Administration officials reversed a decision made during the Biden presidency that would have given millions of people access to weight-loss drugs paid for Medicare and Medicaid.The Trump administration on Friday rejected a Biden plan that would have required Medicare and Medicaid to cover obesity drugs and expanded access for millions of people.Under the law that established Medicare’s Part D drug benefits, the program was forbidden from paying for drugs for “weight loss.” The Biden administration’s proposal last November had attempted to sidestep that ban by arguing that the drugs would be allowed to treat the disease of obesity and its related conditions.Expanding coverage of the drugs would have cost the federal government billions of dollars. The Biden administration estimated the federal expense at about $35 billion over 10 years.The decision announced Friday was part of a larger 438-page regulation updating parts of the programs through which beneficiaries get drug and private medical coverage. The latest revision did not explain why Medicare should not cover the drugs.Catherine Howden, a spokeswoman for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said in an email that the agency believes expanding coverage “is not appropriate at this time.” But she said the agency had not ruled out coverage and “may consider future policy options” for the drugs.The most popular weight loss drugs come from Novo Nordisk, which sells its medicine as Wegovy for weight loss and as Ozempic for diabetes, and from Eli Lilly, which sells its product as Zepbound for weight loss and Mounjaro for diabetes.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.

President Trump wants to bring pharmaceutical manufacturing back to the United States. Experts warn that tariffs could result in shortages and higher prices for generic drugs.The drug industry got a temporary reprieve on Wednesday when foreign-made medicines were exempted from President Trump’s far-reaching new tariffs.But Mr. Trump has been saying for weeks that he plans to impose tariffs specifically on pharmaceuticals, with the goal of shifting overseas production of medications back to the United States. He has said those levies could be 25 percent or higher. Drugmakers still expect tariffs targeting them to be announced soon.“The pharmaceutical companies are going to come roaring back, they’re coming roaring back, they’re all coming back to our country because if they don’t, they got a big tax to pay,” Mr. Trump said in remarks at a Rose Garden event on Wednesday.While there is still some drug manufacturing in the United States, most of the drugs Americans consume are produced at least partly overseas.The most important places in the industry’s supply chain are China, India and Europe. For example, plants in China and India make nearly all of the world’s supply of the active ingredients in the painkiller ibuprofen and the antibiotic ciprofloxacin, according to Clarivate, an industry data provider.Drugmakers have powerful financial incentives to produce their products overseas. For most companies and most medications, tariffs are unlikely to reverse that, experts said.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.

25 minutes ago

The Senate on Thursday confirmed Dr. Mehmet Oz, the celebrity TV doctor, 53-45 and mostly along party lines to lead Medicare and Medicaid, which insure nearly half of all Americans.The future of both programs is the subject of fierce debate: Republicans are contemplating significant cuts to Medicaid, which provides health care to low-income Americans. The Trump administration and G.O.P. lawmakers have proposed sizable reductions in Medicaid spending in part to find savings to pay for President Trump’s tax-cut package.Dr. Oz, 64, has for years been a vocal proponent of Medicare Advantage, the private insurance plans for older Americans, despite federal inquiries and lawmakers’ concerns that insurers have overbilled the government by tens of billions of dollars a year. He promoted it on his TV show and acted as a broker for one company that sells the plan.At his confirmation hearing before the Senate Finance Committee last month, he seemed to acknowledge problems with Medicare Advantage, and tried to reassure senators that there was a “new sheriff in town.”Democrats on the committee grilled him at length about the potential steep cuts to Medicaid, which could result in a substantial number of people becoming ineligible for health coverage.In recent days, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has overseen deep cuts to the Health and Human Services Department, including laying off roughly 10,000 employees on top of another 10,000 buyouts, retirements and departures early on in the new Trump administration.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.

Miller Gardner, the 14-year-old son of the retired Yankees player Brett Gardner, died from carbon monoxide poisoning while on vacation in Costa Rica. Here’s why the gas is so dangerous.Carbon monoxide gas, which is invisible and odorless, can be fatal. It can kill people in their homes as they sleep, seeping undetected from generators. It can accumulate within the walls of closed garages, wafting from cars left running by residents seeking warmth or power in a storm.On Thursday, another fatality by unintentional carbon monoxide poisoning was confirmed. Miller Gardner, the 14-year-old son of the longtime Yankees player Brett Gardner, died of carbon monoxide poisoning while on vacation with his family in Costa Rica. The authorities said contamination from machinery near their room at their resort could have been to blame.While it is preventable, carbon monoxide poisoning is a leading cause of poisoning-related deaths in the United States.Why is carbon monoxide dangerous?Breathing in carbon monoxide causes the gas to build up in the blood and bind to hemoglobin, a protein in red blood cells that is responsible for transporting oxygen from the lungs to the tissues in the rest of the body.When carbon monoxide binds to hemoglobin, it “kicks the oxygen off” the protein, and prevents tissues and organs from getting the oxygen they need to function properly, said Dr. Jason Rose, the chief of pulmonary, critical care and sleep medicine at the University of Maryland School of Medicine.Exposure to carbon monoxide can also lead to inflammation and cellular damage to important organs, namely the heart and brain, said Dr. Anthony Pizon, chief of medical toxicology at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, who said he typically treats a couple of patients with carbon monoxide poisoning each month.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.

