In the spring of 2020, as Covid-19 took hold around the world, Centers of Disease Control and Prevention director Mandy Cohen was the head of North Carolina’s Department of Health and Human Services. Among the challenges she and her team had to face was the antiquated state of data pervasive in public health and medicine. “One of our first things that...

A new study looking at the distribution of receptors that flu viruses can attach to in different cow tissues may help to explain the pattern of illness being seen in the outbreak of H5N1 bird flu in U.S. dairy cattle — and also is sparking debate about the implications of the cow outbreak for human disease. The study, a preprint that hasn’t yet been...

The changing landscape of drug pricing policy in the U.S. has implications for the global pace and direction of innovation. Drug policy changes are being influenced by perceptions of the value of novel medicines relative to their budgetary impacts, with some believing that many medicines may not be worth their cost, creating an important role for health...

For more than 30 years, Alzheimer’s researchers have thought of APOE4 as a major genetic risk factor for most cases of the devastating neurologic disease. But a new study published on Monday argues that this gene variant plays an even more important role than scientists had realized and causes a distinct form of Alzheimer’s. Researchers analyzed data...

You’re reading the web version of Health Care Inc., STAT’s weekly newsletter following the flow of money in medicine. Sign up to get it in your inbox every Monday. About that 90,000 number UnitedHealth Group CEO Andrew Witty faced Congress last week, where lawmakers pressed him on the Change Healthcare cyberattack (my colleague Brittany Trang watched...

Steward Health Care, which once trumpeted its community hospital system as a low-cost alternative to Boston’s medical goliaths before expanding nationally and falling into a deep financial crisis, filed for bankruptcy protection early Monday morning. Under Chapter 11 of the US bankruptcy code, Steward will become a “debtor in possession,” continuing...