Happy Super Bowl Sunday

Happy Super Bowl Sunday

Photo by Dave Adamson on Unsplash
  • The Wall Street Journal reports,
    • “Cardiologists advise having a game plan for the Super Bowl. Don’t overdo it on the nachos, sideline some of the salty snacks, and punt on more than a couple of beers. “You’re entitled to live life,” said Dr. Brett Sealove, chief of cardiology at Hackensack Meridian Jersey Shore University Medical Center in Neptune, N.J. “You just shouldn’t have a thousand wings, a bag of chips and go outside and smoke a pack of cigarettes.” 
    • “Burn off stress hormones by moving around for
      five or 10 minutes during breaks in the game, said O’Keefe. “Shoot a few baskets, take the dog for a walk around the block,” he said.” 

From Washington, D.C.,

  • Committee hearings worth noting:
    • House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Health
      Feb. 11, 2025, 2:00 PM ET | 1100 Longworth House Office Bldg, Washington, D.C.
      Hearing: Modernizing American Health Care: Creating Healthy Options and Better Incentives
      Witnesses: Brooks Tingle, Dr. Jay Carlson, Marcie Strouse, Leslie Dach.
      Meeting Details
    • Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions
    • Feb. 12, 2025. 10:00 AM ET – Senate | G50 Dirksen Senate Office Building, Washington, D.C.
    • Meeting: Hearings to examine the nomination of Lori Chavez-DeRemer, of Oregon, to be Secretary of Labor.
    • Related Items: PN11-4
    • Meeting Details
  • Roll Call adds,
    • “Speaker Mike Johnson said Sunday that tentative plans for a House Budget Committee markup this week may now be postponed as Republican lawmakers continue to struggle to reach an agreement on the framework for a massive reconciliation package containing much of President Donald Trump’s legislative agenda.
    • “House leaders had been hoping to work through the weekend to reach agreement on a budget resolution that would allow for a markup as early as Tuesday. But Johnson said on “Fox News Sunday” that more time is needed.
    • “We were going to do a Budget Committee markup next week,” the Louisiana Republican said Sunday morning at Caesars Superdome in New Orleans, where he was preparing to watch the Super Bowl with President Donald Trump. “We might push it a little bit further because the details really matter. Remember that I have the smallest margin in history, about a two-vote margin currently, so I’ve got to make sure everyone agrees before we bring the project forward, that final product. And we’ve got a few more boxes to check, but we’re getting very, very close.”

From the public health and medical research front,

  • The Wall Street Journal delves into bird flu.
    • “Bird flu’s risk for the general public is still low, with no signs of person-to-person transmission, researchers said. People are still safe to eat cooked eggs and poultry and drink pasteurized milk, they said, since heating milk and other animal products to high temperatures kills the virus. The chance of infected poultry or eggs entering the commercial market is also low, health officials said.  
    • “But health officials and researchers do advise people to be cautious: Avoid interacting with wild birds or sick animals, don’t consume raw milk or cheese, and properly cook and handle poultry. 
    • “Pasteurization is a tried and true intervention that we have to make sure our milk supply is safe,” said Dr. Manisha Juthani, commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Public Health. “Raw milk is most definitely a risk for not just H5N1 but many other things.”
    • People with exposure to infected animals are at greater risk, especially if they aren’t using protective equipment. Dozens of farmworkers have been infected, and at least one person was infected after contact with wild birds and a noncommercial backyard flock.” 
  • The New York Times reports,
    • “Surgeons in Boston successfully transplanted the kidney of a genetically modified pig into a 66-year-old man with kidney failure last month, Massachusetts General Hospital announced on Friday.
    • “It was the fourth pig kidney transplant in the United States, and the first of three that will be done at Mass General as part of a new clinical trial sanctioned by the Food and Drug Administration. Two of the previous patients died shortly after the procedure, including one who was critically ill before the transplant.
    • ‘More than 100,000 people in the country are on waiting lists for transplant organs, mostly kidneys, but there is an acute shortage of human donor organs. Many people will die while waiting.
    • “To help alleviate the shortage, several biotech companies are editing the genes of pigs so that their organs will not be easily rejected by the human body.
    • “The new clinical trial, which is using organs produced by the biotech company eGenesis, is one of two studies of genetically engineered animal organs that got a green light from regulators earlier this week. The other, sponsored by United Therapeutics Corporation, will begin later this year with six patients, but that number could eventually rise to 50.
    • “The latest transplant recipient, Tim Andrews of Concord, N.H., had his surgery in late January and was well enough to be discharged a week later.”
  • Medscape discusses current considerations for prescribing GLP-1 drugs to patients.

Cybersecurity Saturday

From the cybersecurity policy front,

  • Cyberscoop lets us know,
    • “Bipartisan legislation to close a loophole in federal cybersecurity standards by requiring vulnerability disclosure policies for government contractors is getting another shot at passage in this Congress.
    • “The Federal Contractor Cybersecurity Vulnerability Reduction Act, a bicameral, bipartisan bill that stalled out last year in the Senate, was reintroduced Friday [January 31] in the House by Reps. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., and Shontel Brown, D-Ohio. 
    • “The bill, whose 2024 companion in the upper chamber came from Sens. Mark Warner, D-Va., and James Lankford, R-Okla., calls on the Office of Management and Budget and the Defense Department to update federal acquisition policies to require all federal contractors to institute vulnerability disclosure policies (VDPs).
    • “This is a matter of national security,” Mace said in a press release. “Federal contractors handle some of the most sensitive information and critical infrastructure in the country. Without basic vulnerability disclosure policies, we are leaving a gaping hole in our cybersecurity defenses. This bipartisan bill ensures contractors uphold the same cybersecurity standards as federal agencies, reducing risks before they turn into catastrophic breaches.”
  • The Wall Street Journal reports,
    • “Lawmakers announced Thursday they planned to introduce a bill to ban DeepSeek’s chatbot application from government-owned devices, over new security concerns that the app could provide user information to the Chinese government. 
    • “The legislation written by Reps. Darin LaHood, an Illinois Republican, and Josh Gottheimer, a New Jersey Democrat, is echoing a strategy that Congress used to ban Chinese-controlled TikTok from government devices, which marked the beginning of the effort to block the company from operating in the U.S. 
    • “This should be a no-brainer in terms of actions we should take immediately to prevent our enemy from getting information from our government,” Gottheimer said.  
  • SC Media tells us,
    • “A U.S. cybersecurity agency issued a fresh set of guidance for organizations regarding best practices in securing their networks and data storage.
    • “The U.S. Cyber Security and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) posted a set of guidelines aimed at helping companies better secure the commonly used devices that sit at the edges of most networks.
    • “This set of guidance, led by international cybersecurity authorities, is intended to help organizations protect their network edge devices and appliances, such as firewalls, routers, virtual private networks (VPN) gateways, Internet of Things (IoT) devices, internet-facing servers, and internet-facing operational technology (OT) systems,” CISA explained.
    • “It’s thought that American organizations will be motivated in the new year to brush up on security and install updates for commonly exploited security vulnerabilities in their edge devices.”

From the cybersecurity vulnerabilities and breaches front,

  • CISA added eleven known exploited vulnerabilities to its catalog this week.
  • Supplemental Information on the additional KEVs.
    • Bleeping Computer provides background on the February 4 additions.
    • This Linux Security article explains the February 5 addition.
    • ACA Global explains the 7-Zip (a file compression) tool addition on February 6.
    • WNE Security explains the Dante Discovery addition also on February 6.
    • Bleeping Computer discusses the Microsoft Outlook addition also on February 6.
    • Hacker News delves into the Trimble Cityworks addition on February 7.
  • Cybersecurity Dive points out,
    • “Microsoft has identified more than 3,000 publicly exposed ASP.NET machine keys that could be used by threat actors in code injection attacks against enterprise servers.
    • “In a blog post Thursday, Microsoft Threat Intelligence said it observed “limited activity” in December, in which a threat actor used a publicly available ASP.NET machine key to inject malicious code and deploy the Godzilla post-exploitation framework. While Microsoft said the threat actor is “unattributed,” the U.S. government previously has tied the Godzilla framework, which creates malicious web shells that can be used as backdoors, to Chinese state-sponsored threat actor.
    • “In the course of investigating, remediating, and building protections against this activity, we observed an insecure practice whereby developers have incorporated various publicly disclosed ASP.NET machine keys from publicly accessible resources, such as code documentation and repositories, which threat actors have used to perform malicious actions on target servers,” Microsoft said in the blog post.”
  • and
    • “Security researchers warned about a surge in web login brute force attacks against edge devices from a suspected botnet since mid-to-late January, according to a post on X from the Shadowserver Foundation. 
    • “The threat activity targeted devices from several major vendors, including Palo Alto Networks, SonicWall and Ivanti, with more than 2.8 million source IPs per day, according to Shadowserver. The observed threat activity goes well beyond scanning and involves actual login attempts, researchers said.
    • “We do not know who is being targeted in particular, we can only observe attacks against our own honeypots,” Piotr Kijewski, CEO of Shadowserver, said via email.
  • Dark Reading reports
    • More than two weeks after China’s DeepSeek garnered worldwide attention with its low-cost AI model, threat actors have been busy capitalizing on the news by setting up phishing sites impersonating the company.
    • The fraudulent sites aim to deceive users into downloading malicious software or providing credentials and other sensitive information. Researchers at Israel-based Memcyco spotted at least 16 such sites actively impersonating DeepSeek earlier this week and believe the activity represents a coordinated attack campaign among threat actors.
  • Per SC Media,
    • “Infostealers were identified as the largest group of new macOS malware, having increased by 101% in the last two quarters of 2024, according to the Palo Alto Networks Unit42 research group.
    • “The Unit42 research team pointed to three prevalent macOS infostealers in the wild: Poseidon, Atomic and Cthulhu.
    • “While infostealers are often seen as limited in capability compared with trojans, the researchers said in a Feb. 4 blog post that by exfiltrating sensitive credentials, financial records and intellectual property, infostealers often lead to data breaches, financial losses and reputational damage.
    • “Most infostealers are indiscriminate, aiming to maximize data collection for impact and monetization,” wrote the researchers. “This broad range of information stealing capabilities exposes organizations to significant risks, including data leaks and providing initial access for further attacks, such as ransomware deployment.”

From the ransomware front,

  • Cyberscoop informs us,
    • “Ransomware payments saw a dramatic 35% drop last year compared to 2023, even as the overall frequency of ransomware attacks increased, according to a new report released by blockchain analysis firm Chainalysis
    • “The considerable decline in extortion payments is somewhat surprising, given that other cybersecurity firms have claimed that 2024 saw the most ransomware activity to date. Chainalysis itself warned in its mid-year report that 2024’s activity was on pace to reach new heights, but attacks in the second half of the year tailed off.
    • “The total amount in payments that Chainalysis tracked in 2024 was $812.55 million, down from 2023’s mark of $1.25 billion.
    • “Despite its small half-over-half (HoH) increase, we expected 2024 to surpass 2023’s totals by the end of the year,” the company wrote on its website. “Fortunately, however, payment activity slowed after July 2024 by approximately 34.9%. This slowdown is similar to the HoH decline in ransom payments since 2021 and the overall decline during H2 2024 in some types of crypto-related crime, such as stolen funds. Notably, the decline this year is more pronounced than in the last three years.”
    • “The disruption of major ransomware groups, such as LockBit and ALPHV/BlackCat, were key to the reduction in ransomware payments. Operations spearheaded by agencies like the United Kingdom’s National Crime Agency (NCA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) caused significant declines in LockBit activity, while ALPHV/BlackCat essentially rug-pulled its affiliates and disappeared after its attack on Change Healthcare. 
    • “As the industry has seen in past years, ransomware groups often fill the market after the heads of the pack have been dismantled by law enforcement. However, when LockBit and BlackCat disappeared, a well-known ransomware group did not immediately take the mantle. Instead, smaller groups took advantage of the situation, focusing on small to medium-sized targets and asking for small ransoms, according to Chainalysis’ report. 
    • “Additionally, the company says more organizations have become stronger against attacks, with many choosing not to pay a ransom and instead using better cybersecurity practices and backups to recover from these incidents.”
  • Per Bleeping Computer
    • “The North Korean hacking group known as Kimsuky was observed in recent attacks using a custom-built RDP Wrapper and proxy tools to directly access infected machines.
    • “This is a sign of shifting tactics for Kimsuky, according to AhnLab SEcurity Intelligence Center (ASEC), who discovered the campaign.
    • “ASEC says the North Korean hackers now use a diverse set of customized remote access tools instead of relying solely on noisy backdoors like PebbleDash, which is still used.”

