Simplicity is a virtue.

• Govexec reports,
  • “More than 100 members of Congress urged House and Senate leaders last week to advance legislation rejecting President Trump’s planned pay freeze for most civilian federal workers next year.
  • “Last month, Trump issued his alternative pay plan, which formally confirmed the White House’s proposal to freeze most civilian workers’ pay at 2026 levels. Trump separately instructed the Office of Personnel Management to prepare to issue a 3.8% raise to federal law enforcement officers, and he has proposed pay increases between 5% and 7% for military service members, depending on their rank.
  • “In a letter to House Speaker Mike Johnson, Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Senate Majority Leader John Thune and Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, sent last week but published Monday, a bipartisan group of 110 lawmakers led by Rep. James Walkishaw, D-Va., and Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., warned that with inflation hovering over 3%, forcing federal workers to forgo a pay raise is “an effective pay cut.”
  • “The administration’s own proposal on federal pay increases demonstrates why such an increase is necessary,” they wrote. “President Trump has proposed that federal law enforcement personnel receive a 3.8% pay increase to improve recruitment and retention, and has proposed a 5-7% pay increase for service members given the critical support they provide our nation. The same rationale applies to all federal workers.”

• MedPage Today informs us,
  • “A proposal from CMS to cut in half the payment for secondary services performed during outpatient visits is drawing fire from a variety of healthcare groups.
  • “The damage would be extensive to practices who offer procedures and E/M [evaluation and management] visits on the same day as it impacts many clinical scenarios (dermatology, otolaryngology, ophthalmology, and many more),” Anders Gilberg, senior vice president for government affairs at the Medical Group Management Association (MGMA), said in an email to MedPage Today. “MGMA members have relayed to us significant projected financial losses if this cut would go into effect.”
  • “Under the proposed rule, known as the “modifier 25 rule,” if two or more services are performed on the same day, “the most expensive service (either surgical or E/M visit) would be paid at 100%, and all other surgical procedure(s) or E/M visit(s) would be paid at 50%,” CMS explained in a July 16 Federal Register noticeopens in a new tab or window.
  • “For example, suppose a patient goes to the doctor for an outpatient E/M visit, which is billed using CPT code 99212, and then has two skin lesions removed, one billed under CPT code 11300, and the other — a slightly bigger lesion — billed under CPT code 11301. Because the second skin lesion removal code is the highest-paid service of the three, that code will get paid at 100%, while payments for the office visit and removal of the smaller skin lesion will be reduced by 50%.
  • “We continue to believe that there are efficiencies when the same physician (or a physician in the same group practice) provides an E/M service for the same patient in conjunction with a procedure with a global period, and that we are likely duplicating payment under the current payment methodology,” the authors wrote in explaining the proposal, which was originally proffered in 2019 but later withdrawn.” * * *
  • “The comment period on the proposal, which is part of a larger rule on physician payment and other issues, ended Monday. The agency has until Nov. 1 to issue a final rule; it could include the modifier 25 proposal as-is, make changes to it, or leave it out entirely.”

• Fierce Healthcare points out,
  • “The American Medical Association (AMA) is urging the U.S. Centers for Medicaid and Medicaid Services (CMS) to uphold its Jan. 1, 2027 deadline for electronic prior authorizations under its Interoperability and Prior Authorization final rule.
  • “In a Sept. 18 letter (PDF) to CMS Administrator Mehmet Oz, M.D., AMA President John Whyte, M.D., wrote the agency should maintain its deadline and “reject broad enforcement discretion during 2027.”
  • “CMS should stay the course and remain steadfast in its commitment to ‘axe the fax’ and make [electronic prior authorization (ePA)] a reality for physicians and patients,” Whyte wrote.”

• The American Hospital Association News relates,
  • “The White House issued a presidential proclamation Sept. 18 renewing the $100,000 fee for new H-1B visa petitions for individuals entering the U.S., initially levied in September 2025. The fee, currently blocked by a court order, was vacated by a district court in June and is pending appeal. The AHA had asked the administration last year to make healthcare personnel exempt from the fee. The Sept. 18 proclamation to renew the fee extends it for an additional year. The administration also issued an executive order that would further scrutinize companies seeking to hire H-1B workers, particularly organizations that directly or indirectly had layoffs within the previous year or plans future layoffs impacting U.S. workers. The renewal of the $100,000 H-1B fee is separate from the Department of Homeland Security’s proposed $103,265 filing fee for H-1B visa petitions that are subject to statutory numerical caps.”
    
