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[ad_1] A person receives a COVID-19 vaccination dose, during a free distribution of COVID-19 rapid test kits for those who received vaccination shots or booster shots, at Union Station on January 7, 2022 in Los Angeles, California. Mario Tama | Getty Images The U.S. Food and Drug Administration 's independent panel of advisors raised doubts about the need to "periodically" update Covid vaccines, noting that it's unclear if the virus is seasonal like the flu. Advisors on Thursday unanimously voted that new jabs for the fall should be monovalent — meaning they are designed against one variant of Covid — and target one of the omicron XBB strains . Those are now the dominant variants nationwide.  But the original voting question included language about whether the panel recommends a "periodic update" to Covid shots.  Dr. Peter Marks, head of the FDA's vaccine division, asked the panel's chair to strike the wording from the question after severa

[ad_1] The US Supreme Court in Washington, DC, on June 27, 2023. Kevin Dietsch | Getty Images WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Friday blocked in full a lower court ruling that would have curbed the Biden administration's ability to communicate with social media companies about contentious content on such issues as Covid-19. The decision in a  short unsigned order  puts on hold a Louisiana-based judge's ruling in July that specific agencies and officials should be barred from meeting with companies to discuss whether certain content should be stifled. The Supreme Court also agreed to immediately take up the government's appeal, meaning it will hear arguments and issue a ruling on the merits in its current term, which runs until the end of June. Three conservative justices noted that they would have denied the application: Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch. "At this time in the history of our country, what the court has done, I fear, will be seen by so

[ad_1] Life expectancy in the U.S. is between three and five years lower than the average in other high-income countries — and the gap comes in part from misinformation, Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Dr. Robert Califf said. "It's looking worse, not better, over the last several years," Califf told CNBC in an interview Thursday at the agency's headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland. It's not just the Covid pandemic contributing to the decline, he said, pointing out the gap with peer nations is widening. Califf said a new factor has joined the list of known causes of life-expectancy disparities like race, ethnicity, income and education: living in a rural area, where he noted that people are exposed to different information sources. "Why aren't we using medical products as effectively and efficiently as our peer countries? A lot of it has to do with choices that people make because of the things that influenced their thinking," Calif

[ad_1] A UnitedHealth Group health insurance card is seen in a wallet, Oct.14, 2019. Lucy Nicholson | Reuters Good afternoon! Health insurers are feeling the squeeze as older patients head to the doctor more than expected. CVS , which owns health insurer Aetna, on Wednesday  slashed its full-year profit outlook , citing the potential for higher medical costs to bite into its profits. That warning came two weeks after insurance giant  Humana  cited the same factor as it issued a  dismal 2024 earnings guidance . Medical costs from Medicare Advantage patients have  spiked over the last year  as more older adults return to hospitals to undergo procedures they had delayed during the Covid pandemic, such as joint and hip replacements.  Medicare Advantage , a type of privately run health insurance plan contracted by Medicare, has long been a key source of growth and profits for the insurance industry.  More than half  of Medicare beneficiaries are enrolled in such plans, enticed by lower

[ad_1] Every weekday the CNBC Investing Club with Jim Cramer holds a "Morning Meeting" livestream at 10:20 a.m. ET. Here's a recap of Friday's key moments. 1. Wall Street saw some volatility Friday around Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell's morning speech from the central bank conference in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Powell said inflation is still "too high" and the Fed is "prepared to raise rates further" if economic data dictates it. No interest rate hike is expected at next month's Fed meeting, according to the CME FedWatch tool . There's a split in the market on whether we'll see one more rate hike before year-end. Currently, no action is favored. 2. The overall market remains oversold, according to Jim Cramer's trusted S & P Oscillator , but not as oversold as it was earlier in the week. We've been making strategic buys all week long. One day after a blowout quarter, we boosted on Thursday our Nvidia (NVDA) pr

[ad_1] The newly FDA approved Alzheimer's treatment Leqembi is prepared at Abington Neurological Associates in Abington, PA., on Tuesday, November 7, 2023.  Hannah Yoon | The Washington Post | Getty Images The breakthrough Alzheimer's drug Leqembi slowed disease progression in patients over three years, demonstrating the need for them to stay on the treatment long term, according to new data released Tuesday by Japanese drugmaker Eisai .  The study results on Leqembi, which Eisai shares with Biogen , also found that a patient's Alzheimer's disease worsens after they stop treatment. Rates of adverse side effects associated with Leqembi, including brain bleeding and swelling, dropped after six months of treatment, Dr. Lynn Kramer, Eisai's chief clinical officer of deep human biology learning, told CNBC.  That decline is critical: Those side effects in the brain have raised concerns among some doctors and are the main reason a European drug regulator recommend

