Dr. Mehmet Oz, the TV celebrity, dodged queries about Republican plans to cut health insurance for the poor, and emerged unscathed on his ties to major industries.In a hearing on Friday, senators pressed Dr. Mehmet Oz, the TV celebrity nominated to head Medicare and Medicaid, on Republican-led proposals that would significantly affect the health care coverage for nearly half of all Americans.At his confirmation hearing before the Senate Finance Committee, Dr. Oz bantered with senators in a friendly atmosphere, joking about basketball and allegiances to college teams. He largely escaped tough questions from either side of the aisle, displaying his on-air charm as he deflected Democrats’ most pointed concerns about potentially radical changes in health coverage for not only those 65 and older but also for poor children.Many senators seemed distracted by the fierce debate over the Republicans’ budget deal to avert a government shutdown, and they dashed in and out of Dr. Oz’s hearing. But he is poised to sail through the Senate for confirmation as the next administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, an agency with $1.5 trillion in spending. Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, made a big deal of his financial conflicts before the hearing. But at the session, she did not press him on those issues. Instead, she focused on his views about whether private Medicare plans are overcharging the government, an area where she and Dr. Oz seemed to agree on the need to tackle potential fraud and waste.Throughout the hearing, he displayed a facile knowledge of a variety of relevant agency issues, although he repeatedly reverted to stock answers that he would need to study the topic at hand more.Several lawmakers, mainly Democrats, tried to force Dr. Oz to express his views on the Trump administration’s goals to cut back on health care costs and agency budgets, but he repeatedly sidestepped those minefields.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

As the coronavirus spread, researchers worldwide scrambled to find ways to keep people safe. Some efforts were misguided. Others saved millions of lives.Until 2020, few Americans needed to think about how viruses spread or how the human immune system works. The pandemic offered a painful crash course. Sometimes, it seemed that the science was evolving as quickly the virus itself.So The New York Times asked experts to revisit the nightmare. Of the most significant public health measures introduced during Covid, which have held up scientifically, and which turned out to be wrongheaded?The question is particularly important now, because pandemics that could upend American lives are inevitable. One candidate has already surfaced: bird flu.Perhaps the biggest lesson learned, several experts said, is that recommendations during any pandemic are necessarily based on emerging and incomplete information. But during Covid, federal agencies often projected more confidence in their assessments than was warranted.Next time, the scientists said, officials should be more forthright about the uncertainties and prepare the public for guidance that may shift as the threat comes into clearer focus.Rather than promote preventive measures as infallible solutions, they should also acknowledge that no single intervention is perfect — though many imperfect measures can build a bulwark.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

The author of numerous studies, he urged patients to question their physicians and expressed concern about cancer treatment for older adults.Dr. Sheldon Greenfield, whose pioneering research found that older patients with breast and pancreatic cancer got subpar treatment and that patients who grill their doctors during consultations receive better care, died on Feb. 26 at his home in Newport Beach, Calif. He was 86.The cause was colon cancer, his daughter Lauren Greenfield said.Dr. Greenfield was a founder and director of the Center for Health Policy Research at the University of California, Irvine, and a leader of the Medical Outcomes Study, involving more than 22,000 patients and 500 physicians, which determined in 1986 that doctors often ordered exorbitant and unnecessary tests and referred patients to a specialist when a primary care doctor or a nurse practitioner could have delivered equally good care.Alan M. Garber, the president of Harvard University, praised Dr. Greenfield as “a towering figure in health care research.”“His influence extended more widely than even he could have known, through the Medical Outcomes Study and so much else,” Dr. Garber said in an email.In 1991, Dr. Greenfield and collaborators including his wife, Dr. Sherrie Kaplan, found that too many conversations about care are dominated by doctors. They recommended a protocol that included a 20-minute coaching session for patients before they consulted their physicians.“When doctors dominate the medical interview, patients don’t do as well as when the patient exerts more control,” Dr. Greenfield told The New York Times that year.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