• Per a Health Resources and Services Administration news release,
  • “The Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) today announced nearly $19 million in new awards to expand access to high-quality healthcare through telehealth and technology-enabled learning. Announced during Telehealth Awareness Week, the awards will increase access to nutrition services, expand the use of emerging technologies to improve healthcare delivery, and strengthen the healthcare workforce in rural communities and other areas with limited access to care.
  • “Telehealth and innovative technologies are changing what access to healthcare looks like for Americans,” said HRSA Administrator Tom Engels. “No longer is telehealth the exception to the rule — it is an essential part of the healthcare system, and the Trump Administration is helping providers put these tools to work to expand access and improve health outcomes. For a patient in a rural community, that can mean getting specialized care without traveling hours from home. For a clinician, it can mean having expertise and new tools at their fingertips to better serve their patients. Through these investments, HRSA will help test what works and identify successful approaches that can be replicated in communities across the country.”
  • “The awards announced today include:
    • “Telehealth Centers of Excellence ($8.5 million) will pilot and test innovative telehealth solutions to expand access and improve health outcomes.
    • “Telehealth Nutrition Services Network Grant Program ($5.4 million) will increase access to nutrition services that help prevent and manage chronic diseases through telehealth networks.
    • “Technology-enabled Collaborative Learning Program ($4.75 million) will improve provider retention and expand access to care in rural communities using technology-enabled learning models.
  • “These awards build on HRSA’s leadership in telehealth by advancing innovative, high-value programs that expand access to high-quality care. HRSA’s broader telehealth portfolio includes more than 3,600 awards associated with telehealth.”

From the U.S. Office of Personnel Management front,

• Federal News Network reports,
  • “After finding little change in the number of adverse actions taken against federal employees, the Office of Personnel Management is now looking for more feedback on how to “appropriately incentivize” federal managers to take action.
  • “The push comes after OPM released new data showing that for fiscal 2026, adverse actions involving poor performance and misconduct have been on par with last year.
  • “As of June 2026, OPM reported that there have been 3,105 federal employee terminations and separations based on poor performance or misconduct governmentwide. That’s compared with 3,492 in all of fiscal 2025 — excluding only the Postal Service, intelligence agencies and some other smaller government entities.
  • “Despite President Trump’s significant changes to how federal agencies address poor performance and misconduct, the federal government has not seen significant increases in performance-based and adverse actions,” OPM said in a Sept. 15 Federal Register notice.
  • “As a result of its findings, OPM reopened a public comment period and is soliciting feedback for an additional two weeks on a recent proposal to overhaul agencies’ processes for taking performance-based and adverse actions against federal employees.”
• and
  • “Agencies will now be able to more easily offer bonuses of up to $25,000 to federal employees for exceptional work. The Office of Personnel Management is delegating authority to agency leaders to approve larger bonuses for feds. Previously, bonuses of that size required OPM approval. OPM says it’s removing the hurdle as a way to help agencies distinguish high levels of performance.” 
    
• Serving Those Who Serve discusses funding an health savings account in retirement and optimizing a conversion to a Roth IRA.

From the Food and Drug Administration front

• Per an FDA news release,
  • “The Food and Drug Administration’s Innovative Science and Technology Approaches for New Drugs (ISTAND) program has accepted a letter of intent (LOI) for a wearable sensor-derived digital outcome measure intended to quantify foot drop severity and its impact on gait in adult patients with Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease type 1A (CMT1A), a progressive, degenerative disease. This LOI represents the first submission to be accepted into the ISTAND program for a digital health technology (DHT) for a rare neurological condition.”
    
• OncLine reports,
  • “The FDA has granted final approval to lutetium Lu 177 dotatate (Bravnetsa; PNT2003), a lutetium Lu 177 dotatate (Lutahera) biosimilar for the treatment of adult patients with somatostatin receptor (SSTR)–positive gastroenteropancreatic neuroendocrine tumors (GEP-NETs), including foregut, midgut, and hindgut NETs.¹
  • “The agent was approved through the FDA’s abbreviated new drug application pathway, and the agency determined it to be bioequivalent and therapeutically equivalent to the reference product.
  • “As the only radiopharmaceutical the FDA has determined to be bioequivalent and therapeutically equivalent to lutetium Lu 177 dotatate approved in the United States, [the biosimilar’s] approval marks an important milestone, bringing additional treatment options to people living with GEP-NETs,” said Mary Anne Heino, executive chairperson and CEO of Lantheus in a news release. “We are focused on a thoughtful launch and ensuring the right commercial and operational capabilities are in place to support reliable supply and broad patient access.”

