The Supreme Court backed the Affordable Care Act on Thursday, rebuffing a third attack on the law led by GOP-dominated states. Justices ruled in a 7-2 vote that states lacked legal standing to bring the challenge, as they hadn’t been required to pay anything under the ACA’s former mandate provision. (NPR)
Controversial Biogen Alzheimer’s disease drug Aduhelm will raise spending on all prescription drugs at least 8% by the mid-2020s, a new analysis showed. The analysis did not take into account additional spending on PET scans, MRIs, facility fees and other costs associated with administering the IV medication. (Axios)
CureVac’s COVID-19 vaccine rang up a less-than-stellar 47% effectiveness in a large trial, an interim analysis showed. Among 124 cases sequenced in the trial, just one was attributable to the original SARS-CoV-2 virus, underscoring the challenge posed by variant strains. (CureVac)
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s vaccine advisory committee is set to meet Friday about COVID vaccine safety, specifically cases of inflammatory heart conditions found in younger patients who received mRNA-based shots. The committee is also slated to review recommendations for booster vaccine doses. (CDC)
CVS Health suffered a massive data leak that left a billion user records, along with email addresses and user IDs, exposed. The records, which appear to have been culled from cvs.com and cvshealth.com, included categories of products and medications users had searched for or added to their cart during virtual shopping sessions. (Gizmodo)
