Source: Children’s Health Defense

EPA Chief Met With Bayer CEO Over Supreme Court Fight, Agency Records Show

The New Lede reported:

Top US regulators met with Bayer’s CEO last year to discuss “litigation” issues — including “Supreme Court Action” over its glyphosate weed killer — just months before the Trump administration took a series of steps to boost Bayer’s case at the high court, internal government records show.

The June 17 meeting, between officials at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Bayer CEO Bill Anderson and two other top Bayer executives, came as Germany-based Bayer was working to quash costly US litigation brought by tens of thousands of people who allege they developed cancer from their use of the company’s glyphosate-based herbicides, such as Roundup. At the core of those lawsuits are claims that the company failed to warn users of the risk of cancer, as shown in several research studies over many years.

One of Bayer’s stated key strategies to try to end the litigation, which has so far cost Bayer billions of dollars in settlements and jury verdict awards, is getting the Supreme Court to agree with Bayer’s argument that if the EPA does not require a cancer warning on its glyphosate products, the company cannot be held liable for failing to warn of a cancer risk.

The Boom in Autism Therapy Is Medicaid’s Fastest-Growing Jackpot

The Wall Street Journal reported:

When Meghann Mitchell first launched her autism-therapy business in 2019, she took aim at an unlikely source of profit: Indiana’s taxpayer-funded Medicaid program, the public insurance system for the poor. The bet paid off. In 2023, the state paid Mitchell’s company, Piece by Piece Autism Centers, $29 million to provide therapy to just 84 patients — about $340,000 a child — according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of Medicaid billing records.

That amount surpassed what Indiana Medicaid typically spends in a year treating a newly diagnosed lung-cancer patient or covering a year of nursing-home care.

Piece by Piece became one of Medicaid’s most expensive providers in part by raising its prices, triggering reimbursements as high as $640 an hour for routine therapy that can be administered by workers with little more than a high-school diploma. Its highest payments were more than 10 times higher than the nation’s average.

Mitchell said her company complied with Indiana’s rules and the state never objected to her prices.  “I don’t think Indiana really had any oversight, or not much,” said Mitchell, who bought a series of properties, including a $2.5 million home on Florida’s Sanibel Island and a $600,000 waterfront house on the Tippecanoe River in Indiana, while her company’s Medicaid billings soared.

‘Medical Conscience’ Bills Would Let Providers Refuse More Health Care

Stateline reported:

Legislation in at least eight states would expand the rights of doctors, nurses, hospitals and even insurance companies to refuse to provide or pay for care — from contraception and fertility services to medical marijuana and childhood vaccines — that conflicts with their religious or moral beliefs.

For years, most states have had so-called medical conscience laws that are mainly aimed at preventing providers or hospitals from having to participate in abortion. But conservative lawmakers in multiple states are pushing to expand such protections as cultural battles over health care have exploded in recent years.

Supporters say the measures protect providers from being sued, fired or demoted for following their deeply held beliefs. At least five states have passed expanded medical conscience laws in recent years. “There’s no policy advantage in requiring people to participate in a practice that violates their beliefs,” said Bill Duncan, constitutional law and religious freedom fellow at the Sutherland Institute, a conservative think tank in Salt Lake City that supports a medical conscience bill in Utah. “The right type of legislation is to allow for accommodation of those beliefs,” Duncan said.

‘Saving Lives’: Bill Would Fund Psychedelic Therapies for Military Veterans

Military.com reported:

New legislation introduced in Congress would require the Veterans Affairs (VA) secretary to designate the department’s medical facilities as “innovative therapies centers of excellence,” which would include increasing federal funding to study the therapeutic uses of psychedelics for veterans, according to a copy of the legislation shared with Military.com.

The “Innovative Therapies Centers of Excellence Act of 2025” sponsored by U.S. Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ), a U.S. Marine Corps veteran, would designate not fewer than five VA medical facilities that can offer these different therapeutic modalities. VA Secretary Doug Collins, upon the recommendation of VA Under Secretary for Health Ret. Maj. Gen. John Bartrum, is to assure appropriate geographic distribution of such facilities should the bill become law.

This legislation means a lot to Gallego, who served in the Marines from 2002-2006 and was deployed to Iraq where he served as a lance corporal as part of Lima Company, 3rd Battalion, 25th Marines. Between January 2005 and January 2006, 46 Lima Company Marines and one Navy corpsman were killed — including Gallego’s best friend. “When I came back from Iraq, I saw my fellow Marines, like so many other veterans, struggle to get the help they needed,” Gallego told Military.com on Monday. “Our veterans sacrificed so much for this country.”