A doctor was killed and 2 hospital workers were injured on Friday during an attack on a hospital in the Democratic Republic of the Congo while they were working with Ebola virus victims, the World Health Organization announced.
The backdrop: This is not the first attack on a hospital that is treating Ebola victims during the second-largest Ebola virus outbreak on record. WHO has yet to declare its highest alert: "Public Health Emergency of International Concern," despite at least 1,000 cases of Ebola confirmed in the Congo.
Insurers will still be allowed to "silver load" on the individual market next year, the Trump administration announced yesterday.
Why it matters: Silver loading was insurers' solution to the administration's decision to cancel the Affordable Care Act's cost-sharing subsidies for low-income enrollees. It essentially keeps insurers from losing money without raising the financial contribution from subsidized enrollees.
Drug companies are making good on their vow to post their prices online, part of an attempt to keep the Trump administration from imposing even more stringent rules on price transparency, Bloomberg reports.
The bottom line: This is a response to the administration's proposal to require drugmakers to include list prices in TV ads. Some experts say that making patients go online is not the equivalent of requiring TV ad disclosures. "If your aim is transparency, those prices need to be upfront and not require additional action from the patient," Connecture's Jim Yocum told Bloomberg.
On a flight from New York City to Tel Aviv, a flight attendant fell ill, and is now being hospitalized while in a coma from a measles-related complication, the New York Times reports per Eyal Basson, a spokesman for the Isreali Ministry of Health.
Details: It has not yet been confirmed whether the flight attendant had been vaccinated, but the woman's mother claimed she received recommended inoculations, per the New York Times. CNN reports that she has been in a coma for over 10 days. National health officials warned those who were aboard the March 26 El Al flight 002, recommending they visit medical professionals if fevers develop. In a letter, health officials also recommended all airline staff be immunized with 2 doses of the MMR vaccine.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) announced on Thursday that he will introduce new legislation in May to raise the federal minimum age to buy tobacco products from 18 to 21.
"For some time, I’ve been hearing from the parents who are seeing an unprecedented spike in vaping among their teenage children. In addition, we all know people who started smoking at a young age and who struggled to quit as adults. Unfortunately it’s reaching epidemic levels around the country."