[ad_1] Boxes of mifepristone, the first pill given in a medical abortion, are prepared for patients at Women's Reproductive Clinic of New Mexico in Santa Teresa, U.S., January 13, 2023.  Evelyn Hockstein | Reuters A coalition of a dozen Democratic attorneys general sued the Food and Drug Administration on Friday to force the agency to drop all remaining restrictions on the abortion pill, the latest case in an escalating series of legal battles over access to the medication. The attorneys general asked a federal court in the eastern district of Washington to declare that the abortion pill, mifepristone, is safe and effective and that all remaining restrictions on the medication are unconstitutional. The lawsuit was led by Washington state Attorney General Bob Ferguson and Oregon's AG Ellen Rosenblum. The attorneys general of Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Rhode Island and Vermont were also part of the suit. The attorneys g

[ad_1] Two U.S. senators have launched a bipartisan investigation into secretive and powerful private-equity firms' involvement in health care in the nation, demanding documents and information from executives associated with two hospital systems to assess how much profit they have generated through their complex financial arrangements and whether the deals harmed patients and clinicians.   Sheldon Whitehouse, the Rhode Island Democrat who chairs the Senate Budget Committee, and Chuck Grassley, the Iowa Republican who is the committee's ranking member, are spearheading the inquiry. It began in March when Grassley requested information from private-equity giant Apollo Global Management , owner of Ottumwa Regional Health Center, a Lifepoint Health facility in southeast Iowa where a  male nurse assaulted  at least nine sedated patients in 2021 and 2022. The nurse later died from an overdose at the facility. "When it comes to our nation's hospitals, a business model t

[ad_1] The launch of Eli Lilly 's weight-loss drug Zepbound — a key pillar of our investment thesis in the pharmaceuticals giant — is going swimmingly in the U.S., Jefferies said Friday. Weekly Zepbound prescriptions totaled 7,700 in the week ended Dec. 8, its fourth on the U.S. market, according to Jefferies, which cited data compiled by health-care analytics firm IQVIA. That is more than Novo Nordisk 's Wegovy — currently the most popular obesity drug in the country — had in its fourth week after being approved in 2021, Jefferies concluded. "Zepbound has shown strong launch momentum in the weeks following its first prescription recorded," the analysts wrote in a research note. That's an encouraging finding for investors, given it will be more than a month before Eli Lilly reports earnings with formal revenue contributions from its much-hyped obesity drug. The Club holding typically reports fourth-quarter results in late January or early February. To be sure

[ad_1] Next week is one of the biggest of the year for health-care investors, and it has historically been a good time to own ETFs that track the industry. The 2023 JPMorgan Health Care Conference is set to kick off next Monday in San Francisco. The event features keynote speeches from the CEOs of Sage Therapeutics and Eli Lilly , as well as presentations from dozens of other health-care and biotech companies. The conference typically sees many companies preannounce quarterly results, revise outlooks and update investors about clinical trials. While those updates can break both ways for individual companies, they have recently been good news for the sector as a whole. Over the past five years, many of the biggest ETFs in health care and biotech have seen an average positive return in the first half of January, when the conference is typically held. The three funds below — the SPDR S & P Biotech ETF (XBI) , the Health Care Select Sector SPDR Fund (XLV) and the iShares U.S. Medi

[ad_1] Heart disease is the nation's No. 1 killer, reaching into all communities across income, race, gender and geography. It takes a disproportionate toll on minority populations and women, but one challenge that many patients at risk of a heart attack share: inability to identify the risk before it is too late. More than half of individuals experiencing acute myocardial infarction have no symptoms that might serve as early warning signs. Cardiologist James Min, former professor at Weill Cornell Medical College and director of the Dalio Institute of Cardiovascular Imaging at New York-Presbyterian, founded Cleerly to find a better way to assess heart health, by applying AI to the problem, cutting down on the time it takes to flag issues and ultimately reach his goal of a "heart-attack free" world. His startup's quantitative comparison tool tracks patient disease by the amount and type of atherosclerosis (plaque) rather than indirect surrogates, including risk f

[ad_1] The snack aisle is seen during a tour of a new Amazon Go store in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Seattle, Washington, U.S., on Monday, Feb. 24, 2020. Chona Kasinger | Bloomberg | Getty Images For more than a century, frosted cornflakes have been the backbone of Kellogg's business. That changes Monday, when the company will spin off its stable cereal business in favor of its faster-growing snack unit and rename itself Kellanova . The spinoff comes weeks after another wager that consumers will graze between meals, when J.M. Smucker bought Twinkie maker Hostess Brands for $5.6 billion in a bid to expand its snack lineup. But food companies' major bets on snacking come as investors fear the looming danger of Big Pharma's blockbuster obesity and diabetes drugs Wegovy and Ozempic. Many investors have high hopes for the pharmaceuticals' future, but their success could mean slower sales for the companies that produce Oreos, Doritos and Hershey's Kisses. Bi