Lawmakers are zeroing in on MultiPlan, a firm that has helped insurers cut payments while sometimes leaving patients with large bills.Lawmakers on Tuesday called on health insurance regulators to detail their efforts against “troubling practices” that have raised costs for patients and employers.In a letter to a top Labor Department official, two congressmen cited a New York Times investigation of MultiPlan, a data firm that works with insurance companies to recommend payments for medical care.The firm and the insurers can collect higher fees when payments to medical providers are lower, but patients can be stuck with large bills, the investigation found. At the same time, employers can be charged high fees — in some cases paying insurers and MultiPlan more for processing a claim than the doctor gets for treating the patient.The lawmakers, Representatives Bobby Scott of Virginia and Mark DeSaulnier of California, both Democrats in leadership positions on a House committee overseeing employer-based insurance, highlighted MultiPlan as an example of “opaque fee structures and alleged self-dealing” that drive up health care costs. In their letter, they pressed the department for details on its efforts to enforce rules meant to promote transparency and expose conflicts of interest.MultiPlan’s business model focuses on the most common way Americans get health coverage: through an employer that “self-funds,” meaning it pays medical claims with its own money and uses an insurance company to process claims. Insurers such as Aetna, Cigna and UnitedHealthcare have pitched MultiPlan’s services as a way to save money when an employee sees a provider out of network.In many cases, MultiPlan uses an algorithm-based tool to generate a recommended payment. Employers typically pay insurers and MultiPlan a percentage of what they call the “savings” — the difference between the recommendation and the original bill.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 virus is poised to become a permanent presence in cattle, raising the odds of an eventual outbreak among people.Without a sharp pivot in state and federal policies, the bird flu virus that has bedeviled American farms is likely to find a firm foothold among dairy cattle, scientists are warning.And that means bird flu may soon pose a permanent threat to other animals and to people.So far, this virus, H5N1, does not easily infect humans, and the risk to the public remains low. But the longer the virus circulates in cattle, the more chances it gains to acquire the mutations necessary to set off an influenza pandemic.“I think the window is closing on our ability to contain the outbreak,” said Dr. Krutika Kuppalli, an infectious-disease physician who worked at the World Health Organization until April.“We’re so quick to blame China for what happened with SARS-CoV-2, but we’re not doing any better right now,” she added. “That’s how pandemics happen.”Half a year into the outbreak, H5N1 shows no signs of receding in U.S. dairy cattle or in the workers who tend them. In recent weeks, the virus has spread into poultry and workers.As of Wednesday, infections had been reported in 192 herds of cattle in 13 states, and in 13 people. Nine were workers at poultry farms close to dairy farms in Colorado.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.

Getty ImagesNewspaper headlines are warning eating “a ham sandwich a day” increases a the risk of type 2 diabetes – but experts say it is not that simple.

The UK’s first official consumption room for illegal drugs including heroin and cocaine will open in Glasgow on 21 October.

We asked nearly a dozen experts in sex and intimacy for the advice they repeat again and again. For starters, they said, don’t get so hung up on how often you have, or want, sex.Couples worried about “mismatched” libidos. People struggling to orgasm. Lovers wondering if they’re having a “normal” amount of sex.Sex therapists, educators and researchers tend to see these issues over and over again.So Well reached out to several of them to ask: What do you wish more people knew about sex and intimacy?Here’s what the experts had to say.1. Comparison is the thief of sexual joy.Lori Brotto, a psychologist and professor at the University of British Columbia who is the author of “Better Sex Through Mindfulness,” spends a lot of time trying to persuade people to discard the concept of a “normal” sex life when it comes to how and how often they get intimate.The frequency with which couples have sex is not a meaningful measure of sexual health, she said, even though it is something “people get really hung up on.” It doesn’t tell you anything about whether individuals are actually enjoying time with their partners, and the sex they’re having, she added.“I have worked with couples who are having sex every night and are miserable together,” echoed Casey Tanner, a sex therapist based in New York City and author of “Feel It All.” Conversely, she has worked with couples who feel deeply connected and who have sex maybe three times a year.Let go of the numbers game, Ms. Tanner urged, and instead focus on how each sexual experience feels.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.

Apian Ltd/PA WireDrones can be safely used to deliver urgent blood stocks between hospitals, a new project suggests.

ReutersMpox is “not the new Covid”, because authorities clearly know how to control its spread, a leading World Health Organization expert has said.

For 15 years, Dr. Jeffrey E. Shuren was the federal official charged with ensuring the safety of a vast array of medical devices including artificial knees, breast implants and Covid tests.When he announced in July that he would be retiring from the Food and Drug Administration later this year, Dr. Robert Califf, the agency’s commissioner, praised him for overseeing the approval of more novel devices last year than ever before in the nearly half-century history of the device division.But the admiration for Dr. Shuren is far from universal. Consumer advocates see his tenure as marred by the approval of too many devices that harmed patients and by his own close ties to the $500 billion global device industry.One connection stood out: While Dr. Shuren regulated the booming medical device industry, his wife, Allison W. Shuren, represented the interests of device makers as the co-leader of a team of lawyers at Arnold & Porter, one of Washington’s most powerful law firms.Dr. Shuren signed ethics agreements obtained by The Times that were meant to wall him off from matters involving Arnold & Porter’s business. But it’s not clear how rigorously the ethics agreements were actually enforced. His wife’s law firm refused to provide a list of clients — and the agency had no legal authority to require it, said Michael Felberbaum, a spokesman for the F.D.A.In a review of thousands of pages of court documents and F.D.A. records and dozens of interviews with current and former agency staff members and advocates, The Times identified some clients and several instances in which the Shurens’ roles intersected.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.

Getty Images”I didn’t care how expensive it was, I didn’t care if I had any money left – I just wanted to buy it.”

It was not clear if the patient had contracted the new, potentially more deadly strain of the disease, which first appeared outside of Africa last week, in Sweden.The Philippines reported its first case this year of mpox, previously known as monkeypox, on Monday, just days after the World Health Organization declared the disease a global health emergency.The Philippines Department of Health, in a statement announcing the case, did not say whether the patient was infected with Clade Ib, the newer and potentially more deadly version of the mpox virus that is dominant now in the Democratic Republic of Congo, driving a rise in cases there.It was an older strain, Clade IIb, that caused a worldwide outbreak of mpox in 2022.Last Thursday — a day after the W.H.O. declaration of a global emergency — officials in Sweden revealed that a patient there was the first person outside of Africa to be diagnosed with the new strain, setting off fears of a much wider spread. Also on Thursday, Pakistan announced a case of mpox but said it was not yet clear which strain of the disease was involved.Here is what we know.The case in the PhilippinesThe patient is a 33-year-old Filipino man with no travel history outside of the country, whose mpox infection was confirmed and reported on Sunday to the Department of Health, the department said.The man became sick more than a week ago, first with a fever, “followed four days later by findings of a distinct rash on the face, back, nape, trunk, groin, as well as palms and soles,” the department said. The patient was seen in a government hospital, where samples of his skin lesions were taken to test for genetic evidence of the virus.The Philippines’ secretary of health, Dr. Teodoro J. Herbosa, discouraged public panic by emphasizing that officials were working to make testing convenient. “Our health system is working,” he said in a statement, “we can handle the situation and will keep the public well-informed.”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.