POLITICO's Pulse Check

Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) is aiming to introduce health care cybersecurity legislation during the first quarter of 2023 that could set minimum standards for health care organizations to protect patient data from hacking threats. Ben Leonard talks with Lauren Gardner about his conversation with Sen. Warner with thoughts from some of biggest advocacy groups in the space, CHIME and AHA. Learn more abo...

The Biden administration plans to widen the testing of bathroom waste for Covid variants and other pathogens when international flights arrive. Krista Mahr talks with Megan Messerly about collecting wastewater samples from long-haul flights, which administration officials and public health experts see as part of a revolution in biosafety infrastructure, and a critical plank of national security in...

Soaring Covid and seasonal infections like flu and RSV have compounded long-term problems at the NHS. Long wait times for treatment and a chronically understaffed and burned out workforce have raised a contentious debate about whether the U.K. should move away from its single-payer system. Helen Collis talks with Lauren Gardner about what the changes could look like. Learn more about your ad choic...

The Covid public health emergency, which looks likely to end as soon as April, could curtail access to drugs used to treat substance use disorders and mental illnesses. Ben Leonard talks with Ruth Reader about what's holding the DEA back from setting up a special registration process. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Federal officials are paying attention to promising programs emerging on the frontlines of the opioid epidemic — in prisons and jails. Krista Mahr talks with Ben Leonard about her report out of the Maine State Prison. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Alice Miranda Ollstein talks with Adam Cancryn about his report that senior Biden officials are targeting an end to the Covid-19 emergency designation, which would trigger a complex restructuring of major elements of the federal response. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ben Leonard talks with Lauren Gardner about the debate over HHS's directive requiring doctors to send patients test results before they have a chance to explain them. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On Friday, the FDA granted accelerated approval to Leqembi, previously known as lecanemab, made by Eisai and Biogen. The drug is the second that targets amyloid proteins in the brain, which are thought to cause progressive dementia. Katherine Ellen Foley talks with Megan Messerly about the future of the drug. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

According to the latest data from the HHS’ Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration annual survey, one in three Americans had a substance abuse disorder or mental illness in 2021. Lauren Gardner talks with Daniel Payne. Plus, Ben Leonard talks with Amy Abernethy, the former No. 2 at the Food and Drug Administration and now president of Verily’s clinical research business, about ba...

The coronavirus Omicron strain XBB.1.5, which has become the dominant strain in the U.S. in just a matter of weeks, could drive a new wave of cases, a World Health Organization official told reporters Wednesday. Lauren Gardner talks with Carmen Paun about what the WHO knows and what it doesn't — yet. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Katherine Ellen Foley talks with Alice Miranda Ollstein about the influx of new demands that anti-abortion groups have presented to the 118th Congress. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Katherine Ellen Foley talks with Ruth Reader about the state of artificial intelligence in health care and why it hasn’t reached its promise yet. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Carmen Paun talks with Daniel Payne about the trajectory of the mpox outbreak in 2022 and what lessons we can learn from it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In June, the Supreme Court overturned the landmark Roe v. Wade decision — throwing the future of abortion access in the U.S. into flux. Since then, roughly a quarter of states have made accessing the procedure illegal in most circumstances, while others have bolstered protections for doctors and patients. At the federal level, members of Congress and the Biden administration have been grappling wi...

Mark Cuban is famous for his "Shark Tank" reality TV show on ABC and is one of America's most prominent investors. But he's also trying to disrupt the prescription drug space. Earlier this year, he made a foray into health care, launching the Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Company to take on the pharmaceutical market and lower drug prices. Ben Leonard talked with him about the Cost Plus Drug company he...

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) takes the reins of the Senate HELP Committee next month. Lauren Gardner talks with Megan Wilson about why lobbyists are bracing for what comes next. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The House voted on the National Defense Authorization Act last week – the Senate hasn’t yet, but it’s one step closer to passage. Grace Scullion talks with Carmen Paun about the NDAA's planned $5 billion over five years for global health security. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

At least 3,500 Americans have died due, at least in part, to long Covid, according to new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Ben Leonard talks with Krista Mahr about the analysis from the CDC’s Center for National Health Statistics. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Katherine Ellen Foley talks with Megan Messerly about the situation inside hospitals as Covid, RSV and flu cases rise. Nearly 30,000 people currently U.S. hospitals have tested positive for Covid-19, according to the CDC, up 30 percent since Thanksgiving — with New York, Arizona and New Mexico among the hardest hit. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today in our Pulse Check podcast, Lauren Gardner talks with Megan Messerly about the introduction of biosimilars next year to compete with Humira, the anti-inflammatory used to treat arthritis that has been the best-selling drug in America. Competition could reduce prices for consumers, but that’s not certain. Lauren explains how it could play out.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphon...

Retiring Republican Rep. Fred Upton has been a big advocate for major health care policies in his tenure. He joined Ruth Reader to discuss what he accomplished while in office and his hopes for Cures 2.0 and the PASTEUR act. Later, John Halamka talks about the future of AI in health care. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

At the second day of the Milken Future of Health conference, Grace Scullion talks with Dr. Ofer Levy, a pediatrician specializing in infectious diseases at Boston Children's Hospital and a voting member of the FDA COVID vaccine advisory panel. Plus, Sen. Tim Kaine on why he's optimistic there will be funding for long covid in an end-of-year omnibus. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphon...

At the first day of the Milken Future of Healthcare conference, Ben Leonard talks with Steve Posnack, the Deputy National Coordinator for Health Information Technology at HHS, about what he thinks the biggest barriers are to people getting access to their health data. Plus, over on Capitol Hill, lobbying reporter Megan Wilson attended a Q&A with Jack Resneck, the president of the American Medical...

Ben Leonard talks with Erin Banco about her investigation into why the FDA team overseeing licensed vaccines is overwhelmed by high turnover and a backlog of inspections. Also, Shawn Zeller provides a preview of the Milken Institute’s Future of Health Summit, which starts today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices