From Washington, DC

• Modern Healthcare reports,
  • “Senate Republicans are considering cuts to Medicare spending to help pay for Donald Trump’s signature legislative package.
  • “The GOP lawmakers are proceeding cautiously as they expand their search for savings to a popular health insurance program nearly all Americans rely upon in retirement, presenting the move as an effort to root out waste, fraud and abuse. That includes cutting payments to health insurance companies that run private Medicare plans.”

• The Wall Street Journal adds,
  • “Humana, the second-biggest Medicare insurer, has told congressional staffers that it will support moves that would curtail billing practices worth billions in extra payments to the industry, according to staffers and a document viewed by The Wall Street Journal.
  • “The stance by a leader in the Medicare Advantage business—in which insurers offer privately run Medicare plans—represents an important development in a growing debate over how the companies are paid in the $460 billion program.
  • “Insurers get paid more for covering sicker patients in Medicare Advantage, giving companies an incentive to record more diagnoses. Humana has told congressional staffers that it is willing to back new limits on lucrative payments insurers can gain from diagnoses recorded by nurse practitioners who visit millions of enrollees in their homes, according to a one-page policy overview shared with congressional staffers.
  • “After the Journal published this article Thursday morning, the biggest Medicare insurer, UnitedHealth Group, posted a statement saying that it too would support a new limit on the use of diagnoses from home visits.”

• Healio points out,
  • HHS has ended a government-funded program that distributed free COVID-19 tests to community organizations, a department spokesperson confirmed to Healio.
  • “With COVID-19 behaving more like the seasonal flu — rising and falling through the year — and tests widely available at retail stores nationwide, continued federal distribution is a significant waste of taxpayers’ dollars,” the spokesperson said. “The COVID-19 pandemic is over.” * * *
  • “The program differed from the mail-based program that was started and stopped several times throughout the pandemic and provided U.S. residents the opportunity to get free COVID-19 tests delivered directly to their homes.”
  • “HHS is in the process of purchasing a supply of tests that can distinguish between COVID-19 and influenza to have on hand for emergencies.”

• Tammy Flanagan, writing in Govexec, discusses “Should you stay, or should you go? 10 tips for navigating your federal retirement decision. What to consider—financially and emotionally—before leaving government service.”

From the public health and medical research front,

• Chief Healthcare Executive tells us,
  • Two years ago, the American Diabetes Association and The Leapfrog Group announced that they were joining forces to recognize hospitals for providing excellent care to patients with diabetes.
  • Now, the groups are announcing honors for a second batch of recipients, and they’re recognizing more than twice as many hospitals.
  • The American Diabetes Association and the Leapfrog Group have announced 36 hospitals as 2025 Recognized Leaders in Caring for People Living with Diabetes. A year ago, the groups recognized 17 hospitals [which are listed in the article].
  • The organizations say they want to give public recognition to hospitals, but they are also highlighting the importance of providing proper care for patients with diabetes.
  • Nearly one-third of patients admitted to hospitals (30%) are diagnosed with diabetes. Some of those are patients that are being treated in the hospital for another illness or injury.
    
• The New York Times reports,
  • “The technology that powered Covid vaccines may also lead scientists to a cure for H.I.V. Using mRNA, Australian researchers said they were able to trick the virus to come out of hiding, a crucial step in ridding the body of it entirely.
  • “The research, published last week in Nature Communications, is still preliminary, and so far, has been shown to be successful only in a lab. But it suggests that mRNA has potential far beyond its use in vaccines as a means to deliver therapies against stubborn adversaries.
  • “Short for messenger RNA, mRNA is a set of instructions for a gene. In the case of Covid vaccines, the instructions were for a piece of the coronavirus. In the new study, they are for molecules key to targeting H.I.V.
  • “Dr. Sharon Lewin, director of the Cumming Global Center for Pandemic Therapeutics in Melbourne, who led the study, called mRNA a “miraculous” tool “to deliver things that you want into places that were not possible before.”

• STAT News adds,
  • “People with diabetes who were taking GLP-1 drugs had a low but elevated risk of an age-related eye disease that can sometimes lead to blindness, a new observational study concludes, adding to a short list of concerns about eye health in people taking the powerful medications.
  • “The research, published Thursday in JAMA Ophthalmology, found that after one year, more than twice as many people on GLP-1 drugs developed neovascular age-related macular degeneration compared to similar people who were not taking the drugs. The risk was 0.2% in people taking GLP-1s and 0.1% in those who didn’t. Participants, drawn from health records of nearly 140,000 patients in Canada, were matched for socioeconomic status and a long list of conditions in addition to diabetes.” * * *
  • “Seeing such a clear signal in our study was striking,” co-author Reut Shor of the University of Toronto told STAT. “The absolute risk remains low, but the advanced form of AMD is a condition with serious implications for vision and quality of life. So a doubling of risk is clinically meaningful, particularly for vulnerable populations like older adults who may already be at elevated baseline risk.”

• Per Health Day,
  • “A quality improvement strategy can improve electronic health record-based screening for depression and anxiety in people with epilepsy, according to a study published online April 16 in the Journal of Clinical and Translational Science.
  • “Heidi M. Munger Clary, M.D., M.P.H., from the Wake Forest University School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and colleagues developed an implementation strategy for anxiety and depression screening among people treated at an epilepsy center. Implementation outcomes were evaluated five months postimplementation compared to two three-month preimplementation time frames.”
• and
  • Dietary patterns seem to be associated with depressive symptoms, according to a study published online June 3 in BMJ Nutrition, Prevention & Health.
  • Gabriella Menniti, M.D., from Unity Health Toronto, and colleagues conducted a cross-sectional study using National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 2007 to 2018 data to examine the association between restrictive dietary patterns and depressive symptoms stratified by sex and body mass index.

• Per MedPage Today,
  • High blood pressure (BP) awareness increasingly slipped under the radar since the COVID-19 pandemic, according to nationally representative health data.
  • Results from National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) cycles, spanning the years 2013 to 2023, showed no improvement in the proportion of adults having hypertension, diabetes, and high cholesterol who self-reported being unaware and never diagnosed. In fact, hypertension awareness stood out for trending significantly in the wrong direction:
    • Adults with hypertension not realizing it: 14.6% in 2013-2014 to 17.8% in 2021-2023
    • Adults with diabetes not realizing it: 27.5% to 28.9%
    • Adults with high total cholesterol not realizing it: 11.5% to 11.9%
  • “Given declining cardiometabolic health in young adults, it is concerning that approximately one in three with hypertension, two in five with diabetes, and one in four with a high cholesterol level are unaware of having these conditions. Policy efforts to address these gaps in awareness are needed to prevent future cardiovascular events,” wrote Rishi Wadhera, MD, MPP, MPhil, of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston, and colleagues in JAMA Cardiology“

From the U.S. healthcare business front,

• Beckers Hospital Review informs us,
  • “Nonprofit hospitals are seeing margins improve as patient demand for care soars, according to Kaufman Hall’s “National Hospital Flash Report” released June 5.
  • “Kaufman Hall, a Vizient company, analyzed data from 1,300 hospitals collected by Strata Decision Technology for its monthly report.
  • “Hospital performance from January to April outpaced the first four months of 2024, largely driven by patient volume and hospital efficiency,” said Erik Swanson, managing director and group leader, data and analytics, at Kaufman Hall. “Operating room minutes, ED visits and inpatient revenue are trending upward, demonstrating a strong demand for services. A decline in average length of stay indicates that hospitals are triaging, treating, and discharging patients effectively and appropriately.”

• Modern Healthcare reports,
  • “Nineteen critical access hospitals in Nebraska have formed a clinically integrated network, the third coalition of its kind created over the past three months.
  • “The Nebraska High Value Network aims to give rural hospitals the scale to lower costs, invest in new technology, improve treatment and expand value-based contracts while remaining independent. The network, announced Thursday, follows similar alliances in Montana, Ohio, Minnesota and North Dakota.” * * *
  • “Cibolo Health, the rural health advisory firm that helped launch these hospital collaborations, will manage daily operations of the Nebraska High Value Network. The network will include clinical and business integration committees led by member hospital executives who will oversee quality and administrative initiatives.”

• Beckers Clinical Leadership lets us know,
  • “The District of Columbia has the most physicians per 100,000 population, while Idaho has the fewest specialist physicians and Nevada has the fewest primary care physicians per 100,000, KFF data found.
  • “KFF used data from Redi-Data to find the number of MD and DO active state-licensed physicians as of April 2025. Becker’s used Census data from 2025 to find the population of each state.
  • “There are 535,542 primary care physicians and 570,655 specialist physicians in the U.S. this year.
  • “[The article includes a chart with] the number of primary care and specialist physicians per 100,000 people in each state and the District of Columbia.”

• Per MedTech Dive,
  • “Johnson & Johnson CFO Joseph Wolk, at the Bernstein investor conference last week, tempered the company’s expectation that it would suffer a $400 million tariff impact this year.
  • “Wolk gave the update after the U.S. and China reached a temporary agreement to pause escalating tariff rates between the two countries for 90 days.
  • “Weeks before the pause, J&J had predicted on an April’s earnings call that it would incur tariff-related costs of about $400 million this year, primarily affecting its medtech business.
  • “But Wolk, at the Bernstein conference, suggested the forecasted tariff hit could change in the future.
  • “Just based on the retaliatory China tariffs that we had in our $400 million assessment, that probably cuts the $400 million down to $200 million,” Wolk said, responding to a question about the shifting tariffs landscape. That does not include any impact that could result from the Trump administration’s Section 232 investigations, he said. The Trump administration has launched special investigations into the pharmaceutical and semiconductor industries that could lead to tariffs.
  • “In addition, Wolk noted, tariffs between the U.S. and Europe remain in flux.”