• Fierce Pharma relates,
  • “Merck’s Winrevair continues to steadily expand its reach. A new FDA sign-off updated the pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) blockbuster’s label to include new data on patients who are newly diagnosed with PAH and receiving treatment for other conditions. * * *  Winrevair came out of Merck’s $11.5 billion buyout of Acceleron in 2021. The drug is a key part of the drugmaker’s plans to offset looming off-patent Keytruda competition.   
  • “Nuvation Bio also has a label addition to boast about. The FDA update allows the oncology drugmaker to add 14 months of additional data to the label of its CNS-active oral tyrosine kinase inhibitor, Ibtrozi. Ibtrozi is cleared by the FDA to treat locally or advanced metastatic ROS1-positive non-small cell lung cancer. Now, the added data from Nuvation’s Trust-I study showed a median duration of response of nearly 50 months in patients who had not received a tyrosine kinase inhibitor. That’s more than four years of “sustained clinical benefit,” the company said in a statement.  The updates came with no changes to the drug’s safety profile.”

• Cardiovascular Business tells us,
  • “The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has cleared the X°Port Heart Preservation System from Ontario-based Traferox Technologies. The new device offers static 50 degrees F (10 degrees C) heart preservation during transport prior to transplantation, which has been shown in studies to improve outcomes.
  • “Peer-reviewed evidence has linked 10 degrees C heart preservation to reductions in severe primary graft dysfunction and improved post-transplant survival compared to conventional ice storage and exposure to hypothermic temperatures. Improved outcomes were also seen involving transplants of higher-risk donor hearts.[1,2]
  • “The strong clinical evidence supporting 10 degrees C heart preservation, together with the successful adoption of 10 degrees C preservation across leading lung transplant programs, has demonstrated the potential of this approach to improve donor organ preservation and transport,” Rick Mangat, PhD, chief executive officer of Traferox, said in a statement. “We look forward to working with transplant centers across the US to support the continued adoption of 10 degrees C preservation in routine clinical practice.”

No Surprises Act news,

• Bloomberg Law reports,
  • “The Trump administration is launching a program to audit arbitrators of disputes between doctors and insurers under the No Surprises Act, stepping up oversight of a process plagued by litigation since it took effect in 2022.
  • “The law bars doctors from balance-billing patients for unexpected out-of-network care in emergencies and when procedures are performed by out-of-network providers at in-network facilities. While it’s largely shielding patients from surprise bills, implementation has increased medical spending, triggered a wave of lawsuits and raised allegations of bad actors on both sides.
  • “The new audits by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services will “allow the Departments to more closely review the work done” by arbitrators, also known as “independent dispute resolution entities,” or IDREs, a spokesperson said.
  • “These audits will assess certified IDR entities’ full compliance with the NSA and its associated regulations and are anticipated to be a much more in-depth review of the process, programs and operational policies utilized by certified IDR entities,” the spokesperson said.”

From the fraud, waste, and abuse front,

• Beckers Hospital Review reports,
  • “CMS said Sept. 22 that it canceled plan year 2026 ACA policies covering 760,000 people.
  • “CMS canceled 315,000 policies covering these individuals Aug. 31. According to federal rulemaking records — set to publish in the Federal Register on Sept. 23 — these people enrolled with agent or broker help but lacked verified citizenship or immigration documentation. Policy issuers could not identify claims or contact these consumers, either. During a Sept. 22 press conference, Vice President JD Vance said the government will do “additional verification” concerning legal status and income for 419,000 people.
  • In a Sept. 22 news release, CMS said it is anticipating a return of about $2.2 billion in advance payments of the premium tax credit. The removals were spearheaded by the White House Task Force to Eliminate Fraud. 
  • “CMS is also temporarily freezing new agent and broker registrations with federally facilitated exchanges for plan year 2027. This pause will be in effect until Feb. 1. The rulemaking documents said that based on two methodologies, agent and broker noncompliance leading to unauthorized enrollment could amount to roughly $1.5 billion or $6.6 billion in annual improper federal spending.
  • “Temporarily pausing the registration of new agents and brokers narrowly targets the category of agents and brokers that CMS has determined warrant additional scrutiny, while allowing CMS time to implement additional safeguards designed to prevent unauthorized enrollments and other noncompliant practices before new agents and brokers begin assisting consumers on the federally-facilitated exchanges,” the rulemaking document said.
  • “In the release, CMS said it will take on further work with insurance companies to address what may be unauthorized enrollments, focus on terminating noncompliant brokers and agents, and carry out other integrity efforts.”

