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The Trump administration's proposal to extend the duration of short-term health plans would have a particularly significant impact on patients with cancer and cancer survivors, according to a webcast hosted by the National Coalition for Cancer Survivorship on Thursday.

Coverage of our peer-reviewed research and news reporting in the healthcare and mainstream press.

This week, the top managed care stories included President Donald Trump signing an executive order requiring the poor to get jobs or lose food and healthcare benefits; a CMS report found ethnic, racial, and gender disparities in Medicare Advantage plans; CDC highlighted the impact of HIV on America's youth.

Senator Orrin Hatch and Senator Kamala Harris ask Attorney General Jeff Sessions to get the DEA to allow medical marijuana research; current and former executives of pharmaceutical distributors are scheduled to testify before Congress May 8 about their role in the opioid epidemic; 14 patients on Vieques, a Puerto Rican island just east of the main island, are flying 3 times a week for lifesaving dialysis more than 6 months after Hurricane Maria.

The FDA has finalized 2 guidances to accelerate the development of next-generation sequencing (NGS)–based tests, the agency announced on Thursday. The guidances provide recommendations for designing, developing, and validating tests that use NGS.

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A DNA test method called polymerase chain reaction can shave days off the time it takes to detect a Legionnaires' disease outbreak to mere hours and should be implemented by health departments to prevent illness, a new study reported.

What do primary care providers really think about using electronic consultation (eConsult) systems to confer with specialists? A study published in JAMA Internal Medicine found a mix of opinions, and most primary care providers viewed eConsult as shifting some specialty work to them.

National Institutes of Health researchers have uncovered a genetic basis of a rare bone disease known as melorheostosis and said the discovery could offer potential treatment targets, provide clues about bone development, and lead to insights about fracture healing and osteoporosis.

ASCO last updated its guidelines on fertility preservation in 2013. Following the review of recent randomized controlled trials, systematic reviews, meta-analyses, and clinical practice guidelines, the panel made no significant changes to the 2013 recommendations: 2 recommendations for adult women were updated, and several clarifications to other recommendations were made.

AJMC® Convenes the First Gathering of the Institute for Value-Based Medicine to Share Best Practices in New Payment Models in Cancer Care

House Speaker Paul Ryan is leaving Congress at the end of the year without success on spending cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security; the FDA is conducting a criminal investigation into research by a Southern Illinois University professor who injected people with his unauthorized herpes vaccine; the National Institutes of Health (NIH) is "aggressively" looking into reports that it solicited funding from the alcohol industry for a study on the benefits of moderate drinking.

Papers from The Lancet's Taskforce of Non-Communicable Diseases analyzed the potential health and economic impact of implementing taxes on soda, alcohol, and tobacco to combat the rising rates of the chronic diseases worldwide.

Being uninsured puts patients at risk of delayed or suboptimal care for serious diseases, including colon cancer. While colon cancer is potentially curable at its early stages, those who lack insurance (or who have public insurance only) are less likely to receive screening, and some studies have demonstrated that those with no insurance or public insurance are less likely to receive the chemotherapy that can reduce the risk of recurrence in phase III disease.

CVS has announced the launch of CVS Pharmacy Rx Savings Finder, which will provide its 30,000 pharmacists the ability to find less expensive alternatives for their patients.

The pharmaceutical company announced that rimegepant, for the acute treatment of migraines, demonstrated superiority to placebo and met the co-primary endpoints of pain freedom and freedom from the most bothersome symptom in 2 pivotal phase 3 trials.

President Trump signed an executive order aimed at forcing low-income recipients of food assistance, Medicaid, and low-income housing subsidies to get jobs or lose benefits; in the midst of a debate over dysfunction at the VA, there are tens of thousands of full- and part-time vacancies nationwide; a privately-run, family-owned hospital in rural Bowie, Texas, doesn't accept commercial insurance, has drawn attention of state health inspectors, and charges unusually high rates with an "out-of-network" model.

The third annual population health survey from Numerof & Associates found that healthcare organizations have not made as much progress to transition to risk-based agreements as they predicted they would 2 years ago.

CMS Tuesday released a report detailing racial, ethnic, and gender disparities in the quality of care received by Medicare Advantage beneficiaries (MA) between 2015 and 2016. CMS said it was releasing the report in recognition of National Minority Health Month, with the aim of raising awareness of health disparities, develop interventions for racially and ethnically diverse Medicare beneficiaries, and implement quality improvement efforts that improve health equity.

As April 10 marks National Youth HIV & AIDS Awareness Day, CDC and other organizations are highlighting the impact of HIV/AIDS on individuals aged 13 to 24, as they accounted for nearly one-fourth of all new HIV diagnoses in the United States in 2015.

Which state you reside in in the United States is a factor in your risk of suffering from disease, disability, and cause of death, according to the latest annual study that looks at 195 locations around the world. And while health has improved across much of the nation, some states saw stark rises in “diseases of despair,” with large increases in drug and alcohol use disorders, obesity, high body mass index, poor diet, and diabetes.

New legislation in Congress would prohibit limiting what pharmacists can tell patients about the cheapest way to pay for their prescriptions; drug companies, researchers, and health officials are trying to develop an overdose-reversal treatment that is more successful than naloxone against synthetic opioids; a Texas lawsuit seeking to strike down the Affordable Care Act is being opposed by 16 Democratic attorneys general.

CMS said that those opposed to abortion could use their belief as a hardship exemption to avoid the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) individual mandate penalty this year. Plus, the agency will allow states more flexibility in setting their essential health benefit benchmark plans, in a series of rule changes finalized Monday.

After a decade of analyzing over 11,000 tumors from 33 types of cancer, the collaboration between the National Cancer Institute and National Human Genome Research Institute has launched the Pan-Cancer Atlas, providing a comprehensive understanding of 3 focus areas: cell-of-origin patterns, oncogenic processes, and signaling pathways.

Can tai chi act as a substitute for pulmonary rehabilitation for patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD)? A study of 120 patients in the journal Chest suggests that it is a possibility.

President and CEO Kevin Sayer said the company will file for Medicare coverage of the G6, while it continues to work out an issue that prevents beneficiaries from using a feature that lets data be displayed or shared on cell phones.

Once a decade, legislators try to fix healthcare in the United States. Panelists at PULSE: The Atlantic Summit on Health Care, discuss challenges to fixing healthcare and what solutions they see.

The Trump administration has finalized a new director for the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI): Adam Boehler, the former CEO of Landmark Health, a home-based medical care company.

Pembrolizumab (Keytruda) monotherapy as first-line treatment in locally advanced or metastatic non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) met its primary endpoint of overall survival in the Phase 3 KEYNOTE-042 trial when compared with standard of care platinum-based chemotherapy.

Ronny L. Jackson, MD, would give up $1 million in retirement income to head the Department of Veterans Affairs and work in the Trump administration; mega healthcare deals endanger independent practices of primary care providers; Novartis is buying a gene therapy firm focused on spinal muscular atrophy.