From the cybersecurity defenses and business / history front

  • ISACA has released its 2025 State of Privacy Report.
  • Here’s a link to Dark Reading’s CISO Corner.
  • Cybersecurity Dive relates,
    • “Thoma Bravo-backed cybersecurity firm Sophos completed its acquisition of Secureworks Monday in an all-cash transaction valued at $859 million. 
    • “Sophos said the purchase of Secureworks positions Sophos as the largest pure-play provider of managed detection and response services, with a customer base of 28,000 organizations worldwide.
    • “The agreement also expands Sophos’s threat intelligence capabilities operating under the Sophos X-Ops name, with the addition of the Secureworks Counter Threat Unit and other security operations and advisory services.”
  • and
    • “SolarWinds Corp. has agreed to a $4.4 billion deal with Turn/River Capital whereby the private equity firm buys the software firm in an all-cash transaction at $18.50 per share. 
    • “The observability and IT management software provider will become a privately held company and no longer trade on the New York Stock Exchange. 
    • “We have built a great track record of helping customers accelerate business transformations through simple, powerful, secure solutions designed for hybrid and multicloud environments,” Sudhakar Ramakrishna, president and CEO of SolarWinds said in a statement. 
    • “The Austin, Texas-based firm took center stage in one of the most consequential cyberattack campaigns in history when state-linked hackers infected its Orion platform. The attack, disclosed in late 2020, led to massive reforms in how the industry developed software and attempted to secure IT systems against increasingly sophisticated state actors.”

Friday Report

From Washington, D.C.

  • Roll Call reports,
    • “The Senate fiscal 2025 budget resolution released Friday gives instructions to nine authorizing committees to draft a filibuster-proof reconciliation bill aimed at strengthening border control, buttressing military spending and encouraging domestic energy production.
    • “The fiscal blueprint, written by Senate Budget Chairman Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., gives the authorizing committees until March 7 to fill in the details and provide their respective pieces of the package to the Budget Committee, which will then meld them into one bill.
    • “The plan, to be marked up by the committee Feb. 12 and 13, assumes $342 billion over four years divided between border security, the Pentagon and Coast Guard: $175 billion for the border, $150 billion for defense and $17 billion for the Coast Guard.
    • “The new funding would be fully paid-for, but how they do that specifically is up to the authorizing committees charged with drafting the implementing bill. Committees given instructions to come up with the offsets are given low targets — at least $1 billion — to provide them with maximum flexibility. But the expectation is those committees will exceed those targets.”
  • and
    • “House Republican leaders emerged late Thursday from a roughly three-hour meeting without an agreement on the contours of the massive budget reconciliation package they’ve been talking about for weeks.
    • “But they planned to work through the weekend ironing out details with a goal of marking up the blueprint needed for the filibuster-proof bill early next week.
    • “Speaker Mike Johnson said he’ll be working Saturday and through Sunday’s Super Bowl taking place in New Orleans — in his and Majority Leader Steve Scalise’s home state of Louisiana. President Donald Trump, who hosted House GOP leaders for several hours to discuss reconciliation earlier in the day, is slated to attend the game Sunday.
    • “We are almost there,” Johnson said. “A couple final details that we’ve got to work out.”
  • The Washington Post reports
    • A federal judge said Friday he will temporarily bar the U.S. Agency for International Development from putting 2,200 workers on paid leave as planned by the end of the day after employee groups filed a lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s authority to shut down the agency.
    • U.S. District Judge Carl J. Nichols said after a hastily called hearing that he will enter a “limited” order in the lawsuit, brought Thursday, and was still weighing whether to order the government to undo the decision to place an additional 500 workers on paid leave.
    • Nichols said he would explain his decision in writing Friday evening, and cautioned that his freeze would be temporary while both sides flesh out their complex but hastily sketched-out claims.
  • OPM on its Fork in the Road webpage acknowledges the federal court order extending the “deadline for the Deferred Resignation Program, the deadline for federal employees to accept the program is being extended to Monday, February 10, at 11:59 pm ET.
  • MedTech Dive tells us,
    • “The American Hospital Association (AHA) has called for the Trump administration to exempt medical devices from tariffs on imports from Canada, China and Mexico.
    • “In a letter sent to President Donald Trump Tuesday, AHA CEO Richard Pollack said disruption to the supply of devices from China would curtail hospitals’ ability to perform life-saving surgeries, protect patients and healthcare workers from contagion, and diagnose and monitor patient conditions.
    • “The AHA is particularly concerned about products that are already in short supply despite ongoing efforts to strengthen the domestic supply chain, Pollack said.”
  • The Government Accountability Office released a report on the Postal Service today.
    • “The U.S. Postal Service is consolidating some of its mail processing facilities. Before doing so, USPS must give public notice of the proposed changes and provide information on how the changes will affect costs, employees, and mail service.
    • “But we found that USPS’s process for estimating the costs of these changes doesn’t align with best practices we considered. For example, USPS doesn’t document all the assumptions and methodologies it uses to develop cost estimates. This information would help decision-makers and oversight groups better understand any risks or uncertainty involved in the estimates.
    • ‘Our recommendations address this issue.

From the public health and medical research front,

  • Fierce Pharma points out,
    • “Since 1999, Feb. 7 has marked National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day, drawing attention to the disproportionate impact of HIV on Black communities.
    • “For ViiV Healthcare—the HIV-focused joint venture between GSK, Pfizer and Shionogi—the day represents a dual opportunity to both celebrate progress and plan next steps, according to Randevyn Pierre, ViiV’s head of national field engagement in external affairs.
    • “It’s the moment for us to remember those who have contributed so much to this fight to end HIV/AIDS, and it’s an opportunity for us to celebrate how far we’ve come in HIV treatment, advocacy, activism, research and community work, and also to use that as evidence of how far we can go to end HIV,” Pierre said in an interview with Fierce Pharma Marketing.”
  • The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced
    • “Seasonal influenza activity remains elevated and continues to increase across the country. COVID-19 activity is elevated in many areas of the country. RSV activity is declining in most areas of the country.
    • “COVID-19
      • “COVID-19 activity is elevated in many areas of the country. Though wastewater levels are high, emergency department visits are at low levels, and laboratory percent positivity is declining. Emergency department visits and hospitalizations are highest in older adults and emergency department visits are also elevated in young children.
      • “There is still time to benefit from getting your recommended immunizations to reduce your risk of illness this season, especially severe illness and hospitalization.
      • “CDC expects the 2024-2025 COVID-19 vaccine to work well for currently circulating variants. There are many effective tools to prevent spreading COVID-19 or becoming seriously ill.
    • “Influenza
    • ‘RSV
      • “RSV activity remains elevated but is declining in most areas of the country. Emergency department visits and hospitalizations are highest in children and hospitalizations are elevated among older adults in some areas.
    • “Vaccination
      • ‘Vaccination coverage with influenza and COVID-19 vaccines are low among U.S. adults and children. Vaccination coverage with RSV vaccines remains low among U.S. adults. Many children and adults lack protection from respiratory virus infections provided by vaccines.”
  • The University of Minnesota’s CIDRAP informs us,
    • “Infection with the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant confers weak, short-term protection against reinfection, compared with the much more robust and durable protection provided by earlier variants, which highlights the need for periodic vaccine updates, a Cornell University Qatar–led study suggests.
    • ‘The researchers used a test-negative, case-control study design to compare the efficacy of SARS-CoV-2 Omicron infection against reinfection and poor outcomes in Qataris with that offered by infection with previously dominant strains such as Alpha, Beta, and Delta. COVID-positive people were matched with COVID-negative controls in a 1:2 ratio by sex, age-group, nationality, number of underlying medical conditions, vaccine doses received, week of COVID-19 test, testing method, and reason for testing.
    • “The results were published yesterday in Nature. today.”
  • and
    • “Researchers today in JAMA Network Open say children with previous COVID-19 infection have a 25% to 28% higher risk of developing new gastrointestinal (GI) tract symptoms for up to 2 years than kids who did not report SARS-CoV-2 infections.
    • “Studies in adults have shown that the risk of developing new GI symptoms, including abdominal pain, irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), and gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD), is increased in the year following COVID-19 infection, but it is unknown if kids are at the same increased risk.” 
  • Beckers Clinical Leadership adds “Flu cases reach highest levels since 2009 pandemic: 6 respiratory virus updates.”
    • “Flu levels have surged to their highest levels since the 2009 swine flu pandemic, with influenza-related emergency department visits remaining very high across the U.S. 
    • “The flu continues to drive the most respiratory illness activity and officials warn that flu-related emergency department visits are expected to remain high in the coming weeks. “
  • The American Hospital Association News lets us know.
    • “A study by the Penn State Department of Nutritional Sciences found that low vitamin D levels in the first trimester of pregnancy are associated with higher rates of preterm birth and decreased fetal length.    
    • “More than 25% of women who are pregnant or lactating have lower than recommended levels of vitamin D,” said Alison Gernand, one of the study’s authors.   
    • “Women with higher levels of vitamin D were found to have experienced small but statistically significant increases in fetal length.”
  • The New York Times reports,
    • “Hospital and emergency room patients diagnosed with cannabis use disorder — defined as an inability to stop using cannabis even when the drug is causing harm — died at almost three times the rate of individuals without the disorder over the next five years, according to a study published on Thursday, the largest on the subject.
    • ‘Patients with cannabis use disorder were 10 times as likely to die by suicide as those in the general population. They were also more likely to die from trauma, drug poisonings and lung cancer. Those numbers suggest that cannabis use disorder is about half as dangerous as opioid addiction and slightly less dangerous than alcohol use disorder, the researchers said.
    • “A second report, published on Tuesday, found that more cases of schizophrenia and psychosis in Canada have been linked to cannabis use disorder since the drug was legalized.
    • “Many people think, ‘Oh, cannabis is not harmful — it’s organic, it’s natural; how great,’” said Dr. Laura Bierut, a psychiatrist at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis who is an author of an editorial accompanying the study of death risk. But the marijuana sold today is far more potent, and more harmful, than what baby boomers smoked in the 1960s and 1970s, she said.”
  • Per Healio,
    • “Central obesity measures of waist circumference and waist-to-hip ratio appear to be more accurate and consistent indicators of colorectal cancer incidence compared with BMI, according to a study published in JAMA Network Open.
  • and
    • “A blood-based biomarker test may be a reliable method for predicting or ruling out Alzheimer’s disease-related pathology and subsequently for assisting clinicians in formulating a treatment plan for patients, according to new research.
    • “The clinical integration of blood biomarkers for AD holds promise in enabling the early detection of pathology and timely intervention,” Mark Monane, MD, MBA, senior medical adviser at C2N Diagnostics, which funded the study, and colleagues wrote in Diagnostics. “The use of a blood biomarker test that is scalable and accessible as well as acceptable and equitable may address the unmet need in diagnostic testing.”