• Fierce Healthcare relates,
  • “Health tech company Cotiviti is building out its payment accuracy platform for payers with two new additions that will allow plans to see all inpatient claims in one place.
  • “The company said in an announcement that the enhanced platform reduces administrative complexity and unites elements that insurers typically managed through separate programs or vendors. Reducing those silos can support more accurate claims management, Cotiviti said.
  • “The first add-on is called Itemized Bill Review, which digs into high-cost facility claims to identify potential billing errors including miscoding, upcoding or duplicative charges. The Inpatient Coding Validation tool, meanwhile, supports a stronger diagnosis-related group review process that offers a fuller coding and clinical analysis before payments are made.
  • “Cotiviti said that the tools taken together can identify between 9% and 12% in additional errors for submitted inpatient claims, alongside simplifying the process on the payer’s end.”

From the public health and medical / Rx research front,

• Beckers Clinical Leadership reports,
  • “Suicide moved into the 10 leading causes of death in the U.S. in 2024, even as the number of suicide deaths declined from the year before.
  • “The finding comes from the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics’ Sept. 22 report, “Deaths: Leading Causes for 2024.” The report is based on final mortality data from all death certificates filed in the 50 states and the District of Columbia in 2024.
  • “According to Paul Nestadt, MD, medical director at the Johns Hopkins Center for Suicide Prevention, limiting access to firearms could have the greatest effect on preventing suicide deaths and “will save the most lives.”  
  • “More than 28,000 people died by gun suicide last year — more than half of all suicide deaths nationwide, based on preliminary federal figures. The overall suicide rate has recently trended down, yet gun suicides have climbed to record levels for a fifth straight year. ” * * *
  • “The other leading causes, in order, were diseases of heart; malignant neoplasms; accidents (unintentional injuries); cerebrovascular diseases; chronic lower respiratory diseases; Alzheimer’s disease; diabetes mellitus; nephritis, nephrotic syndrome and nephrosis; and chronic liver disease and cirrhosis. The 10 causes accounted for 70.9% of all U.S. deaths.” 
    
• Beckers Behavioral Health adds,
  • “The CDC released new data Sept. 21 showing improvements in several mental health, suicide risk, and dietary indicators among U.S. high school students from 2023 to 2025. 
  • “The findings are included in the CDC’s Youth Health in Focus report, which examines mental health and suicide risk alongside dietary behaviors, physical activity, sleep and digital behaviors. The report presents national Youth Risk Behavior Survey data from 2023 to 2025 and 10-year trends from 2015 to 2025.”

• Beckers Hospital Review offers six things to know about the relationship betweek GLP-1 drugs and blindness due to nonarteritic anterior ischemic optic neuropathy (NAION)
  • “NAION is a rare condition that causes sudden, often permanent vision loss in one or both eyes. Sometimes called an “eye stroke,” the condition is caused by disrupted blood flow to the optic nerve. It typically affects people 50 and older, with an incidence of two to 10 cases per 100,000 people annually in that age group, according to the American Academy of Ophthalmology.” * * *
  • “Research remains mixed. A 2024 Mass General Brigham and Harvard Medical School study and a 2025 study in Diabetes, Obesity and Metabolism found an association between semaglutide and NAION but did not establish causation. Other studies, including a Novo Nordisk-funded study from earlier this year, found no association.” * * *
  • “NAION is not the only eye condition studied in connection with GLP-1s. A 2025 study found semaglutide users had a higher risk of neovascular age-related macular degeneration, and the American Academy of Ophthalmology and North American Neuro-Ophthalmology Society have said semaglutide may also worsen diabetic retinopathy, causing macular complications and blurry vision. A 2024 study first drew wide attention to a possible NAION association, and a follow-up study later that year also found an association.”
    
