Axios

The CDC, state health officials and the Food and Drug Administration are now investigating 193 potential cases of a lung-related illness possibly linked to vaping, acting deputy director for Non-Infectious Diseases at the CDC, Ileana Arias, said on Friday.

The latest: In Illinois, 1 of those cases was fatal. An adult Illinois resident died after being hospitalized with a severe respiratory illness after vaping recently, state officials said Friday. The 193 cases were reported by 22 states, and not all have been confirmed, per Arias. Many of the cases involve teens and young adults. The Wisconsin and Illinois health departments have asked the CDC for assistance to investigate these cases.

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention said Thursday it is "concerned" about a new multidrug-resistant strain of Salmonella that killed 2 and sickened 255 people from June 2018 to March 2019.

Why it matters: Experts have sounded the alarm over growing antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in the U.S. and globally.

There's a lot of skepticism about whether making prices more transparent will do anything to lower them, but there are ways to maximize the odds, Gilbert Benavidez and Austin Frakt write in JAMA Forum.

Driving the news: Both the Trump administration and Congress are pushing pricing transparency measures, banking on the idea that if consumers know how much health care services cost, they'll opt for the cheaper ones.

Buying a new car every year would be a very impractical expense. It would also be cheaper than a year’s worth of health care for a family.

Why it matters: The cost-shifting and complexity of health insurance can hide its high cost, which crowds out families’ other needs and depresses workers’ wages.

Wyoming has come up with a unique way to make air ambulances — a common source of huge surprise medical bills — more affordable, according to the Georgetown University Health Policy Institute's blog.

The big picture: The state is essentially proposing to turn air ambulances into a public utility after its health department has put together a Medicaid waiver that would make all residents, regardless of their income, eligible for Medicaid coverage of air ambulance services.

Premiums for Affordable Care Act coverage are going down in some places, and barely rising in others.

The big picture: Health insurers raised ACA rates dramatically over the past few years, largely due to political chaos. But their plans have still proven to be extremely profitable. Now many companies are lowering premiums as they expect to send money back to their customers.

The CDC is working with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and state health officials to gather information on new cases of lung-related illnesses possibly caused by vaping, per a Wednesday press release.

What's happening: 16 states have reported 153 possible cases of "severe lung illness associated with e-cigarette product use" between June 28 and August 20, according to the CDC. There is no evidence that an infectious disease is the culprit of the illnesses and no deaths have been reported, per the CDC.