From the U.S. healthcare business front,

  • Beckers Hospital Review lets us know,
    • “Oakland, Calif.-based Kaiser Permanente posted an operating income of $569 million (0.5% operating marin) in 2024, up from an operating income of $329 million (0.3% margin) in 2023, according to its Feb. 7 financial report. 
    • “Kaiser’s 2024 results include Risant Health, the Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit it formed to “to expand and accelerate the adoption of value-based care in diverse, multi-payer, multi-provider, community-based health system environments.” Risant closed the acquisition of its first health system, Danville, Pa.-based Geisinger, on March 31. It closed the acquisition of its second, Greensboro, N.C.-based Cone Health, on Dec. 1. 
    • “Kaiser reported operating revenues of $115.8 billion for the fiscal year ended Dec. 31, up from $100.8 billion in 2023. The system posted operating expenses of $115.2 billion, up from $100.5 billion in 2023. 
    • “The system posted a net income of $12.9 billion in 2024. Standard accounting rules required Kaiser and Risant to report the net value of unrestricted assets of the organizations that became part of Risant as one-time net income on its financial statements. A total of $6.8 billion of the $12.9 billion in the system’s net income was related to those acquisitions. The system posted a net income of $4.1 billion in 2023. 
    • “Kaiser reported capital spending of $3.7 billion in 2024, down from $3.8 billion in 2023. Its capital spending priorities in 2024 included preparations to meet California’s seismic safety standards by 2030 and supporting investments in leading-edge technologies and environmentally sustainable facilities. As of Dec. 31, Kaiser and Risant had 55 hospitals, 841 medical offices and 40 retail and employee clinics. “
  • Healthcare Dive reports,
    • “Verily, the life sciences arm of technology giant Alphabet, has reached a deal to sell its insurance subsidiary to Elevance, the payer confirmed to Healthcare Dive on Friday.
    • “The subsidiary, called Granular Insurance Company, provides stop-loss insurance for employers meant to protect them from catastrophically high medical costs.
    • “Terms of the deal were not disclosed.”
  • and
    • “A federal bankruptcy judge agreed to a deal on Thursday that places Prospect Medical’s struggling health system Crozer Health into a 30-day receivership.
    • “Under the terms, Pennsylvania regulators will provide Washington, D.C.-based FTI Consulting $20 million to act as an independent monitor and manager of Crozer while Prospect continues to search for a permanent buyer for the four-hospital health system.
    • “The deal isn’t the one Prospect originally intended to present before the Texas court. However, it will keep the lights on at Crozer for at least another 30 days.”
  • BioPharma Dive notes,
    • “Alumis and Acelyrin are merging, the biotechnology companies said Thursday afternoon, in an all-stock deal that leaves the combined company with a bigger cash balance and three drugs in clinical testing. 
    • “Per deal terms, Acelryin stockholders will receive 0.4274 shares of Alumis stock for each share they own, leaving them with about 45% of the combined company and Alumis equity holders with 55%. The new company, which will keep the Alumis name and be run by its executive team, would have $737 million in cash, enough to keep operating into 2027.  
    • “The merged entity will continue to develop Alumis’ two so-called TYK2 inhibitors, one of which is being developed for plaque psoriasis and lupus while the other is targeting neuroinflammatory conditions like multiple sclerosis. Acelyrin’s top prospect, a thyroid eye disease drug called lonigutamab, is part of the deal, too, but the program will be re-evaluated to “confirm its differentiation in a capital efficient manner,” the companies said.”

Thursday Report

From Washington, DC

Photo by Josh Mills on Unsplash

From Capitol Hill

  • The Wall Steet Journal reports
    • “House Republicans wrapped up a more than four-hour meeting at the White House saying that they had closed gaps in their own internal disagreements over extending expiring tax cuts and cutting spending, and they indicated that they were on track to hold a key committee vote next week.
    • “We had a very productive meeting at the White House,” House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R., La.) told reporters after lawmakers streamed into the Capitol. “We are narrowing down the areas of differences.”
    • “House Republicans from different factions of the party assembled at the White House, each hoping to get Trump’s support for their proposals and resolve disputes that have slowed the party’s progress on taxes, spending and immigration.”
  • The Senate press gallery tells us Thursday evening, “The Senate is considering the nomination of Russell Vought to be Director of the Office of Management and Budget, post cloture. If all time is used, a confirmation vote would occur at 7:00 p.m. We expect several procedural votes to follow the vote on the Vought nomination.”
  • The Washington Post adds,
    • “The Senate on Thursday confirmed Russell Vought as the next director of the powerful White House budget office, installing a conservative fiscal hawk who has promised to pursue sweeping spending cuts and empower President Donald Trump to conform the budget to his political views.
    • “Republicans marshaled a 53-47 vote in support of Vought, who immediately inherits the exceedingly complicated tasks of staving off a government shutdown and preventing a catastrophic debt default — with a political clash over the two critical fiscal deadlines just weeks away.”

From the White House,

  • The Wall Street Journal lets us know,
    • “The White House is working on an executive order to fire thousands of U.S. Department of Health and Human Services workers, according to people familiar with the matter.
    • “Under the order, the Food and Drug Administration, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other health agencies would have to cut a certain percentage of employees. 
    • “The order could come as soon as next week, people familiar with the matter said, after workers have an opportunity to take a buyout. The terms of the order haven’t been finalized, however, and the White House could still decide against going forward with the plans.
    • “The job cuts under consideration would affect the Department of Health and Human Services, which employs more than 80,000 people and includes the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, in addition to the FDA and CDC.
    • “The agencies are responsible for a range of functions, from approving new drugs to tracing bird-flu outbreaks and researching cancer. A loss of staff could affect the efforts depending on which workers are cut and whether they are concentrated in particular areas.
    • ‘The White House on Thursday denied that there is an executive order related to HHS coming.”

From the judicial front,

  • The Wall Street Journal informs us,
    • “A federal judge paused a Thursday deadline for federal employees to decide whether to accept an offer from the Trump administration to resign their jobs voluntarily as the president and his allies attempt to shrink the government workforce.
    • “U.S. District Judge George O’Toole in Massachusetts scheduled a hearing for Monday on whether to grant a temporary restraining order that would block the program while the litigation challenging the offer proceeds.
    • “Employees had previously been told they had until the end of the day on Thursday to decide whether to accept the offer.”

From the Food and Drug Administration front,

  • Per Cardiovascular Business,
    • “The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is warning patients with diabetes about the risk of missing critical safety alerts when using continuous glucose monitors, insulin pumps, automated insulin dosing systems and any other similar medical devices. 
    • “While smartphones have made it easier than ever for patients to track their own insulin levels, the convenient technology is far from infallible. In fact, the FDA has received multiple reports of smartphone-compatible medical devices failing to send expected health alerts. When this happens, the agency warned, it creates a risk of patients experiencing severe hypoglycemia, severe hyperglycemia, diabetes ketoacidosis or even death.
    • “Modern medical devices, such as diabetes devices that connect to a smartphone, can provide users with the convenience and flexibility to configure alerts that are personalized to them,” Courtney Lias, director of the Office of In Vitro Diagnostic Products in the FDA’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health, said in a statement. “However, users should stay aware of alert settings and monitor these devices to ensure they continue to receive critical alerts as expected. Even if configured correctly, certain hardware or software changes can interrupt the expected operation of these critical devices, which can lead to patient harm if undetected.”
  • Per a news release,
    • “The Institute for Clinical and Economic Review (ICER) today released a Draft Evidence Report assessing the comparative clinical effectiveness and value of sonpiretigene isteparvovec (Nanoscope Therapeutics) for the treatment of advanced retinitis pigmentosa.
    • “This preliminary draft marks the midpoint of ICER’s eight-month process of assessing this treatment, and the findings within this document should not be interpreted to be ICER’s final conclusions.

From the Postal Service front,

  • Federal News Network reports,
    • “The Postal Service ended the first quarter of fiscal 2025 with a net profit — a rare moment in the black that Postmaster General Louis DeJoy says is evidence the agency is on the “right path” to overcome long-term financial challenges.
    • “USPS reported $144 million in net income for the first quarter of fiscal 2025, a dramatic reversal from the $2.1 billion net loss for the same quarter last year. The agency’s first quarter is usually its best all year.
    • “USPS, however, still anticipates ending FY 2025 with a $6.9 billion net loss.
    • “The last time USPS saw a net profit was in fiscal 2022, when it ended the year with a $56 billion net profit, ending a nearly 15-year streak of annual net losses.
    • “That sudden change, however, came from Congress passing the Postal Service Reform Act, which ended a mandate for USPS to pre-fund its retiree health benefits well into the future, and brought the agency back to a pay-as-you-go system. The legislation also forgave $57 billion in deferred payments to the retiree health fund.”

From the public health and medical research front,

  • The American Hospital Association News points out,
    • “The U.S. maternal mortality rate decreased to 18.6 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2023, down from 22.3 in 2022, according to new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. While the mortality rate decreased overall, the maternal mortality rate for Black women in 2023 was 50.3 deaths per 100,000 live births, significantly higher than rates for white (14.5), Hispanic (12.4) and Asian (10.7) women.” 
  • and
    • “The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Feb. 6 released an advisory  about an outbreak of Ebola in Uganda caused by the Sudan virus disease. There are currently no suspected, probable or confirmed Ebola cases related to the outbreak that have been reported in the United States or outside of Uganda. The CDC recommends travelers monitor themselves for symptoms of SVD while in Uganda and 21 days after leaving.”
       
  • Healio adds
    • “Pregnant women are more likely to die of violence than any medical cause in the U.S. and are at greater risk for violent death compared with nonpregnant women, underscoring the need for intimate partner violence screening, data show. 
    • “In an analysis of CDC mortality data presented at The Pregnancy Meeting, researchers also found that domestic violence firearm legislation was associated with a reduction in homicide and firearm death in pregnancy.”
  • Modern Healthcare reports,
    • “Kaiser Permanente and Tufts University have launched a joint initiative aimed at improving nutritional and dietary health, the organizations said Thursday. 
    • “The Food is Medicine National Network of Excellence comprises Tufts University’s Food is Medicine Institute in Medford, Massachusetts, and Oakland, California-headquartered Kaiser, along with network members such as Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina, CVS Health, Devoted Health, Elevance Health, Geisinger Health and Highmark Health. 
    • “Network members will track patient outcomes following nutritional and dietary changes and use the data to instruct care delivery and promote food-is-medicine initiatives, according to a news release.”
  • Per the Health Care Cost Institute,
    • The Health Care Cost Institute (HCCI), in collaboration with West Health, conducted an analysis on the use of telehealth mental health services among people with employer-sponsored insurance (ESI). We found that telehealth played an outsized role in the delivery of mental health services starting in 2020, with over 40% of mental health visits occurring via telehealth from 2020-2022. Females, young adults, and people residing in the northeast and west coast received the highest share of mental health care via telehealth. Therapy was the most commonly received mental health service via telehealth.
  • Per AHA News,
    • The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Feb. 6 released a report on emergency department use during the Los Angeles County wildfires that began Jan. 7. All-cause ED encounters in Los Angeles County initially decreased 9% after the start of wildfires, while wildfire-associated encounters increased eightfold. Wildfire-associated ED encounters peaked from the period of Jan. 7-12, aligning with worsened air quality deemed unhealthy for sensitive groups. The CDC said the initial decrease in all-cause visits could be due to evacuations; alterations in activity patterns; or residents seeking care in clinics, urgent care centers or EDs in neighboring counties.”

From the U.S. healthcare business front,

  • STAT News reports,
    • “A strange thing happened weeks before the Food and Drug Administration approved the first treatment made with CRISPR gene editing, an all-but cure for certain patients with sickle cell disease. CRISPR Therapeutics, the biotech that co-developed the therapy, laid off about 50 employees. “Everyone was dumbfounded,” said a scientist who was let go.
    • “It was one early sign that, for all the public accolades, the CRISPR revolution wasn’t exactly going according to plan. 
    • The gene editing tool, wrested out of bacteria 13 years ago by a fractious group of biochemists, was supposed to change medicine. Excitement surged through boardrooms, patient communities, and the press. No less an authority than a Nobel Prize committee announced, in 2020, that CRISPR “may make the dream of curing inherited diseases come true.” Billions were spent chasing that vision, along with treatments for cancer and other non-hereditary diseases, such as HIV.
    • “Few still talk that way. They sure don’t spend that way.
    • “Over the last 16 monthslayoffs have hit nearly every major CRISPR public and private biotech. Eight public CRISPR stocks are down roughly 50% over the past year. Most are down over 75% from their 2021 peak, when near 0% interest rates and the enthusiasm around mRNA fueled a gene editing bubble. Buzzy startups have closed or merged out of existence, sometimes thunderously. In August, Tome Biosciences collapsed, just eight months after announcing $213 million in funding from biotech’s most prestigious investors and a plan to write “the final chapter in genomic medicines.” [See STAT’s updated CRISPR Tracker here.]
  • From Beckers Payer Issues, we learn that “KLAS Research, a healthcare IT data and insights company, named its “Best in KLAS” payer tools for 2025.”
  • Healthcare Dive notes,
    • “Molina reported mixed fourth-quarter results on Wednesday, beating Wall Street expectations on revenue but missing on earnings. The payer also laid out earnings guidance for 2025 that was lower than analysts had anticipated.
    • The fourth-quarter earnings miss was due to higher medical spending in Medicaid, with no help from the risk corridors that kept the worst of utilization jumps from hitting Molina’s bottom line earlier in 2024. Meanwhile, the lower earnings forecast for this year is because of implementation costs from recent contract wins in Medicaid and for individuals dually eligible for both the safety-net program and Medicare, according to the insurer.
    • “The results and 2025 outlook are “disappointing at face value,” but accretion from the contract wins could set Molina up well for 2026, J.P. Morgan analyst John Stansel said in a note Wednesday.”
  • Per BioPharma Dive,
    • “Bristol Myers Squibb is expanding its plan to cut costs, announcing alongside quarterly earnings on Thursday that it will slash an additional $2 billion in annual expenses by the end of 2027
    • “The announcement builds on cutbacks Bristol Myers announced last April and that affected about 2,200 employees. Bristol Myers didn’t say how many workers will be impacted by the new initiative, but Chief Financial Officer David Elkins told analysts on a conference call that cuts will drive “operational efficiencies across multiple areas of the business.” 
    • “Bristol Myers is already facing limited generic competition for one of its highest-grossing products, the multiple myeloma drug Revlimid. But it’s also bracing for the loss of billions in yearly revenue when patents expire for its cancer immunotherapy Opdivo and blood thinner Eliquis. The planned cuts announced Thursday will help Bristol Myers become a “leaner, more focused company” along the way, CEO Chris Boerner said.”
  • and
    • “Sales of Cobenfy, a new mind-stabilizing medicine, totaled $10 million in the final months of last year, results that fell in line with analyst expectations.
    • “Bristol Myers Squibb, which acquired Cobenfy through its $14 billion purchase of Karuna Therapeutics, gave a first look at the medicine’s launch in an earnings report released Thursday. Cobenfy comes as a capsule. It received Food and Drug Administration approval on Sept. 26 as a treatment for schizophrenia, then launched onto the U.S. market in late October.
    • “By Bristol Myers’ count, the number of filled Cobenfy prescriptions had climbed to around 1,000 per week by the end of January. Chief Commercial Officer Adam Lenkowsky told investors on an earnings call that the “launch is really off to a strong start” and the company has “made very good progress achieving our access goals.”