A new study found that fair prices for medications like Wegovy and Zepbound would be hundreds less per month than they are now.It’s easy to make a medical case for blockbuster weight loss drugs like Wegovy and Zepbound, which have been shown to prevent heart attacks and strokes and save lives.But for the employers and government programs being asked to pay for the medications, the financial case for them is less clear. Are the drugs’ benefits worth their enormous cost?The answer right now is no, according to a new study published on Friday in the journal JAMA Health Forum, by researchers at the University of Chicago.To be considered cost effective by a common measure used by health economists, the price of Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy would need to be cut by over 80 percent, to $127 per month, the researchers concluded. And Eli Lilly’s Zepbound would be cost effective only if its price fell by nearly a third, to $361 per month. (Zepbound warranted a higher price, the researchers said, because it produced greater benefits in clinical trials.)“There’s no doubt that the drugs are demonstrating tremendous health benefits,” said David Kim, a health economist at the University of Chicago and the senior author of the study, which was funded by government grants. “The problem is the price is too high.”There’s widespread hope that the drugs will effectively pay for themselves in the long run, by making patients healthier and preventing expensive medical bills. It’s not clear yet whether that will turn out to be true.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

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The Senate Finance Committee holds a confirmation hearing on Friday for Dr. Mehmet Oz, the TV celebrity who is nominated to run major health programs for older Americans and the poor.Dr. Mehmet Oz, the TV celebrity doctor, is expected to face a tense confirmation hearing on Friday, with Democratic senators planning to question how he would oversee Medicare and Medicaid now that Republicans and the Trump administration are weighing significant changes affecting millions of Americans.Among the possible plans being considered by Republican lawmakers and President Trump are severe reductions to health insurance coverage for low-income people and a greater shift toward private plans for older Americans.Dr. Oz, 64, a cardiothoracic surgeon who rose to fame through his successful daytime show, appears poised to secure confirmation by the full Senate.His confirmation hearing is among the last of the Trump nominees whose agencies fall under the jurisdiction of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nation’s health secretary. It immediately follows Mr. Trump’s decision on Thursday to withdraw the nomination of Dr. Dave Weldon to head the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Dr. Weldon’s long-held views against certain vaccines weakened his chances for confirmation.Given that older Americans are advised to receive certain vaccines because they are among the most vulnerable for illnesses like Covid, the flu and pneumonia, it’s possible that Dr. Oz’s positions on immunization will also be of interest to the Senate panel reviewing his qualifications.In addition, some of the Senate Finance Committee members are likely to grill Dr. Oz about his myriad financial ties, many of which would pose troubling conflicts of interest if he were to lead the agency.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

Johns Hopkins University, one of the country’s leading centers of scientific research, said on Thursday that it would eliminate more than 2,000 workers in the United States and abroad because of the Trump administration’s steep cuts, primarily to international aid programs.The layoffs, the most in the university’s history, will involve 247 domestic workers for the university, which is based in Baltimore, and an affiliated center. Another 1,975 positions will be cut in 44 countries. They affect the university’s Bloomberg School of Public Health, its medical school and an affiliated nonprofit, Jhpiego.Nearly half the school’s total revenue last year came from federally funded research, including $365 million from the U.S. Agency for International Development. In all, the university will lose $800 million in funding over several years from U.S.A.I.D., which the Trump administration is in the process of dismantling.Johns Hopkins is one of the top university recipients of the funding that the administration is aiming to slash. And it appears to be among the most deeply affected of the major research institutions that are reeling from cuts — or the threat of cuts — to federal money that they depend on for research studies and running labs.In a statement on Thursday calling it a “difficult day,” Johns Hopkins said it was “immensely proud” of its work on the projects, which included efforts to “care for mothers and infants, fight disease, provide clean drinking water and advance countless other critical, lifesaving efforts around the world.”In a statement last week describing Johns Hopkins’s reliance on federal funding, Ron Daniels, the university’s president said, “We are, more than any other American university, deeply tethered to the compact between our sector and the federal government.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

2 hours ago

Baroness Mone and her husband Doug Barrowman have accused the Covid inquiry of an “establishment cover-up” after their second attempt to be given an official role in the inquiry was rejected.

1 hour ago