A Trump administration plan to overhaul wage levels for visa holders is jolting hospitals and long-term care facilities that are heavily reliant on foreign-born workers.

Why it matters: It's the latest immigration-related policy change to loom over the health care workforce, coming after President Trump's $100,000 H-1B visa fee and the suspension of certain immigrants' work authorization renewals.

• The latest move could further drive up costs for providers already struggling with staffing shortages, thin margins and growing patient demand, because many health jobs can't be outsourced or automated.

Driving the news: The Department of Labor wants to change the formula for calculating what it considers "fair minimum pay" for workers on certain visas, like H-1Bs, and green card sponsorship jobs.

• The administration says the change would make it harder for companies to use visa programs to obtain cheaper labor and undercut American workers.
• But the rule could have an outsized effect on health systems, testing labs, nursing homes and research institutions that sponsor foreign-trained workers.
• There's special concern about rural health providers that rely heavily on foreign-born clinicians to fill gaps in care in underserved areas.

Critics say the change won't adequately account for regional wage differences or experience levels.

• They also warn a higher wage requirement will force employers to raise pay for U.S. workers to comply with labor laws — and make it unsustainable to hire foreign-born talent.

The big picture: The U.S. health care system is heavily dependent on a foreign-born workforce. Immigrants make up about 16% of registered nurses nationwide, per a KFF analysis.

• They make up 28% of the U.S. long-term care workforce, KFF found.

Zoom in: Lynn Bruder, the CEO of staffing firm Nucleus Healthcare, said wage rates for visa-holding nurses on the lower end of the pay scale could jump 25% to 35% in certain markets, or from about $40 an hour to more than $50 an hour.

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Biohub, the Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan-funded institute, yesterday released what it says amounts to "a world model of protein biology."

Why it matters: Biohub says the system can compress years of protein research into hours or days, potentially speeding up drug development.

Driving the news: The release includes an AI protein-structure prediction model, a protein language model and ESM Atlas, a map of 6.8 billion proteins and 1.1 billion predicted structures.

What they're saying: "What we've shown is that these models have learned such a high-fidelity world model of biology that you can design protein interfaces computationally, take them into the laboratory and they function as predicted," Biohub head of science Alex Rives said in a statement.

The big picture: A number of efforts see curing disease as one of the most impactful ways to use AI.

• Isomorphic Labs, a spinout from Google, has raised more than $2 billion to fund AI-based drug discovery.
• In April, OpenAI announced a series of models aimed at helping accelerate biological research, while Anthropic has set up its own life sciences effort.

Yes, but: This work is still steps away from designing a drug that passes clinical trials, and any therapeutic use would require more safety testing.

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The American Cancer Society yesterday expanded its guidelines to add a blood test for colorectal cancer as a screening option for the second leading cause of U.S. cancer deaths.

Why it matters: Tens of millions of people don't opt for screening methods such as colonoscopy or a stool test, and a blood draw for the condition can be incorporated into routine physicals.

Yes, but: The ACS noted that colonoscopy remains the preferred screening option for people age 45 and older, and that blood tests should only be recommended as an alternative.

Driving the news: The new guidelines add Guardant Health's Shield blood test — which was approved by the FDA in 2024 — along with a new version of the Cologuard stool test and the ColoSense at-home test that looks for hidden blood and molecular markers in stool samples.

• The organization said insurance coverage and affordability remain among the biggest factors in whether eligible individuals get screened and said it was pressing for policies that eliminate out-of-pocket costs and other barriers.
• Medicare covers the blood test, which has a list price of about $1,500.

More young people are being diagnosed with colorectal cancer, usually after the disease has already spread.

Eli Lilly won a challenge to digital health brand Noom's advertising claims surrounding a program featuring microdoses of GLP-1 weight-loss drugs.

Why it matters: The action before BBB's National Advertising Division reflects the continued intense competition between brand-name drugmakers and telehealth brands in the surging anti-obesity market.

• Use of GLP-1 drugs below FDA-approved levels is trending online, fueled largely by the belief it costs less and can bring fewer side effects. But medical experts say there's limited evidence it works.

Driving the news: Noom agreed to voluntarily discontinue its "A Smaller Dose. A Smarter Start" claim surrounding its weight-loss program after the National Advertising Division found it couldn't demonstrate a measurable health benefit, BBB said this week.

• Noom said while it disagreed with the conclusion, it would comply with NAD's recommendation.
• NAD said that nothing in its decision prevents Noom from promoting its program or the benefits of its behavior-modification tools as a smarter start, as long as the messages aren't tied to unsupported dosage-related benefits.

Noom last year partnered with Lilly's direct-to-consumer pharmacy provider to streamline access to the company's blockbuster Zepbound. The arrangement reportedly was terminated after Noom continued to sell knockoff versions of GLP-1s, per Fierce Pharma.

💉 The FDA is convening its vaccine advisers today to discuss seasonal COVID shots after Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. overhauled a separate panel. (BioSpace)

⚖️ CVS sued to challenge a Tennessee law that would bar pharmacy benefit managers from owning pharmacies in the state. (Fierce Healthcare)

🫡 Drew Altman, who transformed KFF from a little-known family foundation to a major source of U.S. health policy research, is retiring. (NYT)