• Health Day relates,
  • “Wildfire smoke might pose a greater health risk to humans than other sources of air pollution, two new Mount Sinai studies say.
  • “Particle pollution from wildfires appears to diminish the survival odds of lung cancer patients, a study published Sept. 15 in The Lancet Oncology found.
  • “Wildfire smoke is also linked to an increased risk of hospitalization for heart or lung disease, researchers reported Sept. 17 in the journal Nature Communications.
  • “Wildfire smoke is no longer a regional environmental issue. It is becoming a nationwide public health challenge,” said Yaguang Wei, senior author of both studies. He is an assistant professor of environmental medicine at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City.
  • “Our research shows that wildfire-related (particle pollution) appears to be more harmful than equivalent levels of pollution from other sources,” Wei said in a news release. “As wildfire activity increases, public health and environmental policies must account for both the quantity and the source of air pollution.”
• and
  • “Vitamin D may play a bigger role in pregnancy than simply supporting bone health.
  • “A new study suggests that optimizing vitamin D levels before and during pregnancy may improve outcomes for both mother and baby, including the risk of preterm birth.
  • “We learn about vitamin D’s role in bone health, but no one teaches us about the various roles in pregnancy, especially this relationship with preterm birth we are uncovering,” said study author Anjali Borsum, a student at the Medical University of South Carolina College of Medicine in Charleston.”

• Cardiovascular Business tells us,
  • “When heart patients are diagnosed with severe aortic stenosis (AS), waiting any longer than six months to perform transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR) is associated with worse long-term outcomes. That was the key takeaway from a new analysis published in Open Heart.
  • “The study’s authors highlighted the fact that asymptomatic severe AS is increasingly being treated. At the same time, however, it is still common for patients to wait and then undergo a follow-up clinical and imaging exam six to 12 months later. The group hoped to learn more about the potential impact TAVR timing may have on patient outcomes, performing a retrospective study on data from 149 patients treated at a single facility from 2021 to 2023. The mean age was 85.8 years old, and 36% of patients were men.” * * *
  • “Click here for the full analysis.”

• The Wall Street Journal informs us,
  • “Roche ROP Holding said an obesity drug candidate met the main objectives of a midstage clinical trial by helping patients reduce their blood glucose and body weight.
  • “The Swiss pharmaceutical company is seeking to enter the weight-loss drug market that Eli Lilly LLY and Novo Nordisk NOVO currently dominate, and sees the latest trial results reinforcing its ambitions to rapidly develop a portfolio of medicines for people with obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease.
  • “Roche said its drug, enicepatide, achieved a mean reduction in blood-sugar levels of 2.65 percentage points, as well as a mean weight loss of 15.5%, after 48 weeks for patients who received the highest dose.
  • “The trial enrolled adults with Type 2 diabetes who also had obesity or were overweight, and follows an earlier study that showed the drug helped patients without diabetes shed weight.
  • “Among patients who were on the highest dose, 62% restored blood glucose to levels considered normal, having started the trial as diabetic, Roche said.
  • “The safety and tolerability profile of enicepatide was consistent with that of similar therapies, and treatment discontinuation rates in the trial due to adverse events were low at 2%, it said.”

• BioPharma Dive points out,
  • “An experimental Amgen drug has succeeded in the first of two Phase 3 trials in Sjögren’s syndrome, driving the California biotechnology giant’s stock price up as much as 5% on Tuesday. 
  • “Amgen didn’t provide specific details about the performance of its drug dazodalibep. But it said in a Tuesday statement that treatment led to a “statistically significant and clinically meaningful improvement” on a widely used measure of disease activity after 48 weeks, meeting the trial’s primary objective. Positive effects were observed as early as four weeks after treatment and persisted through the evaluation period, Amgen said. 
  • “Investigators didn’t spot an “imbalance” in the rate of blood clots or opportunistic infections in the Phase 3 study, a potential concern of drugs with dazodalibep’s mechanism. Side effects were generally mild to moderate, and study discontinuations were infrequent and balanced across study arms, the company said.”
• and
  • “Trial enrollees taking Viking Therapeutics’ dual-acting obesity drug maintained nearly all of their weight loss after switching from a weekly shot to less frequent dosing, the company said Tuesday.
  • “Viking enrolled 180 people with obesity and no related health conditions in the Phase 2 trial. They were randomized to receive one of four dosing regimens of VK2735 or a placebo over 21 weeks, and then switched to a biweekly or once-monthly maintenance shot for another 12 weeks. According to Viking, enrollees taking VK2735 ended up retaining as much as 90% of their weight loss.
  • “The “stellar” data “build on [VK2735’s] potentially differentiated profile,” Leerink Research analyst Thomas Smith wrote in a note to clients, potentially allowing the drug to overcome some of the adherence issues associated with GLP-1 medications for obesity.”