Midweek Update

From Washington, DC

Capitol Hill News

  • The Senate Press Gallery tells us, “The Senate invoked cloture [this afternoon] on the nomination of Russell Vought to be Director of the Office of Management & Budget on a party line vote of 53-47.” 
  • Modern Healthcare reports,
    • “A package of healthcare bills including measures that targeted transparency, spread pricing and drug rebates fell off a government funding bill at the last minute after Trump objected to other aspects of the bill.
    • “But the ideas behind them remain popular, and these healthcare, business and labor interests want lawmakers to pick up where they left off by including the PBM policies in the next spending package, which Congress must pass by March 14 to prevent a partial shutdown.”

OPM News

  • The Wall Street Journal reports
    • More than 40,000 federal workers have raised their hands to resign, putting the Trump administration at risk of falling short of its target for slashing the government through voluntary measures. 
    • The Office of Personnel Management last week told workers that they have until Thursday to decide whether to take a buyout. People who do so can continue to be paid through September without working, OPM has saidUnions and a dozen attorneys general say the offer isn’t guaranteed. 
    • On a call Wednesday with agency officials, OPM officials said the number of federal workers who have accepted the resignation offer is more than 40,000, according to a person familiar with the matter. Another person confirmed the figure was above 40,000 as of Wednesday afternoon. The Trump administration is expecting numbers to rapidly increase in the final day before the deadline, a White House official said.
    • When it offered the deal last week, the White House said it expected between 5% and 10% of federal employees to accept, leading to about $100 billion in savings annually, without providing information on how the estimate was reached. Officials haven’t translated the percentage range into a specific target for the number of employees it hopes will resign. There are about two million Americans working for the federal government in civilian jobs, though some positions are exempted from the offer.

From the judicial front,

  • Federal News Network informs us,
    • “Three federal unions are asking a federal court to rule that the Trump administration’s “deferred resignation” program is illegal as currently structured, and to order the Office of Personnel Management to give federal workers at least two more months to decide whether to opt in to the unconventional workforce reduction program.
    • “In a lawsuit filed Tuesday, the American Federation of Government Employees, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees and the National Association of Government Employees claim the offer — sent to most federal workers via last month’s “fork in the road” mass email — violates the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) and other federal laws. As currently designed, the program gives employees until Feb. 6 to decide whether or not to resign.
    • “In issuing the directive across the government barely a week after the new administration was sworn in, OPM did not conduct any analysis of which agencies were likely to experience high levels of resignations, the optimal number of resignations, or where staffing was already woefully insufficient such that soliciting resignations would be incontrovertibly harmful to government operations,” attorneys for the labor unions wrote.”
  • Nextgov/FCW adds,
    • “The Office of Personnel Management asked a federal judge Wednesday to dismiss a lawsuit alleging the agency illegally used a new server to send mass emails to federal employees.  
    • “The initial suit, filed in the Washington, D.C. District Court by two anonymous federal employees, claims OPM — working with Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency — violated the 2002 E-Government Act by bypassing a required privacy impact assessment, or PIA, before standing up the email platform.  
    • “Specifically, the lawsuit targets emails related to the Trump administration’s workforce reduction efforts, including the “Fork in the Road” deferred resignation offer, claiming these were sent via the allegedly unauthorized server.”

From the Food and Drug Administration front,

  • Reuters points out,
    • “The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved Supernus Pharmaceuticals’ (SUPN.O), opens new tab drug-device combination to treat movement-related symptoms of Parkinson’s disease, the drugmaker said on Tuesday. * * *
    • “The treatment branded Onapgo will be available in the U.S. in the second quarter.
    • “The approval brings to an end the company’s years-long effort to secure the FDA’s nod. The agency had declined to approve Supernus’ application in 2022 and 2024, with the regulator last year requesting additional information related to product quality and the device.”
  • Per a news release, “The Institute for Clinical and Economic Review (ICER) today posted its revised Evidence Report assessing the comparative clinical effectiveness and value of suzetrigine (Vertex Pharmaceuticals) for the treatment of acute pain.” This is the non-opioid acute pain drug (brand name Journavx that the FDA approved last week.
    • “Rates of development of opioid use disorder (OUD) after short-term administration of opioids for acute pain are uncertain, as are rates of NSAID adverse effects (e.g., acute kidney injury, gastrointestinal bleeding, acute coronary syndrome) when used in the post-operative setting. There are also uncertainties in assessing the efficacy of suzetrigine because of lack of data on use of rescue medication in the Phase III trials, which studied the drug’s use after surgery, as well as the use of imputation for pain scores after rescue medication was used in the clinical trial.
    • “The above uncertainties inform ICER’s ratings that the evidence for suzetrigine for the treatment of acute pain in comparison with no systemic treatment, in comparison with opioid analgesics, and in comparison, with NSAIDs are all promising but inconclusive (P/I), meaning moderate certainty of a small or substantial net health benefit, with a small likelihood of a negative net health benefit. 
    • “The FDA approved suzetrigine for acute pain on January 30, 2025. The manufacturer announced a US price of approximately $232.50 for a one-week course of treatment for acute pain.
    • “When compared to treating with opioids, ICER expects the treatment to be cost-saving from a lifetime perspective because of cost offsets due to fewer patients developing OUD.”
  • The revised report “will be reviewed at a virtual public meeting of the Midwest CEPAC on February 28, 2025. The Midwest CEPAC is one of ICER’s three independent evidence appraisal committees comprising medical evidence experts, practicing clinicians, methodologists, and leaders in patient engagement and advocacy. Register here to watch the live webcast of the virtual meeting.”

From the public health and medical research front,

  • The New York Times reports,
    • “Dairy cows in Nevada have been infected with a new form of bird flu that is distinct from the version that has been spreading through herds over the last year, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced on Wednesday.
    • “The finding indicates that the virus, known as H5N1, has spilled from birds into cows at least twice — leading to these two sets of infections — and that it could continue to do so. It also suggests that the virus may pose a persistent risk to cows and to the people who work closely with them.
    • “Before last year, scientists did not know that cows were susceptible to this type of influenza.
    • “This is not what anyone wanted to see,” said Louise Moncla, an evolutionary biologist who studies avian influenza at the University of Pennsylvania. “We need to now consider the possibility that cows are more broadly susceptible to these viruses than we initially thought.”
    • * * *”So far, at least, the spread of D1.1 to cows “doesn’t change the average person’s life,” Dr. Moncla said. But it poses risks for dairy workers and the dairy industry, experts said. It also suggests the possibility that cows already infected once with B.3.13 could become ill a second time with D1.1, Dr. Richard Webby, an influenza expert at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, said.
    • “It’s no longer just one virus,” he said. “This, to me, suggests that it’s going to be a lingering problem.”
  • and
    • “The idea was so tantalizing. Drugs in the GLP-1 class, which includes Wegovy and Ozempic, have proved miraculous in treating weight loss and other diseases. And some researchers hoped that the drugs could also help with some of the most difficult diseases to treat — those of the brain, like Parkinson’s.
    • “But now, at least for Parkinson’s, that hope seems dimmed. A rigorous study that randomly assigned Parkinson’s patients to take exenatide, a relative of Ozempic, showed absolutely no benefit or slowing of the course of the degenerative disease after 96 weeks.
    • “And there were no effect on patient symptoms, no effect on brain scans, no subgroup that showed any benefit. No matter how the researchers sliced the data the results were the same.
    • The study, published Tuesday in The Lancet, is bad news for the half million Americans who have been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. Symptoms include tremors, stiffness and difficulty with balance. Patients also may develop dementia. Treatments, including medications and deep brain stimulation, can help with symptoms. But no treatment has been shown to slow the disease’s progress.”
  • Per STAT News,
    • “Nine patients with advanced kidney cancer who received an experimental vaccine tailored to their tumors’ specific mutations mounted an immune response to their disease and remained cancer-free for three years, an early-phase clinical trial has shown. 
    • “The study, published Wednesday in Nature, demonstrates the potential of personalized vaccines to change the course of certain cancer types, but larger, longer trials are needed to confirm this approach. Cancer vaccines developed with different molecular recipes are still in their early stages, before strong conclusions can be made, experts said.”
  • Per Cardiovascular Business,
    • “Adults who regularly floss their teeth may be significantly decreasing their risk of stroke or heart rhythm issues, according to new findings to be presented at the American Stroke Association’s International Stroke Conference 2025.
    • “Researchers focused on data from more than 6,000 study participants with an average age of 62 years old. The group was followed for up to 25 years as part of the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities study. Over the course of the study, 434 participants had a stroke and 1,291 were diagnosed with atrial fibrillation (AFib).
    • ‘Overall, flossing at least once per week was associated with a 22% lower risk of ischemic stroke, a 44% lower risk of cardioembolic stroke and a 12% lower risk of AFib. Flossing more often appeared to lead to more significant risk reductions.
    • “The difference in AFib risk was unexpected, surprising researchers.”
  • and
    • “Forty-eight percent of all U.S. adults incorrectly believe that they should be taking low-dose aspirin every day to minimize their risk of experiencing a heart attack or stroke, according to a new survey out of the University of Pennsylvania.
    • “Yes, doctors did recommend that adults take daily aspirin to protect against cardiovascular disease (CVD) in the past—but that was quite some time ago. In 2019, the American College of Cardiology American Heart Association released new guidelines saying heathy older adults should not be taking low-dose aspirin due to certain risks, including gastrointestinal bleeding. The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force even published separate recommendations in 2022 saying patients 60 or older should not be taking daily aspirin to prevent CVD, highlighting the lack of any real benefits. 
    • “Now, however, many adults still seem to think daily low-dose aspirin is beneficial, even when they are facing no other health problems. * * *
    • “Habits backed by conventional wisdom and the past advice of healthcare providers are hard to break,” Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center and director of this survey, said in a statement. “Knowing whether taking a low-dose aspirin daily is advisable or not for you is vital health information.”
    • “Another key takeaway from the survey was that younger patients appear to know more about the benefits and risks of taking daily low-dose aspirin when healthy. For example, 29% of healthy respondents with no family history of CVD who are between the ages of 18 and 39 understand that the risks of daily aspirin outweigh the benefits for someone in their circumstances. That is only true for 11% of adults in that same situation between the ages of 40 and 59, however, and just 7% of adults ages 60 and older.”
  • BioPharma Dive reports,
    • “Novo Nordisk is planning a new Phase 3 trial of its next-generation obesity drug CagriSema that will test different doses and longer duration of treatment, the company said Wednesday.
    • “The announcement comes six weeks after the Denmark-based company released data from another Phase 3 trial that underperformed executives’ expectations on weight loss. Other studies are ongoing, including one with results due this quarter, and Novo plans in early 2026 to ask for regulatory approval of CagriSema.
    • “Novo, which pioneered the use of GLP-1 medicines like Wegovy for weight loss, is in a tight competition with Eli Lilly. The rivalry sharpened when Lilly’s drug Zepbound showed it helped people lose more weight than Wegovy in a head-to-head trial, a finding that put greater scrutiny on Novo’s pipeline.”

