Act News

• The American Hospital Association News reports,
  • “The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services released guidance July 17 on new remittance advice remark codes required for use following updates to the No Surprises Act independent dispute resolution process. RARCs are standardized codes that convey information about claims processing. The guidance specifies circumstances in which group health plans and health insurance issuers offering group or individual health insurance coverage must use each RARC and technical instructions to facilitate usage. CMS said that plans and issuers can continue to use claim adjustment reason codes they consider most appropriate for any claim adjustment. The RARCs specified apply for items and services furnished on or after Jan. 1, 2027.”

From the judicial front,

• Bloomberg Law reports,
  • “Anthropic PBC and a group of authors received final approval Monday of their $1.5 billion settlement to end a copyright class action over the AI company’s downloading of millions of pirated books, $122 million of which will go to the authors’ attorneys and litigation costs.
  • “The pact is the largest copyright class action settlement in US history and one of the first deals in the dozens of similar lawsuits pending against AI giants including OpenAI Inc., Meta Platforms Inc., and Google. It provides about $3,100 per author of more than 480,000 works Anthropic downloaded from pirate libraries Library Genesis and Pirate Library Mirror.
  • “As of April, claims for 440,490 of the works have been filed.
  • “The deal “provides meaningful relief” to the authors and publishers given the potential range of relief, “especially since further litigation would likely be complex, expensive, lengthy, and risky,” said Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin of the US District Court for the Northern District of California.
  • “Success at trial was not assured, and a loss would have left the Class with no recourse.”

From the public health and medical / Rx research front,

• Cardiovascular Business reports,
  • “More than 56% of U.S. adults between the ages of 30 to 79 years old are now eligible to start undergoing statins, according to new findings published in JAMA.
  • “Those numbers are based on the new dyslipidemia guidelines published in March by the American College of Cardiology, American Heart Association and several other leading medical societies.[2] The 2026 guidelines included several major changes, the researchers noted. The age range targeted for treatment broadened from 40–75 to 30–79, for example, and clinicians started focusing on 30-year risk instead of just 10-year risk. 
  • “What do these updates mean for patient care? According to the team’s analysis, many more patients—approximately 21.5 million—are now eligible for statins. 
  • “The shift to a longer view of cardiovascular disease risk is a sea change for doctors in counseling patients,” lead author Timothy S. Anderson, MD, a primary care physician and health quality researcher with the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, said in a statement. “We wanted to better understand the potential population-health effect of this shift.”

• The American Medical Association lets us know what doctors want their patients to know about Crohn’s Disease.
  • “Crohn’s disease is a condition that can affect any part of the digestive system. While it affects people throughout their lives in different ways, more treatment options are now available. Physicians are also finding promising lifestyle adjustments to help with the disease.”

• Health Day tells us,
  • “Higher levels of testosterone in girls during puberty are associated with mental health symptoms such as depression and anxiety.
  • “Testosterone increases were more significant than other hormonal changes, including estrogen.
  • “Hormones can impact the brain before puberty becomes physically apparent.”
• and
  • “Heart-healthy vegetables may differ for men and women
  • “Men benefit most from legumes, while women benefit most from cruciferous vegetables, research shows
  • “Even one daily serving is linked to better health.”

• The Wall Street Journal adds,
  • “An American Heart Association statement says drinking up to five cups of coffee a day is safe for most adults and might benefit heart health.
  • “Consuming three to five eight-ounce cups of coffee daily is linked to a lower risk of heart disease, stroke and Type 2 diabetes.
  • “The potential benefits of coffee can be diluted or eliminated by adding sugar, syrups and creamers with high saturated fat.”

• Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology News relates,
  • “A vaccine to prevent pancreatic cancer, targeting common KRAS mutations, was found to be safe and stimulated KRAS-specific T-cell responses in 90% of study participants who were at high risk of developing pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC), according to Phase I clinical trial results. After a median follow-up of 16.5 months, none of the participants developed pancreatic cancer, and some of the precancerous lesions shrank or stopped growing. “The study represents the first proof of concept for the use of vaccines for interception of pancreatic cancer in human patients.
  • “The findings are published in Cancer Discovery, in the paper, “First-in-human Testing of a Mutant KRAS Vaccine for Pancreatic Cancer Interception in High-risk Cohorts.”

