Biden and Harris team up for health care event in North Carolina

Biden and Harris team up for health care event in North Carolina

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris will promote their health care agenda on Tuesday in North Carolina, a battleground state that Democrats hope to flip in their favor after falling short to Donald Trump in the last two presidential elections. Fourteen years after President Barack Obama signed the Affordable Care Act … Read more

Supreme Court hears arguments Tuesday in case that could restrict access to abortion medication

Supreme Court hears arguments Tuesday in case that could restrict access to abortion medication

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court is hearing arguments Tuesday in its first abortion case since conservative justices overturned the constitutional right to an abortion two years ago. At stake is the ease of access to a medication that was used in nearly two-thirds of all abortions in the U.S. last year. Abortion opponents are asking … Read more

Supreme Court again confronts the issue of abortion, this time over access to widely used medication

Supreme Court again confronts the issue of abortion, this time over access to widely used medication

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court will again wade into the fractious issue of abortion this week when it hears arguments over a medication used in the most common way to end a pregnancy, a case with profound implications for millions of women no matter where they live in America and, perhaps, for the race for … Read more

UnitedHealth says it has made progress on recovering from a massive cyberattack

UnitedHealth says it has made progress on recovering from a massive cyberattack

UnitedHealth is testing the last major system it must restore from last month’s Change Healthcare cyberattack, but it has no date yet for finishing the recovery. The health care giant said Monday that it is testing software for submitting medical claims. It already has largely restored systems for handling pharmacy claims and processing payments. Change … Read more

Early results show lower cancer rates than expected among Air Force nuclear missile personnel

Early results show lower cancer rates than expected among Air Force nuclear missile personnel

WASHINGTON — The Air Force is reporting the first data on cancer diagnoses among troops who worked with nuclear missiles and, while the data is only about 25% complete, the service says the numbers are lower than what they expected. The Air Force said so far it has identified 23 cases of non-Hodgkin lymphoma, a … Read more

EPA tightens limits on a chemical used to sterilize medical equipment, citing cancer risk

EPA tightens limits on a chemical used to sterilize medical equipment, citing cancer risk

WASHINGTON — The Environmental Protection Agency is imposing stricter limits on a chemical used to sterilize medical equipment after finding a higher-than-expected cancer risk at facilities that use ethylene oxide to clean billions of devices including catheters and syringes. A rule finalized Thursday will reduce ethylene oxide emissions by about 90% by targeting nearly 90 … Read more

State Medicaid offices target dead people’s homes to recoup their health care costs

State Medicaid offices target dead people’s homes to recoup their health care costs

WASHINGTON — As Salvatore LoGrande fought cancer and all the pain that came with it, his daughters promised to keep him in the white, pitched roof house he worked so hard to buy all those decades ago. So, Sandy LoGrande thought it was a mistake when, a year after her father’s death, Massachusetts billed her … Read more

Bernie Sanders wants the US to adopt a 32-hour workweek. Could workers and companies benefit?

Bernie Sanders wants the US to adopt a 32-hour workweek. Could workers and companies benefit?

The 40-hour workweek has been standard in the U.S. for more than eight decades. Now some members of Congress want to give hourly workers an extra day off. Sen. Bernie Sanders, the far-left independent from Vermont, this week introduced a bill that would shorten to 32 hours the amount of time many Americans can work … Read more

Vice President Harris, rapper Fat Joe team up for discussion on easing marijuana penalties

Vice President Harris, rapper Fat Joe team up for discussion on easing marijuana penalties

WASHINGTON — Vice President Kamala Harris and rapper Fat Joe led a White House discussion Friday on easing marijuana penalties, with Harris saying it’s “absurd” that the federal government classifies marijuana as more dangerous than fentanyl, the synthetic opioid blamed for tens of thousands of deaths annually the United States. Harris, a former state prosecutor … Read more

Vice President Harris will visit a Minnesota clinic that performs abortions

Vice President Harris will visit a Minnesota clinic that performs abortions

WASHINGTON — Vice President Kamala Harris on Thursday plans to tour a Minnesota clinic that performs abortions and provides other reproductive care as Democrats play up their opposition to the rollback of abortion rights in an effort to help reelect President Joe Biden in November. It will be the first time that a president or … Read more