From the U.S. healthcare business front,

  • Healthcare Dive lets us know,
    • “Healthcare access and affordability is Americans’ top public health concern, followed by ensuring safe food and water and reducing chronic disease, according to a new survey published by Gallup and Emory University’s Rollins School of Public Health. 
    • “Republicans were more likely than Democrats to list ensuring safe food and water as their top public health priority and less likely to list the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as one of their top three sources of trusted health information.
    • “However, both Democrats and Republicans support federal action on their top priority public health concerns, with 60% of Republicans and more than 75% of Democrats indicating a preference for federal leadership over state action.”
  • The Wall Street Journal reports,
    • Novo Nordisk shares rose after the drugmaker reported strong sales growth for its blockbuster obesity and diabetes drugs and issued a forecast for full-year 2025 results that topped analysts’ expectations.
    • ‘Novo’s shares were up 3% in European trading, and its American depositary shares were up 3.4% in premarket U.S. trading Wednesday after Novo reported fourth-quarter earnings. Investors who had become concerned about an obesity market slowdown, as well as Novo’s competitive position, breathed a sigh of relief.
    • “The story continues to be about market expansion for obesity,” said David Moore, president of Novo Nordisk’s U.S. unit, on a conference call with analysts.”
  • Fierce Pharma tells us,
    • “Less than a decade since it secured its first FDA approval for a biosimilar, Amgen’s portfolio of the copycat drugs is growing and making strong contributions to the company’s top line.
    • “In 2024, when Amgen generated $33.4 billion in revenue, more than $2.2 billion came from sales of its biosimilars. It was a 16% increase from Amgen’s biosimilar sales in 2023 and the company appears ready to top that figure this year.
    • “Less than three months ago, Amgen became the first company in the U.S. to launch a biosimilar version of Regeneron and Bayer’s eye disease blockbuster Eylea. Then last month, Amgen brought to the market a knockoff of Johnson & Johnson immunology powerhouse Stelara.
    • “In the last nine weeks of last year, Amgen’s Eylea biosimilar, Pavblu, generated $31 million in sales.
    • “The current feedback from retina specialists that we’ve been talking to is very enthusiastic, very positive,” Murdo Gordon, Amgen’s global commercial operations chief, said Tuesday during a quarterly conference call. “They are pleased that Amgen is bringing yet another high-quality biosimilar in a very easy-to-use prefilled syringe.”
  • “Beckers CFO Reports informs us,
    • “Burlington, Mass.-based Tufts Medicine recorded an operating loss of $28.9 million (-4.1% operating margin) in the first quarter of 2025, down from an operating loss of $6.5 million (-0.9% margin) in the same quarter last year, according to its Feb. 3 financial report. 
    • “Tufts Medicine’s management said in the report that last year’s first quarter operating loss was reduced by “two significant one-time items.” The system received $41 million in one-time grants from the state and the federal government, and $24 million in revenue from a 340B settlement. Excluding those two items, the system would have seen an operating loss of $71.5 million in the first quarter of 2024. 
    • “Eliminating these one-time items from each fiscal year would show an improvement of $43 million,” management said in the report. 
    • “Tufts reported total operating revenue of $710.7 million in the three months ended Dec. 31, up from $701.5 million reported in the same period last year.” 
  • Per Healthcare Dive,
    • “Teladoc Health has signed a definitive agreement to acquire virtual preventive care provider Catapult Health for $65 million, the telehealth vendor said Wednesday.
    • “The deal, which is expected to close in the first quarter, will help Teladoc catch members’ health conditions early and funnel patients toward the telehealth vendor’s other offerings, including therapists and primary care providers, according to a press release.
    • “Catapult clinicians will also be able to directly enroll eligible members in Teladoc’s chronic condition management programs for diabetes, hypertension, pre-diabetes and weight management — a key area of investment for the telehealth vendor, executives said last month at the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference.”
  • and
    • Molina has closed its $350 million acquisition of ConnectiCare, the health insurer announced Tuesday.
    • “The deal adds $1.4 billion in annual premiums to Molina’s topline and 140,000 additional Medicare, Affordable Care Act marketplace and commercial members to the insurer’s rolls.
    • “The acquisition, which was announced last summer, also brings Molina into the state of Connecticut for the first time. ConnectiCare was previously a subsidiary of New York-based nonprofit health plan EmblemHealth.”
  • and
    • “Kroger pharmacies are once again back in Express Scripts’ network, two years after the grocer kicked the massive pharmacy benefit manager to the curb over its allegedly unsustainable pricing model.
    • “Kroger Health, the grocer’s healthcare subsidiary, said on Wednesday it had reached a new agreement with the Cigna-owned PBM that allows customers in Express Scripts’ Medicare prescription drug and Tricare plans for military members to fill prescriptions at Kroger pharmacies.
    • “The new agreement also allows Express Scripts’ commercial and Medicaid clients to add Kroger pharmacies to their networks, according to the announcement. Express Scripts customers can also receive healthcare at Kroger clinics, which offer low-acuity services like vaccinations and preventive care.”

Tuesday Report

From Washington, DC,

Capitol Hill News

  • Healthcare Dive tells us,
    • “A key congressional committee voted Tuesday to advance to a full Senate vote the nomination of prominent vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as the next U.S. health secretary.
    • “The 14-13 vote by the Senate Finance Committee was along party lines, with all 14 Republicans on the panel voting in favor of Kennedy. Among them was Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., a physician who said in a hearing last week that he was “struggling” with his vote because of Kennedy’s claims about vaccines.
    • “Cassidy said on social media platform X he voted yes after “very intense conversations” with Kennedy and the White House over the weekend.
    • “With the serious commitments I’ve received from the administration and the opportunity to make progress on the issues we agree on like healthy foods and a pro-American agenda, I will vote yes,” he said.”
  • The American Hospital Association News adds, “The Senate Feb. 4 confirmed Doug Collins as the new Department of Veterans Affairs secretary by a 77-23 vote.”
  • Per a Senate news release,
    • “U.S. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) released the following statement after meeting with Dr. Mehmet Oz, President Trump’s nominee to be Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Administrator:
    • “I had a constructive meeting with Dr. Oz, where we discussed his approach to health care policy and vision for CMS.  I value his advocacy for consumer choice and his commitment to expanding Americans’ access to affordable, high-quality health care.  I look forward to considering his nomination before the Finance Committee.”
  • Politico reports, “President Donald Trump’s nominee for attorney general, Pam Bondi, was confirmed by the Senate Tuesday evening, 54-46.

OPM News

  • Govexec informs us,
    • “With just two days remaining before the deadline for federal workers to accept or reject the Trump administration’s so-called deferred resignation program, agencies are again defending its legality and increasingly coaxing feds to take the deal.
    • “Federal workers have until Thursday to respond to one of a series of emails offering what Trump officials are calling “buyouts,” in which a federal worker is paid their current salary and benefits until Sept. 30 though will have effectively quit by the end of February. Administration officials say employees who accept the deal will be placed on paid administrative leave—in an apparent effort to circumvent the $25,000 cap on Voluntary Separation Incentive Payments—while the Office of Personnel Management has already begun granting agencies Voluntary Early Retirement Authority for eligible federal workers.
    • “But according to Axios, only 20,000 feds have thus far accepted the deal, which has been widely panned by Democrats and federal employee groups as illegal and unenforceable. That accounts for less than 1% of the 2.3 million federal workers, and well below the White House’s reported target of 10%.” * * *
    • “OPM on Tuesday issued new guidance seeking to defend the offer’s legality, insisting that the agreement resigning federal workers will sign legally binds agencies into maintaining their pay and benefits until September.”
  • Federal News Network points out,
    • “Agencies have until Noon on Wednesday to send the Office of Personnel Management a list of employees on probation and say whether or not they want to keep them.
    • “Federal sources confirm OPM asked agencies to submit their lists and gave them a 200-character limit to explain why the employee should stay in government.” * * *
    • “Data on how many employees are under a probationary period is not readily available. The latest data from Fedscope is from March 2024 and shows more than 220,000 federal employees were within their one-year probationary period. That number may indicate generally how many newly hired employees are in the federal workforce at any given time.”

Food and Drug Administration News

  • The Hill reports
    • “The Food and Drug Administration has upgraded its classification of a broccoli recall initially reported in late December, labeling it as “Class I” — the agency’s most serious recall category.
    • “Braga Fresh, of Salinas, California, had initially issued an “advisory” for a specific lot of Marketside Broccoli Florets in late December, after Health and Human Services workers discovered Listeria monocytogenes in “multiple samples” from a Texas Walmart.
    • “The broccoli had been distributed to Walmart stores in 20 states: Alaska, Arkansas, Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Texas, Utah, Washington and Wyoming.
    • “No illnesses had been reported at the time of the initial advisory. Consumers were advised to throw away the potentially affected product and contact Braga Fresh with any other concerns.
    • “In late January, however, the FDA upgraded the recall to a Class I, the FDA’s website shows.
    • “Class I, the FDA says, involve “a situation in which there is a reasonable probability that the use of, or exposure to, a violative product will cause serious adverse health consequences or death.”
  • Per Fierce Pharma
    • “Seven months after the FDA signed off on a reintroduction of Roche’s eye implant Susvimo, the U.S. regulator has broadened its label as a treatment for diabetic macular edema (DME), which is the leading cause of diabetes-related blindness.
    • “The nod is the second indication for Susvimo, an alternative to regular eye injections that was originally approved to treat wet age-related macular degeneration in October 2021.
    • “Twelve months later, however, Susvimo was pulled because of manufacturing problems with the seal on the port delivery device. By July of last year, Roche had ironed out the issues and earnedendorsement from the FDA to put it back on the market. 
    • ‘Susvimo is the size of a grain of rice and is surgically implanted under the upper eyelid. The device provides a customized formulation of Lucentis (ranibizumab), which needs refilling just twice a year.”
  • STAT News reports,
    • “Amgen said Tuesday that the Food and Drug Administration has ordered a hold on a study of the company’s early-stage obesity candidate, another potential setback in the company’s efforts to join the booming weight loss drug market.
    • “Amgen has so far said little about the drug, dubbed AMG 513, and has not described the drug’s mechanism. On a call with analysts, Amgen executives did not explain why AMG 513 is on a clinical hold, other than to say “it’s not related to the drug” and that discussions are underway to reopen the study.” 

Miscellany

  • The Social Security Administration has created a set of online FAQs about the Social Security Fairness Act.
  • The Groom Law Group discusses the CMS simplified prescription drug creditable coverage methodology proposed on January 10. “Comments on the Draft CY 2026 Part D Redesign Program Instructions are due to CMS no later than February 10, 2025. and must be submitted to PartDRedesignPI@cms.hhs.gov with the subject line “Draft CY 2026 Part D Redesign Program Instructions.”

From the public health and medical research front,

  • Healio lets us know,
    • “World Cancer Day [is] Feb. 4.
    • “Union for International Cancer Control (UICC) created World Cancer Day in 2000 to educate the public about the importance of early detection and treatment, encourage elected representatives to commit ample resources to reduce cancer mortality, and increase awareness that lifestyle behaviors have a considerable effect on cancer risk.
    • “This year’s World Cancer Day is the first of a 3-year campaign with the theme “United by Unique.” The campaign is designed to promote the need for “a fundamental shift in cancer care and health systems” around the world toward a people-centered approach, according to a UICC press release.
  • and
    • “SGLT2 inhibitors confer greater risk reductions for major adverse cardiovascular events in older adults with type 2 diabetes compared with younger adults, according to findings from a systematic review and meta-analysis published in JAMA.” * * *\
    • “Age should not be a barrier to treatment with SGLT2 inhibitors in patients who are likely to benefit from reduced CV risk,” Peter Hanlon, PhD, clinical senior research fellow in the School of Health and Wellbeing at University of Glasgow in the U.K., told Healio. “It also suggests that for these treatments that have a proven CV benefit, change in blood glucose may be a poor indicator of the protective effect on CV outcomes.”
  • The Wall Street Journal discusses “The Right White Noise for a Good Night’s Sleep. Plus, some of our favorite products for blocking annoying sounds.