Trump cutbacks were supposedly aimed at administrators. But scientists in food and drug-testing labs and policy experts who advance generic drug approvals were also dismissed.Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced wide-ranging cutbacks at federal health agencies, including the Food and Drug Administration, that would eliminate duplicative services and paper pushers.But in interviews with more than a dozen current and former F.D.A. staff members, a different picture emerged of the far-reaching effects of the layoffs that would ultimately reduce the agency work force by 20 percent. Among them are experts who navigated a maze of laws to determine if an expensive drug can be sold as a low-cost generic; lab scientists who tested food and drugs for contaminants or deadly bacteria; veterinary division specialists investigating bird flu transmission; and researchers who monitored televised ads for false claims about prescription drugs.In many areas of the F.D.A., no employees remain to process payroll, to file retirement or layoff paperwork and to help overseas inspectors who are at risk of maxing out agency credit cards. Even the agency’s library, where researchers and experts relied on medical journal subscriptions that have now been canceled, has been shut down.The F.D.A.’s new commissioner, Dr. Marty Makary, showed up for a long-awaited appearance at the agency’s Maryland headquarters on Wednesday. He delivered a speech outlining broad problems in the health care system, including a rise in chronic diseases. Employees were not given a formal opportunity to ask questions.About 3,500 F.D.A. employees are expected to lose their jobs under the reductions. A spokesman for Health and Human Services did not respond to questions.When the Trump administration executed its first round of cuts to the F.D.A. in February, it gutted teams of scientists who did the delicate work of ensuring the safety of surgical robots and devices that infuse insulin in children with diabetes. Some of the layoffs and cutbacks, described by former F.D.A. officials as arbitrary, were rapidly reversed.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.

She used her wealth strategically to expand opportunities for women, underwriting the development of the pill and supporting the suffrage movement.This article is part of Overlooked, a series of obituaries about remarkable people whose deaths, beginning in 1851, went unreported in The Times.Katharine Dexter McCormick, who was born to a life of wealth, which she compounded through marriage, could have sat back and simply enjoyed the many advantages that flowed her way. Instead, she put her considerable fortune — matched by her considerable willfulness — into making life better for women.An activist, philanthropist and benefactor, McCormick used her wealth strategically, most notably to underwrite the basic research that led to the development of the birth control pill in the late 1950s.Before then, contraception in the United States was extremely limited, with bans on diaphragms and condoms. The advent of the pill made it easier for women to plan when and whether to have children, and it fueled the explosive sexual revolution of the 1960s. Today, the pill, despite some side effects, is the most widely used form of reversible contraception in the United States.McCormick’s interest in birth control began in the 1910s, when she learned of Margaret Sanger, the feminist leader who had been jailed for opening the nation’s first birth control clinic. She shared Sanger’s fervent belief that women should be able to chart their own biological destinies.The two met in 1917 and soon hatched an elaborate scheme to smuggle diaphragms into the United States.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.

35 minutes ago

In addition to reductions at agency personnel, federal regulators are demanding $2.9 billion in contract cancellations, The Times has learned.Alongside extensive reductions to the staff of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Trump administration has asked the agency to cut $2.9 billion of its spending on contracts, according to three federal officials with knowledge of the matter.The administration’s cost-cutting program, called the Department of Government Efficiency, asked the public health agency to sever roughly 35 percent of its spending on contracts about two weeks ago. The C.D.C. was told to comply by April 18, according to the officials.The cuts promise to further hamstring an agency already reeling from the loss of 2,400 employees, nearly one-fifth of its work force. On Tuesday, the administration fired C.D.C. scientists focused on environmental health and asthma, injuries, violence prevention, lead poisoning, smoking and climate change.Officials at the White House and the Department of Health and Human Services did not immediately respond to requests for comment.Abruptly cutting 35 percent of contracts would be tough for any organization or business, said Tom Inglesby, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security at the Bloomberg School of Public Health, who advised the Biden administration during Covid.“Sure, any manager can find small savings and improvements, but these kinds of demands are of the size and speed that break down organizations,” he said. “This is not the way to do good for the public or for the public’s health.”The C.D.C.’s largest contract, about $7 billion per year, goes to the Vaccines for Children Program, which purchases vaccines for parents who may not be able to afford them. That program is mandated by law and will not be affected by the cuts, according to one senior official who spoke on condition of anonymity.But other C.D.C. contracts include spending on computers and other technology, security guards, cleaning services and facilities management. The agency also hires people to build and maintain data systems and for specific research projects. Over the past several years, contracts have also supported activities related to Covid-19, one official said.Separately, H.H.S. last week abruptly discontinued C.D.C. grants of about $11.4 billion to states that were using the funds to track infectious diseases and to support mental health services, addiction treatment and other urgent health issues.At least some of the contracts D.O.G.E. is now asking the agency to discontinue may no longer be implemented because the people overseeing them have been fired. This is not the first time D.O.G.E. asked the agency to cut funding. It previously asked the C.D.C. to cut grants to Columbia University and University of Pennsylvania, saying those institutions had failed to take action against antisemitism on campus. “Funding grants and contracts are the mechanism by which we get things done,” said one C.D.C. scientist who asked to remain anonymous because of a fear of retaliation. “They are cutting off our arms and legs.”

2 hours ago