Axios

Quick update: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention today announced the E. coli outbreak continues to spread — so far, 22 states have reported 98 people are ill with a 53% hospitalization rate. Ten of those have kidney failure from hemolytic uremic syndrome.

What's happening: CDC also says this strain is producing "a type of toxin that tends to cause more severe illness, which may explain why there is a high hospitalization rate."

Go deeper: How researchers are studying the outbreak.

AbbVie CEO Rick Gonzalez about patients who have hepatitis C during the drug company's Q1 earnings call yesterday:

"This is a market that is going to be around for a long, long time and be a very big market. And I think now, essentially you have us and one competitor who have the lion's share of this marketplace."

The bottom line: AbbVie and Gilead Sciences, through Gonzalez' own lens, have become the dominant options for patients who have hepatitis C. And AbbVie's main hepatitis C drug, Mavyret, appears to be winning over physicians in part because it costs less than Gilead's main Harvoni product — although Mavyret still retails for about $26,400 for a regular course of treatment before discounts.

The next big battle in health care will almost certainly be about costs, and right now it’s largely confined to industry infighting and finger-pointing. But mounting frustration from employers and employees could put cost controls on the table faster than you might think.

The big picture: Frustration over health care costs is one thing. But the greater threat to the health care industry is one that’s just starting to percolate — concern that we’ve already maxed out the existing tools to control those costs.

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.