From the U.S. healthcare business front,

  • Healthcare Dive reports,
    • “On Tuesday, Centene touted healthy membership growth in Affordable Care Act plans, while arguing that Medicaid and Medicare — businesses that proved rocky last year — will stabilize in 2025.
    • “Already the largest marketplace carrier, Centene now has upwards of 5 million ACA members paying premiums, executives told investors during a call to discuss its fourth-quarter results. That’s compared to 4.8 million members at the end of 2024.
    • “Growth in ACA members was a major contributor to Centene’s $3.3 million in profit last year, according to the company. However, Centene expects enrollment to peak in the first quarter before sliding back down over the year, in part from efforts to improve program integrity, CEO Sarah London said.”
  • Per Fierce Pharma,
    • “The continued decline of Merck & Co.’s HPV vaccine Gardasil in China has come to a head as the New Jersey drug giant is halting shipments to the world’s second-most populous country.
    • “Thanks to ongoing market challenges, Merck is temporarily cutting off Gardasil deliveries to China from February through at least the middle of 2025. The move should help the drugmaker clear out excess doses of the vaccine cluttering its inventory, Merck said (PDF) in an earnings presentation Tuesday.
    • “Over the last three months of 2024, Gardasil generated $1.6 billion in sales globally, signaling an 18% decline compared to the same period in 2023. For the full year, during which Merck generated total revenues of $64.2 billion, Gardasil sales dropped 3% to $8.6 billion.”
  • Per Healthcare Dive,
    • “HCA Healthcare completed its $110 million purchase of Manchester, New Hampshire-based Catholic Medical Center on Feb. 1, a spokesperson confirmed to Healthcare Dive. The deal is the latest in a growing trend of hospital acquisitions motivated by financial distress.
    • “HCA received regulatory approval to purchase CMC in January, after the New Hampshire attorney general’s office determined CMC was on the brink of bankruptcy and could soon close its 330-bed acute care facility without a buyer.
    • “Regulators imposed significant conditions on the sale and will monitor HCA for compliance over 10 years. For example, HCA will be required to invest $200 million to expand healthcare capacity in New Hampshire and preserve critical service lines for the duration of the monitoring period, including pregnancy care.”
  • and
    • Prospect Medical Holdings said Monday it has a deal to sell its two hospitals in Rhode Island — collectively called CharterCARE Health Partners — for approximately $160 million to the Centurion Foundation, a nonprofit healthcare operator based in Georgia. 
    • The deal precedes Prospect’s January Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing. Prospect and Centurion signed a definitive agreement in 2022, and Rhode Island regulators approved the sale last year. However, the attorney general’s office placed 40 closing conditions on the sale. In first day bankruptcy motions, Prospect said the terms were too onerous for the cash-strapped system to meet.
    • In a statement to Healthcare Dive, a spokesperson for the Rhode Island attorney general’s office was steadfast, saying the parties “must comply” with the regulators’ terms as laid out last year. “We are reviewing their filing carefully to determine whether their proposed sale does so,” the spokesperson said.

Monday Report

Photo by Sven Read on Unsplash

From Washington, DC,

  • This afternoon, a cloture petition on the nomination of Russell Vought to be Director of the Office of Management and Budget was filed with the Senate. The next step will be a vote on the cloture motion which requires 51 votes.
  • Per a Senate news release,
    • “U.S. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) and Finance Committee member Michael Bennet (D-Colorado), with Ranking Member Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) and Finance Committee member Tim Scott (R-South Carolina), reintroduced the Medicare Multi-Cancer Early Detection (MCED) Screening Coverage Act that would ensure Medicare beneficiaries’ access to cutting-edge tests capable of detecting multiple types of cancer before symptoms appear.  Bipartisan companion legislation (H.R. 842) was also introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives.” * * *
    • Bill text can be found here
  • Nature adds,
    • “US Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) guidelines recommend single-cancer screening for select cancers (e.g., breast, cervical, colorectal, lung). Advances in genome sequencing and machine learning have facilitated the development of blood-based multi-cancer early detection (MCED) tests intended to complement single-cancer screening. MCED tests can interrogate circulating cell-free DNA to detect a shared cancer signal across multiple tumor types. We report real-world experience with an MCED test that detected cancer signals in three individuals subsequently diagnosed with cancers of the ovary, kidney, and head/neck that lack USPSTF-recommended screening. These cases illustrate the potential of MCED tests to detect early-stage cancers amenable to cure.”
  • The New York Times reports,
    • The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has given the green light to two biotechnology companies for clinical trials that will transplant organs from genetically modified pigs into people with kidney failure. If successful, these studies could lead to the broader use of cross-species transplantation, a dream of medical scientists for centuries.
    • One of the companies, United Therapeutics Corporation, will begin its trial with six patients, but that number could eventually rise to 50. The other, eGenesis, said it would begin with three patients and grow the study from there.
    • “We are entering a transformative era in organ transplantation,” said Mike Curtis, the president and chief executive of eGenesis.
  • The Government Accountability Office released a report on food safety.
    • “Millions of Americans get sick from foodborne illness every year. While many cases are mild, some cases can result in hospitalization, long-lasting complications, or even death.
    • “In this Q&A, we reported that the safety and quality of the U.S. food supply is governed by at least 30 federal laws, collectively administered by 15 federal agencies. Federal agencies have developed some agency-specific and joint goals related to reducing foodborne illness, but most of these goals have not been met.
    • “A national food safety strategy could help ensure agencies are working together in an effective and efficient manner to reduce foodborne illness.”
  • AHIP offers for public download a report on Medicare Advantage Demographics. “The most recent demographic data [released last Friday January 31] show that MA continued to be a vital source of coverage for low-income Medicare enrollees and diverse populations.”

From the public health and medical research front,

  • The New York Times considers whether the “Bird Flu Could Become Airborne? Scientists were slow to recognize that Covid spreads through the air. Some are now trying to get ahead of the bird flu.”
  • BioPharma Dive adds, “Drugmakers prep for bird flu outbreak, despite continued low risk. While the virus hasn’t made a sustained leap into humans, vaccines and treatments are being developed ahead of an outbreak.”
  • The American Medical Association lets us know what doctors wish their patients knew about Alzheimer’s Disease.
  • The Washington Post informs us,
    • “Those who go hungry or worry about getting food while pregnant are at higher risk of complications such as preeclampsia and gestational diabetes, a new analysis suggests.
    • “The paper, published in JAMA Network Open, used data from an online health survey of more than 19,300 pregnant Kaiser Permanente Northern California members between June 2020 and September 2022. Researchers did not find similar risks among those who received food assistance while pregnant.”
  • Per MedPage Today,
    • “Just over half of patients with overweight or obesity discontinued their GLP-1 receptor agonist within 1 year, with rates even higher among the subset without type 2 diabetes, according to a retrospective cohort study.
    • “Among over 125,000 patients, 53.6% discontinued their GLP-1 receptor agonist by 1 year, and these rates were significantly higher for patients without versus with type 2 diabetes (64.8% vs 46.5%), reported Ezekiel J. Emanuel, MD, PhD, of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, and colleagues.
    • “Regardless of diabetes status, every 1% of body weight loss was tied to a 3% lower risk of discontinuation, they wrote in JAMA Network Open.
    • “Of the 41,792 patients who stopped treatment and had a weight measurement at discontinuation available, 47.3% and 36.3% of those with and without type 2 diabetes, respectively, restarted their GLP-1 agent at 1 year, and 57.3% and 46.4% restarted within 2 years. For every 1% of body weight regained after discontinuing treatment, there was a 2% to 3% increased hazard of restarting treatment.
    • “The high discontinuation rate did not come as much of a surprise, as prior studies have reported GLP-1 receptor agonist discontinuation rates of up to 81%, Emanuel’s group wrote. They added that the links between weight loss and discontinuation and between weight regain and reinitiation “suggest that weight management is an important factor regardless of type 2 diabetes status.”
  • Per BioPharma Dive,
    • “Adding Pfizer’s cancer drug Braftovi to standard treatments helped people with a form of colorectal cancer live longer without their disease worsening than those who got the typical care alone in a Phase 3 trial, the company said Monday.
    • “The result confirms earlier research from the study, called Breakwater, which had shown that trial volunteers receiving Braftovi were significantly more likely to see their tumors shrink or disappear. Those data were used to support an accelerated U.S. clearance for Braftovi in colorectal cancer in December.”

From the U.S. healthcare business front,

  • Healthcare Dive tells us,
    • “Health supply chain costs and pharmaceutical expenses are projected to rise modestly between July 2025 and June 2026, according to new research from healthcare services company Vizient.
    • “Pharmacy spend will rise 3.8%, driven in part by increased demand for specialty medications. AbbVie’s autoimmune disease drug Humira will continue to be the most popular drug by total spend, however popular GLP-1s like Ozempic, Wegovy and Mounjaro are projected to enter the top-10 list of medications by total spend.
    • “Supply chain costs will rise by approximately 2% during the period, following higher prices for raw materials, increased freight and shipping costs and tariffs on medical-surgical products, according to the report.”
  • Fierce Healthcare adds,
    • “Moody’s Ratings is downgrading the insurance industry’s credit outlook to negative as elevated medical costs continue to batter payers.
    • “Moody’s analysts noted in a report that spending in the commercial market alone is set to increase by 8% this year, the fastest rate recorded in 13 years. Spending in the individual market, meanwhile, is set to climb by 7.5%, another increase that’s higher than in recent years.
    • “Factors driving these spending hikes include inflation, prescription drug spending and higher utilization of behavioral health. Based on those trends, Moody’s projects spending in Medicare Advantage (MA) will also increase by between 5% and 7%.
    • “We are changing our outlook on the health insurance sector to negative from stable,” the Moody’s analysts wrote. “Although we expect EBITDA growth to remain in the low single digits, insurers will continue to grapple with medical costs in excess of reimbursement rates for MA and Medicaid, while commercial coverage also faces continued high medical costs.
  • Per Healthcare Dive,
    • “Cigna has released a plan it says will make healthcare more affordable and accessible for its members — including tying executive compensation to customer satisfaction — as health insurers continue to reckon with discontent with their industry since the killing of a major insurance executive late last year.
    • Cigna plans to start linking bonus awards for high-level officers to the company’s net promoter score, a measure of customer loyalty and satisfaction, the Connecticut-based insurer said Monday.
    • “Cigna will also invest in more care advocates, pare back hurdles to receiving care and make it easier for doctors to update patients on the status of prior authorization requests. Cigna also plans to release an annual “customer transparency” report starting next year with information on its business practices, including data on prior authorization requests, appeals and denials.”
  • and
    • Bankrupt Prospect Medical Holdings said Friday it intends to sell Crozer Health, its four-hospital health system based in Pennsylvania, to an unnamed consortium of nonprofit healthcare operators.
    • Attorneys for Prospect said the proposed sale is the “only viable alternative to an immediate, forced shutdown of the Pennsylvania Hospitals” in documents filed in federal bankruptcy court on Friday.
    • Prospect will appear before the bankruptcy court on Thursday to seek approval for the transaction. As of Monday morning, the hospital operator had yet to file critical details about the sale to the court, including a proposed purchase price or the names of the possible buyers. However, a press release says the deal would include all Crozer hospitals, ambulatory surgery centers, clinics and physician offices.

Happy Groundhog Day

The Weather Channel reports, “Before a huge crowd filled with excitement and anticipation, and bundled up against temperatures in the 20s, t​he groundhog known as Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow Sunday morning in central Pennsylvania. That means we could see six more weeks of winter, at least according to Groundhog Day lore.”

From Washington, DC

  • Capitol Hill News
  • The full Senate will begin to take up the nomination of Russell Vought to be Director of the Office of Management and Budget tomorrow afternoon.
  • Per a Senate news release,
    • “U.S. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) announced [today] the Committee will mark up the nomination of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to be Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) during an executive session on Tuesday, February 4, 2025, at 10:00AM ET.” 
  • On Wednesday February 5 at 10 am ET the House Oversight Committee will hold a hearing about
    “Rightsizing Government.”

OPM News

  • Federal News Network reports,
    • “The Office of Personnel Management’s blanket offer for federal employees to accept its “deferred resignation” offer is starting to narrow.
    • “Some agencies are notifying employees in certain critical positions that they are exempt from OPM’s offer. In other cases, agency leaders have told employees who already accepted the offer that they must keep working, regardless of what they have already been told by OPM.”
  • and
    • “The Office of Personnel Management is giving agencies the authority to offer early retirement to federal employees — in addition to the “deferred resignation” offer sent to most federal employees in a mass email earlier this week.
    • “OPM is approving VERA authority so eligible employees may receive VERA if they accept the deferred resignation officer,” OPM Acting Director Chuck Ezell wrote in an email obtained by Federal News Network. “If your full retirement eligibility data falls within the 2025 calendar year, the agency may extend your deferred resignation period to the date of your full retirement eligibility.”
    • “An OPM spokesperson confirmed to Federal News Network the VERA extends governmentwide.
    • “Federal and postal employees under the Civil Service Retirement System (CSRS) and Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS) are eligible for voluntary early retirement if they’re at least 50 years of age, with at least 20 years of service, or any age with at least 25 years of service.
    • “Voluntary Early Retirement Authority doesn’t always come with a financial incentive. But in cases agencies do offer money, the incentive is capped at $25,000.”

