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Good morning. This is Lev Facher filling in for Theresa while she enjoys her spring vacation. Lots of news yesterday, papal and otherwise — let’s get to it. I’m reachable at [email protected].
The Supreme Court seems likely to uphold a key ACA mandate
The Affordable Care Act’s mandate that health insurers cover preventive care appears likely to survive a legal challenge currently before the Supreme Court.
During oral arguments on Monday, conservative justices including Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh appeared skeptical of arguments that the ACA’s process for determining which services must be covered by health insurance violates the Constitution, the Associated Press reports. The case reached the Supreme Court after the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals sided with employers, who had argued they can’t be required to provide certain such services.
However the court decides, the ruling could have profound ramifications for the future of preventive health care in the U.S., legal and medical experts told STAT’s Angus Chen last week. The ACA provision covers medications and screenings recommended by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, including statins, HIV prevention drugs called PrEP, and lung and colorectal screenings. There are several compelling reasons to maintain coverage of preventive services without cost sharing like deductibles and copays, writes Jeff Levin-Scherz in an op-ed. The managing director of the North American Health and Benefits Practice at WTW elaborates here.
Some justices suggested the case could be returned to the lower court. In any case, a ruling is expected by the end of June.
NIH bans new funds to institutions with DEI programs, Israel boycotts
The Trump administration is stepping up its efforts to wield the federal government’s scientific purse strings as leverage in a broader policy war. Yesterday, my colleague Anil Oza scooped that the National Institutes of Health will soon prohibit new grants from being awarded to institutions that boycott Israeli companies or maintain programs dedicated to diversity, equity, and inclusion. The news follows the cancellation of numerous grants and funding opportunities targeted toward researchers of historically marginalized backgrounds, as well billions of dollars in research grants previously awarded to Ivy League schools including Harvard and Columbia.
Shortly after Anil’s exclusive, the NIH formalized the policy, announcing that grant recipients must certify that they do not have any “diversity, equity, and inclusion” or “diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility” programs or participate in Israel-related boycotts. The agency warned that grantees found to violate those terms are subject to award cancellations and clawbacks of money already spent. But on Monday, newly installed NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya said that the agency remains committed to research that advances the health of minority populations, STAT’s Jonathan Wosen reported.
Stances on autism are reshaping the advocacy landscape
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s repeated references to the autism “epidemic” and suggestions that it is fueled by an “environmental toxin” have provoked such intense outrage within the autism community that leading advocacy organizations have temporarily cast aside long-standing feuds.
More than 20 organizations penned a letter last week that brought together several unlikely bedfellows in the autism advocacy world, including Autism Speaks and the Autistic Self Advocacy Network. Those organizations’ beef stretches back decades to Autism Speaks’ infamous 2009 ad that compared autism to AIDS, cancer and diabetes. (See the recent graphic on ASAN’s website, titled “Before You Donate to Autism Speaks, Consider the Facts.”)
The signators write that rhetoric suggesting that autism is preventable will only deepen stigma and misunderstanding surrounding an already-marginalized population. It also ignores the robust scientific evidence that autism is mainly genetic. While it’s unclear how long this truce will last, the letter is a clear sign that Kennedy’s policies are changing how the autism community is advocating for itself. — O. Rose Broderick
More Americans with mental health conditions are using psilocybin
Use of psilocybin, the hallucinogenic compound found in numerous mushroom species, has sharply increased since 2019, according to a new study published Monday in the Annals of Internal Medicine.
The spike is particularly pronounced among Americans with mental health conditions, the study shows. The rate of adults 18-29 reporting psilocybin use in the past year jumped by 44%, according to the study, while adults over 30 showed a 188% increase. Perhaps unsurprisingly, poison control center calls related to psilocybin also skyrocketed among adults, teens, and even children.
“What really surprised us was how quickly these numbers changed and how many people using psilocybin had conditions like depression, anxiety or chronic pain,” Karilynn Rockhill, a researcher at the Colorado School of Public Health who co-led the study, said in a press release. “New laws or growing interest in its potential mental health benefits may be prompting people to seek psilocybin as a form of self-treatment.”
Democratic senators push back against cuts to tobacco divisions at FDA, CDC
The staffing cuts roiling HHS have hit people working on tobacco issues particularly hard. A letter signed by 18 Democratic senators on Monday pushes the Trump administration for answers about how it plans to regulate tobacco products and enforce those regulations in light of cuts at the FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products, as well as what the gutting of the CDC’s Office on Smoking and Health means for the future of tobacco use prevention and cessation.
“Without these critical staff, we are concerned that more youth will start using tobacco products, fewer people will quit, and more people will become ill and die from tobacco-caused disease,” the senators write.
Beyond these concerns, the senators’ list of questions highlights just how little information lawmakers, not to mention the public, have about what’s going on in the federal government. They want to know things like how many people have lost their jobs, whether federal funding will continue for various anti-tobacco initiatives, and what’s going to happen to the $712 million in user fees collected from tobacco companies and meant to be used by the CTP. Wouldn’t we all! Read more about the upheaval at the FDA and CDC’s tobacco divisions, the latter of which a former director called “the greatest gift to the tobacco industry in the last half century.” — Sarah Todd
The case for long-term clinical trials on diet and nutrition
An NIH research program meant to study the association between diet and chronic health is unlikely to yield meaningful conclusions, according to a new First Opinion piece by researchers David Ludwig and Mary Putt. The culprit is the planned duration of the various diets included in the study: just two weeks each.
Ludwig and Putt argue that such a short duration is “simply not enough time to tell us anything meaningful” and leaves the research extremely prone to statistical bias and other confusion. Since there is “no substitute” for longer trials, they argue, the program in question — Nutrition for Precision Health — should channel its funding toward large-scale trials of low-carbohydrate, ultra-processed, and other diets spanning two years.
But as the program currently stands, “these trials are not only inconclusive, but also potentially misleading by making a healthy diet look bad and an unhealthy diet look good,” they write. “We must do better.”
What we’re reading
As fentanyl deaths slow, meth comes for Maine, New York Times
- I got cancer at 26. Four decades later, my story offers the gift of hope, Washington Post
- National Science Foundation cancels research grants related to misinformation and disinformation, Nieman Lab
- Intensive lowering of blood pressure tied to lower dementia risk, STAT
Harvard sues Trump administration over funding freeze, The Boston Globe
- Why cameras are popping up in eldercare facilities, KFF Health News
