Axios

Seven of the world's largest pharmaceutical companies — AbbVie, Amgen, Novartis, GlaxoSmithKline, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Eli Lilly and Biogen — cumulatively collected $12.1 billion of profit in the first three months of 2018. That's up 29% from the same time last year.

The bottom line: Drug makers have not been shy about raising list prices on previously approved medications, despite President Trump's rhetoric about going after the industry.

Senator Chuck Schumer will aggressively pressure the director for the Center for Disease Control, Robert Redfield, to begin conducting research on gun violence in the country immediately, an aide told the Daily Beast.

The backdrop: When Congress passed its spending budget in March, there was an addendum to the bill formally stating that the CDC could spend money on gun research, clarifying language from a 1996 amendment that blocked the CDC from doing so. The addendum paved the way for the CDC to officially dedicate government resources to such research, but the CDC has yet to take action in the month since the funding bill passed. Schumer is now taking the lead to ensure they press forward.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says it's using whole genome testing and on-the-ground investigation to try to determine why the current E. coli outbreak from romaine lettuce is more virulent than normal — about half of all people affected have been hospitalized .

Kevin Counihan, a former Obama administration official who oversaw the HealthCare.gov marketplace and now is an executive at health insurer Centene, told Wall Street investors during Centene's first-quarter earnings call that the Affordable Care Act's requirement to purchase health insurance wasn't really effective.

"When I was at [the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services], I never really thought the individual mandate was all that powerful, and I'll tell you why. Because number one, the dollar value for the penalty was not that significant, particularly compared to premium. And number two is, there were so many opportunities for people to appeal."