From the U.S. healthcare business front,

  • Beckers Hospital Review offers executive insights on the impact that the President’s February 1, 2025, tariff program may have on healthcare.
  • Beckers also tells us,
    • “Healthgrades has recognized 250 U.S. hospitals as part of its 2025 America’s Best Hospitals Awards.
    • “The top 50 hospitals [which are listed in the article] represent the 1% of U.S. hospitals providing the highest level of quality care, according to a Jan. 28 news release. 
    • “Healthgrades evaluated the clinical performance of approximately 4,500 hospitals across more than 30 common procedures and conditions, the release said. Read more about the methodology here.”
  • Fierce Healthcare informs us,
    • “Medicare Advantage patients treated in value-based care models saw better outcomes than those treated in fee-for-service models, according to a new study.
    • “Researchers led by a team at Optum examined claims data on nearly 5.3 million person-years from 2016-19 across 20 different measurements and found that patients in accountable care models were 9% less likely to be admitted to the hospital and 9% less likely to visit the emergency department.
    • “The study found that value-based patients were also 22% less likely to be admitted to the hospital for concerns related to chronic conditions like chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder or asthma, including an 18% reduction in admissions related to hypertension.
    • “In addition, patients treated in the value-based models were 9% less likely to be admitted to the hospital from the emergency room, the study found.:

Cybersecurity Saturday

From the cybersecurity policy and law enforcement front,

  • Cyberscoop reports,
    • “A bipartisan pair of House lawmakers are seeking to improve private-public coordination for financial institutions amid a surge of ransomware attacks on the sector.
    • “The Public and Private Sector Ransomware Response Coordination Act, introduced this week by Reps. Zach Nunn, R-Iowa, and Josh Gottheimer, D-N.J., would direct the Treasury secretary to deliver a report on existing collaboration between federal agencies and private financial companies, examining how those partnerships can be improved to better protect the industry from cyberattacks.
    • “The legislation from Nunn and Gottheimer, both members of the House Financial Services Committee, comes as global ransomware attacks jumped 67% from 2023 to 2024, according to the director of national intelligence. And according to Statista, approximately 65% of financial institutions globally reported experiencing a ransomware attack in 2024, up from 34% in 2021.”
  • Per a House of Representatives announcement,
    • On Wednesday, February 5, 2025, the Committee on Homeland Security will hold a hearing entitled, “Preparing the Pipeline: Examining the State of America’s Cyber Workforce.”
    • The Committee will meet at 10:00 a.m. EST in 310 Cannon House Office Building. Witnesses will be by invitation only.
    • This event will be streamed live at homeland.house.gov and on YouTube.
  • Cyberscoop adds
    • “The Federal Bureau of Investigation, along with several other international law enforcement departments, has seized control of several high-profile online platforms linked to cybercrime in a sweeping operation aimed at disrupting digital marketplaces for stolen credentials and hacking tools. The domains of forums Cracked[.]io and Nulled[.]to now redirect to FBI-controlled servers, signaling efforts to dismantle infrastructure that supports cybercriminal activity.
    • “As of Wednesday, visitors to the forums — long criticized as hubs for password theft, software piracy, and credential-stuffing attacks — encountered DNS error messages indicating federal intervention. Eagle-eyed cybersecurity researchers discovered Wednesday that the specialized servers that translate IP addresses into domain names redirected visitors to FBI-owned assets, effectively shutting down access. 
    • “Also seized were domains and services belonging to SellIX, which enabled users to create storefronts for illicit goods, and StarkRDP, a Windows remote desktop hosting service, which was allegedly leveraged by threat actors to anonymize attacks.
    • “According to the image on the Cracked and Nulled websites, law enforcement from Australia, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Spain, and Romania were also involved. Europol also played a role, according to the image. 

From the cybersecurity vulnerabilities and breaches front,

  • Cyberscoop lets us know,
    • Cryptojacking, the tactic of breaking into a device to steal computing resources and mine crypto, is a pervasive, frustrating and expensive problem. But attacks like these can also raise cybersecurity concerns, especially when they happen to the federal government. 
    • Last fall, the U.S. Agency for International Development learned it was hit by a cryptojacking incident, according to documents viewed by Scoop News Group. The agency was notified by Microsoft that a global administrator account located in a test environment had been breached through a password spray attack — a brute force attempt to enter a system by guessing a series of passwords. 
    • That account was then used to create another account — and both were then deployed to begin crypto-mining processes through USAID’s Azure resources. The result was around half a million dollars in cloud service charges to the agency.
    • Using government resources to break into an agency’s resources for the purpose of mining crypto might sound strange, but it happens. 
  • Per Cybersecurity Dive,
    • “The Food and Drug Administration has released a safety communication about the cybersecurity vulnerabilities of certain patient monitors from Contec and Epsimed.
    • “The notice, which the FDA published Thursday [January 30], describes three vulnerabilities that can allow people to gain access to remote monitoring technology and potentially manipulate the devices.
    • ‘The FDA is not aware of cybersecurity incidents, injuries or deaths linked to the vulnerabilities but is advising patients, healthcare providers and IT staff to take steps to mitigate the risks.”
  • and
    • “Threat actors are exploiting a zero-day vulnerability in Zyxel CPE Series devices months after the security flaw was originally reported to the company, researchers at GreyNoise disclosed in a blog post Tuesday.
    • “The critical command-injection vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2024-40891, allows an attacker to execute arbitrary commands on a CPE Series device, which can lead to exfiltration of data, infiltration of a computer network or total system compromise. 
    • “Due to GreyNoise’s first-hand, confirmed mass exploitation attempts for this vulnerability, we chose to disclose this to raise awareness among those who may be impacted,” a spokesperson for GreyNoise said via email. “All decisions to move forward were made in conjunction with VulnCheck and its policies.”
  • Dark Reading informs us,
    • “Researchers have discovered two new ways to manipulate GitHub’s artificial intelligence (AI) coding assistant, Copilot, enabling the ability to bypass security restrictions and subscription fees, train malicious models, and more.
    • “The first trick involves embedding chat interactions inside of Copilot code, taking advantage of the AI’s instinct to be helpful in order to get it to produce malicious outputs. The second method focuses on rerouting Copilot through a proxy server in order to communicate directly with the OpenAI models it integrates with.
    • “Researchers from Apex deem these issues vulnerabilities. GitHub disagrees, characterizing them as “off-topic chat responses,” and an “abuse issue,” respectively. In response to an inquiry from Dark Reading, GitHub wrote, “We continue to improve on safety measures in place to prevent harmful and offensive outputs as part of our responsible AI development. Furthermore, we continue to invest in opportunities to prevent abuse, such as the one described in Issue 2, to ensure the intended use of our products.”
  • The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency added one known exploited vulnerability to its catalog this week.
  • The CIS Center for Internet Security adds,
    • “Multiple vulnerabilities have been discovered in Apple products, the most severe of which could allow for arbitrary code execution. Successful exploitation of the most severe of these vulnerabilities could allow for arbitrary code execution in the context of the logged-on user. Depending on the privileges associated with the user, an attacker could then install programs; view, change, or delete data; or create new accounts with full user rights. Users whose accounts are configured to have fewer user rights on the system could be less impacted than those who operate with administrative user rights.
    • “THREAT INTELLIGENCE:
      • Apple is aware of a report that CVE-2025-24085 may have been actively exploited against versions of iOS before iOS 17.2.”

From the ransomware front,

  • Forbes reports,
    • “With LockBit already stating that Feb. 3 will see it restart operations, the threat is about as real as it gets. So, what do you need to do?
    • “The primary mitigations are:
      • Install updates for operating systems, software and firmware as soon as they are released.
      • Require phishing-resistant, non SMS-based multi-factor authentication.
    • “In the face of these challenges, businesses, governments, and individuals must stay vigilant and proactive,” Matt Hull, global head of threat intelligence at NCC Group, warned, and that’s good advice that you would be well-advised to action immediately before the ransomware threat becomes a reality for you.”
  • Dark Reading points out,
    • “Two healthcare institutions, Frederick [Maryland] Health and New York Blood Center Enterprises (NYBCe), are grappling with disruptions from separate ransomware attacks they faced this past week.
    • “Frederick Health posted an update to its website on Jan. 27 noting that it “recently identified a ransomware event” and is working to contain it with third-party cybersecurity experts to get its systems back online.
    • “Though most of its facilities remain open and are still providing patient care, Frederick Health reported that its Village Laboratory is closed and that patients may experience some operational delays.
    • “New York Blood Center Enterprises, a nonprofit made up of a collection of independent blood centers, first identified suspicious activity affecting its IT systems on Jan. 26. On Jan. 29, it alerted the public that it took its systems offline in an effort to contain the threat, which was attributed to a ransomware attack. NYBCe is working to restore its systems; however, it remains unclear when it will be fully operational again. The organization expects processing times for blood donations at its centers and offsite blood drives may take longer than usual.”
  • Bleeping Computer adds,
    • “Community Health Center (CHC), a leading Connecticut healthcare provider, is notifying over 1 million patients of a data breach that impacted their personal and health data.
    • “The non-profit organization provides primary medical, dental, and mental health services to more than 145,000 active patients.
    • “CHC said in a Thursday filing with Maine’s attorney general that unknown attackers gained access to its network in mid-October 2024, a breach discovered more than two months later, on January 2, 2025.
    • “While the threat actors stole files containing patients’ personal and health information belonging to 1,060,936 individuals, the healthcare organization says they didn’t encrypt any compromised systems and that the security breach didn’t impact its operations.”
  • Hackers News explains how Interlock Ransomware infects healthcare organizations.

From the cybersecurity defenses front,

  • Cyberscoop informs us
    • “Imagine, for a moment, that your network is hit with ransomware.
    • “One of your employees clicked on a malicious link and now your network is compromised, data is encrypted and most of the organization’s systems are locked or offline.
    • “Then imagine if instead of assembling an incident response team, notifying the board and contacting law enforcement, the forensic sensors in your device’s firmware spring to life. They begin healing your network, restoring locked files, and communicating with other systems to collect forensic data.
    • “The firmware then analyzes the data to identify how the attackers entered and exploited system weaknesses, then blocks those vulnerabilities to prevent future breaches through the same entry points. 
    • “While it sounds like science fiction, researchers at one of the Pentagon’s top cyber innovation hubs are attempting to prove the idea is more than a pipe dream.
    • “Red-C, a new project being rolled out by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, seeks to build new defenses into bus-based computer systems, which are firmware-level systems used in everything from personal computers to weapons systems to vehicles.”
  • Cybersecurity Dive tells us,
    • “Organizations that have consolidated security spending into integrated platforms have experienced improved cyber resilience and stronger operational efficiencies, according to a study released Tuesday by IBM and Palo Alto Networks
    • “Managing security stacks has been a struggle for organizations, which juggle an average of 83 different security tools from 29 different vendors, according to the study.
    • “More importantly, the “platformization” model reduces the time it takes to identify and mitigate security incidents by an average of 74 days and 84 days, respectively, the study found.”
  • Per Dark Reading,
    • “When automated pen-testing tools appeared a few years ago they prompted an interesting question: How close are they to replacing human pen testers? While the short answer was “not that close — yet,” they definitely had potential and were worth keeping an eye on.
    • “As I’ve just had the chance to review the latest iteration of these tools, it’s interesting to see how they’ve evolved and how close are they now are to replacing the human pen tester for offensive security work.” * * *
    • “Overall, it’s good to see these tools evolve. The rate of change is glacial, but they now understand cloud environments and can target Web applications, though they are still temperamental, costly, and miss a few things. One could argue humans are the same. For now, however, humans maintain the advantage — but they aren’t mutually exclusive. Just like crowdsourced security and traditional pen testing, automated pen testing is now another tool that can be layered onto your offensive security testing, where it can help you find the exploits that matter to your organization.”
  • Here is a link to Dark Reading’s CISO Corner/

Friday Report

From Washington, DC,

White House News

  • Per a White House fact sheet,
    • “ELIMINATING 10 REGULATIONS FOR EACH NEW REGULATION ISSUED: Today, President Donald J. Trump signed an Executive Order to unleash prosperity through deregulation. 
    • “The Order requires that whenever an agency promulgates a new rule, regulation, or guidance, it must identify at least 10 existing rules, regulations, or guidance documents to be repealed.  
    • “The Director of the Office of Management and Budget will ensure standardized measurement and estimation of regulatory costs.
    • “It requires that for fiscal year 2025, the total incremental cost of all new regulations, including repealed regulations, be significantly less than zero.'”
  • FEHBlog observation – The White House needs to turn its attention to subregulatory guidance.