From the U.S. healthcare business and artificial intelligence front,

• AHIP reports today that “Health Plans Are on Track to Streamline Prior Authorization.”
  • “Leading health plans continue to make steady progress implementing the industry’s multi-year series of voluntary commitments to simplify prior authorization. A recent story from KFF Health News paints an incomplete picture of health plans’ work to support continuity of care and standardized submissions for prior authorization requests – both important parts of the broader industry initiative.”
    
• Beckers Payer Issues introduces the leader of the BCBS affiliate in every state and five AI execs driving health insurers’ strategies

• Healio relates,
  • “Variation in facility fees was linked to significant differences in cost of cardiology services with major national insurers, according to a study published in JAMA Network Open.
  • “Facility fees varied by nearly $30,000 for certain cardiology procedures, with UnitedHealthcare and Blue Cross Blue Shield having the highest facility prices and Aetna consistently having the lowest, researchers reported.”

• BioPharma Dive tells us,
  • “Nearly four times as many Americans are taking a GLP-1 weight loss drug now compared to two years ago. But about 20% still aren’t using an FDA-approved medicine, despite efforts to curb compounded copycats, according to a recent Gallup survey. The number could be even higher. Another 12% weren’t sure if they were using a brand-name medication.
• and
  • “Tempus AI said Monday it has agreed to buy Personalis for $1.5 billion. 
  • “Fremont, California-based Personalis makes a molecular residual disease test for cancer. Tempus expects the acquisition will allow it to better support patients around cancer diagnostics, treatment selection, recurrence and monitoring. 
  • “The planned purchase follows recent interest in blood-based cancer tests across the medtech industry. Abbott in March closed its $21 billion purchase of Exact Sciences, Guardant’s colon cancer blood test received UnitedHealth coverage, and Freenome recently shared results of a pivotal study of its blood-based screening for colorectal cancer.”

• STAT News adds,
  • “It’s officially a trend. For the third time in nine months, a pharma company has announced that it is assembling the largest AI supercomputer in the life sciences industry. This time, it is Bristol Myers Squibb.” * * *
  • “The Princeton, N.J.-based company’s move to own its AI infrastructure, announced on Monday, is the latest in a string of pharma bets on AI data centers. In October 2025, Eli Lilly announced it was building pharma’s largest AI data center with over 1,000 of what was then NVIDIA’s latest processors. In March, Roche announced it had the “greatest announced GPU footprint available to a pharmaceutical company” with 2,176 processors on its premises in the U.S. and Europe, plus more available in the cloud for a total of over 3,500 processors. Now BMS says it is increasing its AI computing capacity more than tenfold to become the “most powerful” AI buildout in pharma, though executives declined to specify a number of processors.”
    
• Cardiovascular News informs us,
  • “Heartflow had a busy four days at SCCT2026, the annual meeting of the Society of Cardiovascular ComputedTomography (SCCT). The company’s advanced artificial intelligence (AI) technologies were at the heart of multiple presentations, for example, and it officially launched a new staging tool based on total plaque volume (TPV) calculations.
  • “Heartflow’s AI software turns coronary CT angiography (CCTA) images into personalized 3D models of the heart. With tools like Plaque Analysis and Roadmap Analysis, the company’s Heartflow One platform helps care teams explore, evaluate and manage a patient’s coronary health. 
  • “Heartflow technology was featured in eight different clinical studies presented at SCCT2026, providing an in-depth look at the cardiovascular health of more than 36,000 adult patients. DECIDE, for example, focused on registry data from nearly 12,000 symptomatic patients with zero coronary artery calcium (CAC) scores. These individuals would have typically been categorized as zero-risk patients, but researchers found that approximately one-half of the cohort actually did present with non-calcified plaques that were missed by the original CAC score.
  • “While coronary calcium scoring has been a helpful foundational tool, relying on calcium scoring alone leaves a diagnostic gap for clinicians, particularly regarding high-risk non-calcified plaque,” investigator Vincent L. Sorrell, MD, co-director of the Cardiovascular Research Priority Area at the Gill Heart and Vascular Institute at University of Kentucky HealthCare, said in a statement. “The DECIDE data demonstrate that Heartflow’s TPV-based staging unmasks important cardiovascular disease in over half of symptomatic patients who present with a calcium score of zero. This enhances our ability to accurately identify at-risk individuals and optimize preventive management based on a more precise understanding of their actual disease burden.”