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

• The Wall Street Journal reports,
  • “Western pharmaceutical companies are urging the administration to allow them to keep doing deals with Chinese companies for promising drug candidates, despite a 2025 law restricting U.S. investment in Chinese technology.
  • “The group that represents pharmaceutical companies such as Pfizer, Merck and Eli Lilly has been lobbying to make sure that the new rules the Treasury Department is writing, as part of that 2025 law, maintain the drugmakers’ ability to do deals in China.
  • “At stake are billions of dollars in deals and an increasingly important source of experimental drugs for Western companies, which they need to restock their pipelines as they face big upcoming revenue holes with key drugs losing exclusivity in coming years.
  • “The 2025 law, called the Comprehensive Outbound Investment National Security Act or COINS, requires the federal government to screen deals with certain countries involving sensitive technology. So far, the Treasury Department has been reluctant to fully incorporate pharmaceuticals, according to two people familiar with the matter, as it finalizes regulation for other technology under the law, like AI systems and semiconductors.
  • President Trump is meeting Chinese President Xi Jinping this week, a summit that pharmaceutical leaders believe will be instrumental in determining how far the administration goes with putting curbs on Chinese biotech investment. The rules need to be finalized by March.”

• Beckers Hospital Review identifies 32 “contract breaks between major health systems and certain Medicare Advantage insurers [that have occurred in] 2026. Providers dropping plans often cite prior authorization denials and slow reimbursement; in other cases, insurers are terminating the contracts themselves.”
  
• Kaufmann Hall tells us.
  • “For decades, rural healthcare has been organized primarily around hospitals and clinics connected through traditional referral relationships. But the pressures facing rural providers challenge that structure. Rural communities today are asking what a more sustainable approach should look like.
  • “The hub-and-spoke model is familiar to rural healthcare, concentrating complex services centrally while extending others into local communities. But today’s pressures demand an evolution of that approach. The network of tomorrow must combine physical care sites, digital capabilities, and trusted community connections to deliver the right care in the right place.
  • “That requires adding a new element: the node. The result is a hub-spoke-node network built around the patient.”

• Beckers Clinical Leadership lets us know,
  • “Adult medical specialties posted the largest increase in median work relative value unit productivity from 2025 to 2026, the second consecutive year the category has led on productivity growth, according to a survey from SullivanCotter.
  • “The Chicago-based consulting firm released findings from its 2026 Physician Compensation and Productivity Survey Sept. 17. The report includes data from 575 healthcare organizations representing about 235,000 physicians across 240 specialties.
  • “Productivity gains were modest across the board, with year-over-year changes ranging from 0.8% to 2.8%. Median total cash compensation rose across all major specialty categories over the same period, led by adult medical specialties at 7.2%.”
• and
  • “Is pneumonia contagious?” is the most-Googled respiratory health question in the U.S., drawing an estimated 137,000 searches per month, according to a Sept. 22 analysis from healthcare staffing firm Soliant Health.
  • “The data offer a glimpse at patients’ health concerns heading into the 2026-27 virus season. 
  • “To compile the ranking, Soliant Health analyzed 30,000 question-based search queries in September using data from the search engine optimization platform Ahrefs. Soliant identified the medical questions tied to respiratory illness season and ranked them by estimated monthly U.S. search volume. The firm excluded branded queries, entertainment searches and near-duplicate questions. 
  • “Together, the 15 questions draw more than 731,000 estimated searches a month, according to a Sept. 22 news release shared with Becker’s.
  • “Alongside traditional internet search engines, AI platforms are emerging as another key tool patients use to find health answers. Thirty-four percent of Americans use AI chatbots for health information, and symptom diagnosis is one of the top reasons, according to a Pew Research Center survey released in August.”
  • [The article lists the top 15 Googled questions.]

• Drug Channels notes,
  • “For more than a decade, the answer to “Where do drug wholesalers make their money?” has been generic drugs.
  • “Although wholesaler revenues are linked most closely to sales of brand-name drugs, the majority of wholesalers’ gross profits comes from generic drugs. We estimate that in calendar year 2026, generic drugs will contribute 52% of total drug distribution gross profits of the Big Three wholesalers, but only 9% of drug distribution revenues.
  • “Generic drugs are the long-running hit show that has carried wholesalers’ profits for 15+ seasons. The show is still on the air, but a supporting character is starting a spinoff.
  • “Generic drugs’ share of distribution gross profits has declined, from 68% in 2022 to 52% in 2026. This partially reflects the growth in profits from provider-administered biosimilars. Biosimilars now account for 6% of wholesalers’ drug distribution revenues, but 23% of total gross profits.”