Capitol Hill news

  • Modern Healthcare reports,
    • “Doctors and some bipartisan allies on Capitol Hill advanced their campaign to boost Medicare physician reimbursements with the release of new legislation Friday.
    • “The Medicare Patient Access and Practice Stabilization Act of 2025 would give doctors a 6.6% rate increase through 2026 and be retroactive to the beginning of this year, when a 2.9% cut took effect.” * * *
    • “The next government funding bill, which must pass by March 14 to prevent a partial shutdown, is an obvious vehicle. Supporters would likely have a greater chance getting Medicare physician reimbursements into that legislation than into a broader bill with many billions in healthcare cuts that Trump and GOP leaders are drafting on a partisan track.”
  • Per a Senate press release,
    • “U.S. Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL) and U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA), a senior member and former chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, today sent a letter to the President and CEO of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) urging them to embrace their bipartisan legislation, the Drug-price Transparency for Consumers (DTC) Act, to empower patients and providers and commit to voluntarily disclosing list prices in DTC advertisements. 
    • “The Senators wrote, “The United States is one of only two developed countries in the world that permits such pharmaceutical commercials. President Trump’s nominee for Health and Human Services Secretary has expressed interest in outright banning this practice. It would be wise for drug companies to adopt commonsense solutions to address the concerns that have been raised about DTC prescription drug advertising. As you are aware, the United States Senate previously voted unanimously to pass our measure to require that pharmaceutical companies disclose their list prices in DTC ads, and it is our hope that this policy will become law this Congress. This bipartisan legislation would ensure that when patients are bombarded with information about the newest wonder drug, the price is not kept secret. President Trump previously has issued regulations to advance this policy.” * * *
    • Full text of the letter is available here.

OPM News

  • OPM issued an addendum (FEHBlog Dropbox link) to its 2026 FEHB / PSHB call letter today which implements two of the President’s executive orders.
  • Federal News Network reports,
    • “Trump administration officials are taking major steps to cut down the size of the workforce and federal programs at the Office of Personnel Management.
    • “During an internal meeting Friday morning, Trump administration officials directed OPM senior career staff to begin making plans to cut the agency’s workforce and programs by 70%. Multiple sources with direct knowledge of the meeting confirmed the details of the meeting to Federal News Network.
    • “Sources who provided information to Federal News Network on the condition of anonymity said the political leadership at the agency also directed OPM leaders to stop work on anything that is not statutorily required.
    • “Trump administration officials told agency office leaders and associate directors at OPM to prepare briefs over the weekend detailing all of their work and programs that are statutorily required. By Monday, all OPM offices are expected to give political leaders organizational staffing charts with plans for an initial 30% reduction for both federal employees and contractors.”

Postal Service news

  • Federal News Network tells us
    • “The Postal Service’s regulator warns the next phase of a 10-year reform plan would slow mail delivery for a “significant portion of the nation,” but wouldn’t save USPS enough money to justify the changes.
    • “The Postal Regulatory Commission, in an advisory opinion on key parts of the USPS “Delivering for America” plan, found upcoming changes meant to cut billions of dollars each year wouldn’t do much to help the agency regain its long-term financial footing — but would lead to “disproportionate” cuts in service across rural communities.
    • “A PRC official told Federal News Network that nearly 40% of single-piece first-class mail — including letters and postcards — would see a service downgrade under these changes — and that the impact would be even greater in rural areas.
    • “The Commission urges the Postal Service to reconsider whether the speculative, meager gains from this proposal outweigh the certain downgrade in service for a significant portion of the nation,” the PRC wrote Friday.”

FDA News

  • MedPage Today informs us,
    • “The FDA approved an oral combination of meloxicam and rizatriptan (Symbravo) to treat adults with acute migraine with or without aura, Axsome Therapeutics announcedopens in a new tab or window.
    • “Meloxicam is a COX-2 preferential non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) and rizatriptan is a 5-HT 1B/1D agonist (triptan). The newly approved drug uses a proprietary technology called MoSEIC to increase meloxicam’s solubility and speed of absorption after the drug is taken orally while maintaining its extended plasma half-life.
    • “A significant proportion of migraine patients experience inadequate efficacy with currently available acute treatments, leading to even greater suffering, and an increased risk of worsening of migraine pain and attack frequency,” said Richard Lipton, MD, of Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City, in a statement. “Results of multiple clinical trials demonstrate that Symbravo can provide rapid and long-lasting freedom from migraine pain, whether treatment is taken early in the attack while the pain is mild, or later in the attack when the pain may be severe.”

From the public health and medical research front,

  • The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced today
    • “Seasonal influenza activity remains elevated and continues to increase across the country. COVID-19 activity is elevated in many areas of the country. RSV activity is declining in many areas of the country.
    • “COVID-19
      • “COVID-19 activity is elevated in many areas of the country. Though wastewater levels are high, emergency department visits are at low levels, and laboratory percent positivity was similar to last week. Emergency department visits and hospitalizations are highest in older adults and emergency department visits are also elevated in young children.
      • “There is still time to benefit from getting your recommended immunizations to reduce your risk of illness this season, especially severe illness and hospitalization.
      • “CDC expects the 2024-2025 COVID-19 vaccine to work well for currently circulating variants. There are many effective tools to prevent spreading COVID-19 or becoming seriously ill.
    • “Influenza
    • “RSV
      • “RSV activity remains elevated but is declining in many areas of the country. Emergency department visits and hospitalizations are highest in children and hospitalizations are elevated among older adults in some areas.
    • “Vaccination
      • “Vaccination coverage with influenza and COVID-19 vaccines are low among U.S. adults and children. Vaccination coverage with RSV vaccines remains low among U.S. adults. Many children and adults lack protection from respiratory virus infections provided by vaccines.
  • News supplementing the CDC report
    • Health Day notes,
      • “People still see COVID-19 as an ongoing public health threat, even though the pandemic officially ended in 2023, according to a new HealthDay/Harris Poll.
      • “Nearly 3 in 4 people (72%) agree COVID is still a serious public health issue, including more than a third (35%) who strongly agree, the poll found.
      • “COVID has settled into the sort of ongoing health threat already posed by the seasonal flu, which had its turn as a pandemic back in 1918, Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, said.
      • “You’ll get hundreds of thousands of people hospitalized with influenza every year,” Offit told HealthDay TV. “You’ll get tens of thousands of people who die every year from influenza. I think that’s what COVID is now. I think this virus will be with us for decades, if not longer.”
    • The University of Minnesota’s CIDRAP lets us know
      • “The nation’s flu activity continued a steady rise last week, with 44 states at the high or very high level and that national test positivity just shy of 30%, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said today in its weekly update.
      • “Outpatient visits for flulike illness have been above the national baseline for 9 weeks in a row. Of samples that tested positive for flu at public health labs, nearly all were influenza A, and subtyped influenza A samples were about evenly split between the H3N2 and 2009 H1N1 strains.
      • “On the CDC’s flu activity map, most of the country is awash in shades of red that reflect high or very high activity. However, some states are shaded purple, the highest level on the activity scale. They include Southeastern states such as Louisiana, South Carolina, and Tennessee, but also several in the Northeast, including Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, and New Hampshire.
      • “The CDC reported 16 more pediatric flu deaths, which push the season’s total to 47. The deaths occurred between the middle of December and the week ending January 25. All involved influenza A, and, of 13 subtyped samples, 7 were H1N1 and 6 were H3N2. 
      • “For deaths overall, the level remained steady, with flu making up 1.6% of all deaths last week.
      • “Emergency department (ED) visits for flu are at the very high level and are increasing in all age-groups, making up 7% of all ED visits, the CDC said in its weekly respiratory virus snapshot. Meanwhile, hospitalizations for flu remain elevated and are likewise on the rise for all age-groups.”
  • Per STAT News,
    • “Researchers confirmed that antidepressants lead to a significant reduction in generalized anxiety
    • “The long-awaited update, published by the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, considered by some to be the gold-standard of evidence-based health care, considered evidence from 37 unique randomized control trials with 12,226 participants and found that these drugs are effective compared to a placebo.
    • “The drugs’ long-term impacts are muddier, said Prof. Peter Tyrer, an emeritus psychiatry professor at Imperial College London who was not involved in the study. Some patients have difficulties stopping antidepressants because of withdrawal problems. 
    • “The main reason why antidepressants were preferred to benzodiazepines (drugs that are equally effective in treating generalised anxiety) was the dependence risk, we just seem to have shifted the problem of adverse effects from one class of drugs to another,” Tyrer said. 
  • and
    • “To create one of the most advanced immunotherapies in cancer, CAR-T cell therapies, scientists engineer immune T cells to carry a synthetic protein on their surfaces. This protein, called the chimeric antigen receptor or CAR, is what gives these engineered cells such potency against certain cancers and allows them to recognize and destroy malignant cells. In a new study, scientists have found that CAR-T cells are able to donate this synthetic protein to normal T cells, essentially arming other cells in the immune system with advanced technology to kill cancer.
    • “While this finding is fascinating scientists and cancer researchers, it’s not yet clear how sharing CARs between T cells might impact CAR-T therapy efficacy or influence the design of future synthetic receptors, experts told STAT. However, the work does reveal new biology around how T cells share proteins with one another and gives bioengineers some insights into how to manipulate that process.”

From the U.S. healthcare business front,

  • Beckers Payer Issues tells us,
    • “Aetna, Blue Shield of California and Centene’s Health Net have launched a shared, value-based payment model for reimbursing primary care physicians in California.
    • “The project, led by the California Quality Collaborative and the Integrated Healthcare Association, involves 11 providers across the state, covering about 17,000 patients. The single payment model went live on Jan. 1 and aims to address primary care reimbursement challenges, improve health equity, and boost health outcomes. The model focuses on small, independent practices and could eventually expand beyond California, according to a Jan. 30 news release.
    • “Instead of each health plan using its own payment system, the three insurers use a single, shared system that rewards physicians for providing high-quality care, especially among underserved populations. The CQC will help practices implement the new system, improve care coordination, and integrate mental and physical health services. A platform called Cozeva will provide data to help physicians track their performance and close care gaps.
    • “Participating providers are here. A full model guide is available here.
  • Kauffman Hall offers an infographic about the state of rural healthcare.
  • BioPharma Dive considers the following — “After decades of research, Vertex Pharmaceuticals has an approved pain medicine. Can one of the most powerful biotechs contend with a healthcare system that’s long favored opioids?” The FEHBlog hopes so.
  • Per Fierce Pharma,
    • “One of the most important launches for Novartis in recent years is off with a bang.
    • “Following a broad FDA approval for the adjuvant treatment of HR-positive, HER2-negative early breast cancer in September, Novartis’ Kisqali grew U.S. sales by 65% year over year—or nearly 25% sequentially—to $549 million in the fourth quarter of 2024.
    • “A Novartis presentation released on Friday shows that Kisqali’s new patient starts jumped from an average of around 1,500 per month before the approval to about 2,200 in both October and November. Data for December were not yet available.”
  • and
    • “Two years after AbbVie’s loss of market exclusivity for Humira, those “How it Started and How it’s Going” memes are looking better each quarter for the Illinois drugmaker.
    • “On Friday, when AbbVie reported its quarterly earnings, the pharma giant jacked up its 2027 projected sales of Humira follow-ons Skyrizi and Rinvoq to a combined $31 billion. It is a $4 billion increase on the company’s previous guidance for the immunology duo.
    • “Chief commercial officer Jeff Stewart explained that the projection increase has come because of growing “share capture.” Skyrizi now holds 40% of the total prescription share of the biologics psoriasis market, he said.
    • “Of the $4 billion adjustment to the 2027 projection, $2 billion has been added to Skyrizi’s estimate in inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and $500 million has been added to Rinvoq’s in the same indication.  
    • “Across the board, we’re seeing tremendous performance, particularly in IBD,” Stewart explained.”